Top Trends in Human Resource Management in 2021–2022 in Narrow and Specific Niches

While it’s relatively easy to find a competent customer support specialist, it may be a real challenge to hire a professional ready to deal with more specific tasks. Luckily, the trends mentioned in this article will help overcome this problem.

It doesn’t matter what type of business a person owns because its success will mainly depend on its team. Thus, one of your HR manager’s key tasks is to find real professionals ready to deal with complex tasks and challenges. While finding an ordinary worker is not a problem, things are totally different when you start looking for a person with the knowledge necessary for a specific niche.

First of all, it’s important to pay attention to the job candidate’s major and additional skills. It’s great if a professional knows how to perform their duties and, at the same time, can come up with a solution for problems beyond their responsibilities.

For instance, imagine your company works in a specific industry, such as cryptocurrency, and you are looking for a copywriter. In this case, it’ll be a good idea to look for a person who knows not only how to write texts but also how to trade crypto assets, develop simple smart contracts, etc. Such T-shaped specialists become more and more popular with the owners of different companies because their rich experience can help them solve specific problems.

In addition, during the interview, an HR manager should consider an extremely important trend related to the rising popularity of full-time remote work. Nearly 60% of modern employees want to work remotely. Thus, HR managers have to adapt to new workplace settings to keep the company’s workers motivated and engaged.

On the other hand, you should make sure that a person will be able to perform their specific duties while working from home. For instance, if you are looking for a backend developer, make sure that a job candidate has hardware powerful enough to complete their future tasks.

HRM Trends in eSports

Working in the eSports industry is an excellent option for developing both hard skills and creativity. According to Indeed, the list of the most popular jobs in this niche includes programmers, game testers, developers, designers, writers, etc. As a rule, these specialists work closely together to create impressive digital words and innovative gaming mechanics.

Professional HR managers from the eSports industry say that there are several specific trends. It’ll be a wise decision to follow them if you want to find the best experts and encourage them to join your team:

• Show your main projects. There is a real race between the companies that develop eSports products. Thus, if you want to attract a talented professional, you should show them all the benefits of your existing project (or at least share your ideas). In addition, it’s important to clearly outline all roles in your team and share your company’s culture with the prospective candidate.
• Use social media power. The Internet provides talented developers and game designers with the possibility to share their works with the whole world. HR managers often monitor social media platforms, such as LinkedIn, AngelList, GitHub, and Instahyre. There is a strong chance that you may find your perfect job candidate there.
• Offer benefits. It’s not enough just to offer your IT specialists or other team members the possibility of working from home. HR departments in modern eSports companies should also come up with other goodies, such as child care assistance, company events, free Friday beer (for office workers), etc.
• Look for legal and compliance specialists. The eSports industry expands into new areas, including Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa. And the countries in these regions may have specific laws. Thus, any eSports company needs specialists with banking and financial backgrounds as well as hands-on experience in anti-money laundering regulations.

How Ensure You Hire the Best Candidate

And now let’s discuss the most efficient tips, which will help you find your ideal employee:

1. Look for self-learners. Even if the person doesn’t have enough experience related to your specific niche, they may have a great desire and motivation to get the necessary knowledge. Thus, self-learners can improve their skills and become valuable members of your team.
2. Test your candidate. Spend some time watching your new employer’s results and attitude to his duties. Try to discover their strong and weak points to provide your specialists with the most appropriate tasks.
3. Prepare for the interview. Check out your candidate’s CV, portfolio, and cover letter before the interview. It’ll help you prepare several questions, which you can use to discover a person’s professionalism.
4. Make sure the candidate is interested in your job position. It’s just great if a person has not only the necessary skills but also takes an interest in your specific niche.

By the way, our HR manager Polishchuk Mariia has also shared her thoughts about the situation in the IT labor market:

Choosing the right job candidate is now more challenging than ever. Further, statistics prove this fact too. For example, an HR manager could get nearly 10 responses to a technical job posting in January 2019. However, in January 2022, there were only 1–2 responses on average.

COVID-19 is also among the key factors which have led to this situation. At the pandemic’s beginning, we could see a significant fall in the IT labor market. Some companies started laying people off and shutting down their projects.

During such a challenging period, we established a partnership with our first client as well as worked on the active development of our team. We’ve managed to significantly expand our team (nearly four times) in the last two years. Moreover, none of our workers was fired during this period. And soon, the IT market got out of the crisis, which significantly accelerated the recruiting of technical specialists.

Nonetheless, some candidates say they don’t want to work in the Gaming and Gambling industries. In this case, I usually write something funny, just like: “Please, wait and read the rest of our offer. eSports isn’t about sports gambling but about professional competitions.” After it, I tell the candidates about awesome development possibilities during the work on a highload project and its challenging (but, at the same time, interesting) aspects, which may attract professional developers.

Our most important values include the company’s horizontal organizational structure and non-bureaucratic policy. Thus, we attract employees who are tired of big corporations. As a rule, these people are looking for honesty and reliability — that’s what I’m trying to show them during our interviews. I believe that it’s the key factor why we have high employee retention and all our candidates go through a probationary period.

There are many gamers among IT specialists. These people understand that the gaming industry can entertain us and provide a perspective of significant professional development. And together with our team, they can get on the inside of the eSports industry and get a job, which allows them to discuss the latest tournaments, victories of their favorite teams, and news in the IT market.

Conclusion

Hiring the right candidate is a challenging process, but if you do everything right, you may find a reliable worker ready to share your company’s values. And as you can see, if a company wants to work only with the best ones, it should also create attractive conditions. It’s important to show your candidates all benefits and possible prospects they may get as soon as they start working in your team.

Modern employees appreciate the possibility to work from home and a chance to express their own ideas. Luckily, we at 27 Nerds fully share these awesome trends.