I thought that this was going to be a difficult post to write especially when the recruitment industry and hiring and firing in general is in turmoil right now, but when I got down to it my Top 10 predictions just fell out!

1. Recruiters stop using job boards to attract candidates and only use web apps in conjunction with revamping the job tab on their own website.  The real (if difficult) birth of cloud recruiting begins.

2. Recruitment agencies halve (or more) their percentage fee.  Tons of these guys will go out of business in 2009 (except for the ones that have a monopoly or add value).

3. Google comes up with an imaginitive way of finding and recruiting people.

4. Less and Less “career advice”, and more and more “how to keep a job advice” appears on those job boards that think we actually read that stuff!

5. The big job boards (Monster, Jobserve et al) begin to stagger around a little punch drunk.  They’re being hit from a lot of different directions these days (Facebook, LinkedIn et al) and no matter how much they try and change the colour of their spots they’re still the same old dinosaur and can’t adapt to the planet’s changing economic conditions.  They’re in the wrong game now and this year they may start to realise it!

6. Something really useful in the recruitment world will catch fire for mobiles that will change the whole game.

7. Buy-up of other job boards to reduce competition and try and keep revenue streams from drying up.

8. People/Job networking sites to rise and rise, although where there revenue streams will come from is anyones guess.

9. YouTube video shorts promoting companies, individual departments or individuals will put on a growth spurt but YouTube will need to add a smarter interface if it’s going to work.

10. The term “Personal branding” is dusted off, given some new spin to the point where it actually takes off.

My top 8 topics of interest for the recruitment industry in 2009 and beyond are:

1. Personal Promotion (for want of a better phrase!).  You own the data, you know what your skills are you know when you’re available.  Who else is in a better position to know all this?  Recruitment agencies - I think not!

2. Social Networking Sites - Can recruiters engage with candidates using social networking sites?

3. Video Branding - How can employers, agencies and individuals promote and develop their own brands?

4. Recruitment Blogs - How can recruiters utilise blogging within their career sites?

5. Personal Tagging - Forget scanning CVs or resumes, use data tags instead.

6. Aggregators - How aggregators are used in online recruiting (I have an instant aversion to aggregation - just smacks of poor quality output to me)!

7. Recruitment and Web 2.0 (+ Web 3.0)! - Nice words but is there any substance behind all this verbage?  Do we really need to engage with Generation Y using these techniques?

8. Cloud Recruiting - The recruitment industry’s spin on cloud computing