Baltic Countries: Companies need to invest in employer brand and recruitment process

You may say that in Baltic countries candidates are fishing for the better job opportunities. Sometimes they are even applying positions they do not have skills for. People have high salary expectations and ambitions. This means that salary levels are increasing and for example in Lithuania salaries are expected to increase approximately +5%/annually. Despite the salary increases people in Lithuania are still willing to move abroad after better living conditions. In Estonia instead willingness to move abroad has been decreasing as the salaries have been increasing. But salary is not the only thing that matters. People are also looking for development opportunities, flexible working hours and quick, smooth recruitment processes.

CV-Online survey conducted in September, 2016 showed that only 39% of employees consider they get adequate wage for work contributed, but overall satisfaction with job for example in Latvia is 6.2 out of 10. Thus employers will continue with pay rise and better work environment. Companies will work on improving their employees’ experience in order to increase the overall job satisfaction level and decrease rotation risks. They are also investing in their employees and strong collaboration with educational institutions (education, training and retraining). Also we will see more flexibility in the job to have better work/life balance.

Companies are investing more in their employer brand, especially job ads and career sites. We see that more and more employers redesign their job ads in new formats by including company values, showing internal culture (photos, video), using photos and success stories of employees, showing photo of direct supervisor, using icons and less text, showing salary, using creative approach and humor (job position title, photo, content). One of the tools is Social Media that companies use for brand building and candidate attraction. Social Media provides more frequent interaction with the target audience in a cost and time saving way.

Companies are also creating modern and attractive career sites (also mobile friendly) to provide better candidates' experience. Recruitment process automatization and investing in ATS (applicant tracking system) are coming more popular. Companies have also started to understand that BIG DATA analysis will be the key point of business success. But what companies need to do more is to think about data processing of their employees and candidates due to coming new EU data protection regulation in May, 2018. This will require to make legal and IT audit of all processes related to candidate sourcing, recruiting, hiring and employment. It means HR specialists will need additional competencies.  

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