Now that my grumpy post calling out the OUTS of 2024 is over with, let’s embrace the good… ✨
There’s a lot to be excited about this year, according to people on both the hiring and job searching sides. I’ve been thinking about their opinions/feedback and how it compares to the daily news about hiring, layoffs, promotions, and more.
Here are some of the most exciting themes for what’s in this year, the things that will will help talent and organizations succeed:
The Candidate Experience
Like I shared in my last post, this hunger games-style hiring in the tech world has talented candidates demoralized and exhausted. Collective memories matter when it comes to brand recognition! One of my favorite services is Glassdoor because it removes the barrier to other people’s experiences when talent is looking for work. We can expect to see even more services like this on a variety of platforms. Who’s going to become the Deuxmoi of the hiring experience? Slack groups are already catching onto the value of public discussion here. Who’s going to set the new example for best practices now that some old players have royally damaged their reputations for how they treat talent?
Some suggestions:
Candidates need a seamless, efficient application process. Nobody wants to input the same information multiple ways at multiple steps in the process. Some organizations will demand more from their ATS platforms and some new services will be created to keep making the experience better. The care and quality of your job application experience reflects the quality of your brand/product. It’s also OK to be a startup with messy HR (temporarily), but you can still keep the application process clean.
I’m dying for more platforms that support an organized job search! LinkedIn and co. have the right intentions, but someone will do a better job. I have my eye on some that make it into a game, some that help organize different materials, but we haven’t hit the mark just yet. Some interesting features that should be developed further: Organizing/tailoring materials, tracking success rates based on stages of interview processes, tracking applications overall, etc. It’s also worth noting that candidates don’t want multiple platforms and accounts. We’re not going to see people use everything. We’ll see the winning platform with the cleanest and most comprehensive employer <> talent UX scoop up the engagement of the talent pool.
Communication: Feedback is invaluable to people on a job search. I totally understand that hiring teams are swamped, too, and am complicit in failing to give good feedback sometimes. But there needs to be a better balance and investment in this part of the experience. Candidates WANT to improve, they want to develop their skills, and organizations who find a way to make this feedback available will be extremely popular even to those they don’t hire. Shoutout to the teams already working overtime to provide feedback along the way.
Loyalty <3
Is it karma, or did you just lay people off the week before Christmas?
Conversations about employee and employer loyalty will be 🔥 this year. Debates about job-hopping and lack of career pathways feel stale and we need more in this conversation. I want to hear from managers who have developed and promoted the same talent on a regular basis. I want to understand what kept high performers loyal to their employer for 10+ years, or through 2020-now, especially if they had other options. I want to understand what specific benefits and career pathing strategies work, through both studies and anecdotes from people I know.
Comment, email me, find me… I need to hear more takes on this. Where are both employers and talent missing the mark when it comes to loyalty? Which orgs are doing a great job with this, and why?
I spoke with someone recently who only approves new headcount every few years (they oversee a large tech/food company, specifically their data org). I love this approach, btw. Slow & steady prevents unnecessary layoffs.
This person was very proud of their retention of some employees for over 20 YEARS. In tech especially, that’s incredible. His secret? Constantly upskilling his team. Learning about his people personally, investing in their ongoing education/pivots throughout the org, and supporting career changers coming from junior positions in the non-tech sides of their business. I can’t recommend this enough, and he is not concerned about constantly replacing talent. Startups can achieve this too on a smaller scale by being intentional and incorporating this practice from day 1.
We’ll also see conversations about promotions and raise expectations. Some of the dinosaurs do this very well and after the last few years, talent has a new appreciation for the way more established companies approach career pathing. People are willing to take a slight salary cut if it means excellent benefits and they know exactly what growth looks like long-term. There’s a happy medium: be flexible enough to grow top talent quickly like a startup, but provide clear timelines and expectations (even when you can’t deliver on them on time) so that people are less inclined to job hop or just switch to freelancing.
Lifelong Learning
We know this, but I’m so excited to see what innovations this sparks this year.
