Modern Hire, the first science-based hiring platform that enables organizations to continuously improve hiring experiences and outcomes with trusted science and technology, today released its third annual Hiring Trends Report. The analysis integrates Modern Hire research, learnings from its diverse clients and industry data to identify the most influential hiring trends for 2021.

“The pandemic significantly impacted the job market and hiring process last year –– and our new Hiring Trends Report shows that those effects will continue into 2021 and beyond,” said Karin Borchert, CEO of Modern Hire. “We rose to the occasion to meet and exceed client needs in 2020 by providing a science-based, personalized and data-driven approach to fairly, efficiently and effectively hiring candidates. Modern Hire is leading the industry with our proven science and trusted technology, which will be critical to helping the world return to work faster in 2021.”

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This year will continue to bring groundbreaking challenges to the job market and hiring processes. But with them come opportunities to redefine hiring practices and commit to a future of data-driven decision making. Based on Modern Hire’s rigorous analysis, the company has identified five hiring trends that will be most important to hiring teams this year:

Leverage talent agility. To be successful in 2021, hiring teams need to adapt an agile approach to talent, in which hiring teams evaluate candidates for fit across many job roles at once. Pre-hire assessments that quickly identify the candidates most likely to succeed, along with advanced AI techniques and scientifically backed prediction of on-the-job success, allow hiring teams to better understand the agility of their potential talent –– and ultimately hire the most promising candidates faster.

Build hiring processes immune to shock with automation. The 2020 pandemic caused a rapid and massive shift to a candidate-abundant market. While hiring teams can never lose sight of the candidate experience, building an efficient hiring process that is immune to labor market shocks is high priority in 2021. Forward-thinking hiring teams are automating as much as possible –– and selecting automation tools that will continuously improve their outcomes and enhance fairness –– to enable a frictionless, quicker hiring process.

Increased urgency for diversity in hiring. The need for meaningful improvement in organizational diversity and inclusion will spur increased concentration on more effective diversity hiring in 2021. Predicting, measuring and programmatically controlling for bias is an essential part of the hiring process for all enterprises –– as is monitoring the data and analyses frequently and in real-time as candidate pools change.

Candidate experience as brand experience. When it comes to virtual hiring in 2021, enterprises must ensure that their employer brand comes through in a strong, seamless hiring experience. Candidate engagement is an integral aspect of the brand experience, so candidates should have the chance to demonstrate competence and provide job-relevant information throughout the entire hiring process. As many individuals have lost jobs and are looking to get back to work, a candidate experience that provides candidates with the dignity that they deserve is of even greater importance.

Increased emphasis on human-centered AI. The “black box” approach that many HR technology vendors take to applying AI techniques cannot endure in a world where talent acquisition needs to be fair and ethical. AI hiring tools must be created with a human focus in mind and be beneficial for individuals as well as organizations. 2021 will be the year more hiring teams understand and commit to the deployment of AI hiring technologies that demonstrate a human-centric approach.

“Based on our years of research, client work and industry data, we believe that these five trends will be among the most influential to creating more fair, efficient and effective hiring processes in 2021 and beyond,” said Borchert. “Enterprises must take action now to modernize and automate their hiring processes to remain competitive and hire top talent this year – and for many years to come.”

For more information and to download Modern Hire’s 2021 Hiring Trends Report, please visit: https://modernhire.com/2021-hiring-trends/. To learn more about Modern Hire’s award-winning, science-based enterprise hiring platform, please visit www.modernhire.com.