The certification/online course space is saturated but the competition is great for the talent pool. Nobody loses when learning and growth is accessible to all. You can learn for free at libraries (also a big fan of Youtube) or a reasonable price at community colleges which makes skill-building accessible. You can also invest in targeted learning with more formal courses like bootcamps and online certs. A talent pool that’s constantly improving is excellent for employers who aren’t scared of what that means for people planning and talent attraction. For this reason, I’m a huge fan of companies who use apprenticeships to funnel in diverse junior talent (in-house or externally). Mid-level talent is dying to get their hands out of junior-level work! Free them up, let them optimize your onboarding. I also love the companies who are betting on upskilling. It’s exciting when your employer not only works with you to plan your growth long-term, but invests in you to continue learning and becoming more valuable by footing the bill for your education.
What does innovation look like here?
The online course world will continue to flesh itself out between the high-ticket certs vs. free content, and the mentorship space is wide open for some stars. ADPlist does a great job making networking accessible so that people can learn from experts in their field. LinkedIn needs to trim the fat in the algorithms and listen to their users: we want less posturing and more quality knowledge-sharing. Lean into the impact of LinkedIn Learning and the hiring features and show us how you’re de-prioritizing accounts that just want vanity metrics. We’ll see some new in-person learning/networking opportunities become popular as we continue balancing remote vs. in-person.
Systems & People Planning
As a type-A person who loves organizing, I can admit that there’s a line. We don’t need a thousand Notion/Google Doc/Asana/Confluence pages without a clear strategy for updating them (@Notion…ilysm tho xoxo). Tech debt is an enormous $$$ sucker for orgs at every level. The dinosaurs have embarrassing UX and the small “lean” teams have too much documentation and not enough maintenance. There’s clearly not a one-size-fits-all solution, but there are some winners who will help organizations solve for issues like data management, in-house workflow documentation, customer flows, and evolving sales collateral. We don’t need more options to organize our data. We need platforms that help us constantly audit and simplify. I’d encourage org leaders to ask themselves how they are thinking about roles like Salesforce engineers, product management, data teams as a whole, and more.
People planning is a system, and a crucial one at that. Morale is in a weird place, and companies who invest in their people ops and strategy will come out on top.
Some key areas:
Management training
Succession planning
Regular onboarding/documentation audits
Feedback loops with top individual contributors: where do they need to be freed up?
DEI training: What will people be held accountable do within their roles?
AI & Workflow Hacking
I’ve seen the news about the ethics & standardization of ChatGPT/ OpenAI lawsuits gearing up, so we’ll see what comes of those conversations this year. 👀
I’m more focused on how we can all use AI to make our jobs easier. People are getting creative when faced with resourcing challenges. Let’s not overdo it or put protected data on there… 🫠 but we can be strategic about how it frees us up.
I’ve been loving keeping tabs on a former manager who’s building out her AI for Education company, which provides excellent thought leadership and content for how to ethically/efficiently use AI in the education world. That’s what we want to see more of!
Labor Organization (!!)
The trends in every area of our world show us that people are in the mood to get organized. I’m here for it. I don’t expect blanket organizations that cover the entire tech world, but we’ll see some specialized progress for sure. People are looking for standardization (across the board: salaries, benefits, role definitions), protections from irresponsible accounting, and equity.
What the tech world lacks is the healthy balance between labor organizations and employers that exists in some other industries. I think we’ll see some disruption from ex-FANG-ers (? idk, but y’all love putting “ex-” whatever in your bios) and I hope we’ll see some leadership from traditionally non-tech companies that are heavily investing in their tech orgs. Organizations that benefit from this trend will be the ones who embrace it, set those standards, and let their top talent position themselves as thought leaders in this area.
Slack Groups
Which are your favorites? Mine is Techqueria.
Am I forgetting anything?
Prioritizing some of these themes when planning for 2024 will help talent and organizations thrive. I’m excited to see what job creation, employee retention, and new products come from them.
Thank you for reading, & please share this with someone who needs it! 🫶🏼
Let me know which topics you’d like to see covered next, or if you have any hot takes about the ins & outs for this year.
Great content and insights summarized well here Lupe, thanks for putting this out there into the interwebs. I agree with you tech debt from many platforms are and will continue to ail companies this year and beyond. Well-designed, customizable ways to provide continuous auditing (think event monitoring but applied to multiple system areas: content, documentation, intranet sites, FAQs, CMS and more) will be key to simplifying and keeping organizations mission, impact, and execution first focused.