Top Staffing Buzzwords for 21st Century

Buzzwords are terms that you may hear in the workforce from time to time. Whether you are a recruiter or a candidate, these words will sum up phrases and explanations in an easy, manageable way.

Sometimes, these words can be quite confusing if you aren’t familiar with them. Oftentimes, the buzzwords are trends that slip in and out very quickly. That’s why it’s important to do a little research at the beginning of each year so that you’ll be able to keep up with the latest words and those that are no longer relevant.

Here we will go over:

  • Staffing buzzwords, and
  • Buzzwords you should avoid

Staffing Buzzwords

  • Campus Recruiting – Campus recruiting is a term often used to describe talent hunting and hiring college and university students.
  • Authenticity – The validity of a company or candidate.
  • Blind Recruitment Software – Blind recruitment software is a recruitment reformatting tool that hides certain information about candidates before the recruiter sees them to prevent biased hiring.
  • Hiring Bias – Hiring without subconscious stereotypes.
  • Employment Personality Assessments – A way of testing how candidates can handle potential work situations and tasks.
  • Best Practices – Making sure you do the best you can in a successful, manageable way.
  • Business Intelligence –The tools, best practices, and applications used to analyze information and improve performances and decisions.
  • Candidate Experience (CX) – The overall involvement of someone who’s searching for a job.
  • Company Culture – The diversity, values, and principles of a company.
  • Recruitment Automation – Automating recruiting tasks and workflows.
  • Compensation – Employees work for compensation, otherwise known as a paycheck.
  • Competitive Market – The economy is improving, but jobs are still scarce in some areas of the country. With that comes competition between recruiters, as candidates are few and far between at times.
  • Compliance – Making sure your company is compliant with the ACA and other new tax laws that are now enforced. Without compliancy, there are fines that will be assessed.
  • Content Marketing – Using words in the form of articles and written advertisements to sell your service or product.
  • Customization – Working with staffing software that allows you to create your own customized dashboards, analytics, and other tools that work best for your company’s needs.
  • Data Security – Making sure software is up-to-date with all protocols.
  • Diversity – A workplace that’s accepting and offers a diverse group of employees.
  • Employer Branding – Creating a workplace that offers a culture that is appealing to everyone. Employer branding works to ensure your current workers are happy and well taken care of as well.
  • Engagement – Working with the candidate, initiating the first step, and making sure they get in for an interview.
  • Gen Y – The generation of people who are starting to move up in the ranks and get promoted as Gen X are retiring.
  • Gender Equality – Making sure both men and women are treated equally in the workforce on every level. Also known as the gender gap.
  • HR Business Partner – Experienced HR professional that works directly with a company’s senior leadership to direct and develop their HR agenda.
  • Hiring Manager – The person in charge of recruiting, hiring and firing.
  • HR Technology – Recruiting software, job boards, and more.
  • Integration – When software and other technology comes together and incorporates others services to provide a better experience for all involved.
  • Interviewing – Meeting with candidates that are interested in working for your company. This is your chance to ask questions and talk about their strengths and weaknesses.
  • Performance Review Questions – Questions that help you assess the performance of employees.
  • Volunteer Time Off – Volunteer time off is paid time sponsored by the employer which allows the employee to do volunteer work in their community.
  • Job Boards – Used by recruiters to post job openings and candidates to post resumes, job boards are a great way to recruit.
  • Learning Management – Making sure your employees are always developing and learning by sending them to workshops and seminars or other types of continuing education is learning management.
  • LinkedIn Recruiter – Talent management through LinkedIn. You can purchase staffing software that works with the social media site and your current in-house recruiting software.
  • Outsourcing – Hiring an outside company to perform daily functions of a business. These tasks are usually ones that saves your business time and money.
  • Performance Management – Making sure current workers are completing their daily tasks and developing in the way they should be.
  • Pre-Candidate Engagement – Building and cultivating relationships with people before they become candidates.
  • Hiring Pipeline – The hiring pipeline is a list of candidates who have expressed a strong interest in your company.
  • Professional Certification – As professionals take a test to prove they’re qualified for their career, they become professionally certified.
  • Recruiting – The act of searching for candidates that might be interested in working for your company.
  • Retention – Making sure you keep employees and candidates happy so that they’ll be more likely to want to continue to work for your company.
  • Social Recruiting – Using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media networking sites to recruit new candidates.
  • Sourcing – When recruiters reach out to candidates through an agency or staffing company, they’re sourcing.
  • The Cloud – Staffing software now extends to SaaS (Software as a Service). There’s no longer a need for in-house software. Everything can be stored on the cloud, which saves hard drive space and more.
  • The Economy – There has been steady growth in the economy in the past year. The job market is increasing. Look for it to continue to rise in the coming year.
  • University Recruiting – Going to a college or university to find candidates while they’re still in school but planning for graduation and life after college.
  • Video Interviewing – A great way to interview remotely, without having to disrupt the candidate’s current work schedule. It also saves money when a recruiter might otherwise have to fly an applicant in for a meeting.
  • Work/Life Balance – Instead of working all the time and focusing less on life, consider a work/life balance that gives you equal amounts of time at each. Gen Z is looking more for this than any other generation in the past.
  • Recruitment CRM – Candidate relationship management software allows you to store, organize, sort, and manage your candidate data. It also allows you to maintain communication to build and nurture relationship for future positions.
  • Maternity Leave Cover – Refers to temporary positions created to fill the duties of employees on maternity leave, emphasizing the importance of work/life balance.
  • Outbound Hiring – A proactive recruitment strategy where recruiters reach out to potential candidates directly, rather than waiting for applicants.
  • Appointing Officer – The designated authority in an organization responsible for making hiring decisions.
  • Job Board – A digital platform where employers post job vacancies and candidates apply, an essential tool in modern recruitment.
  • ATS (Applicant Tracking System) – Software that automates the hiring process, from receiving applications to scheduling interviews, crucial for managing applicant flow data.
  • Recruiting Metrics – Quantitative measures used to track and analyze the effectiveness of recruitment strategies, including time to hire and quality of hire.
  • Headcount Mapping – Planning and visualizing organizational structure and future hiring needs, crucial for strategic workforce planning.
  • Informed Candidate – A candidate well-researched and knowledgeable about the company and the role they’re applying for, enhancing the quality of applications.
  • Probationary Arrangement – A trial period for new hires to assess their fit within the organization, often used to mitigate the risk of early attrition.
  • Direct Reports – Employees who report directly to a manager or leader, highlighting the structure of organizational hierarchy.
  • Individual Contributor – An employee who contributes individually to projects or tasks without supervising others, playing a unique role in the team dynamics.
  • Employee Assessment – Evaluations conducted to measure an employee’s performance, skills, and suitability for the role or promotion.
  • Human Resource Outsourcing – The practice of contracting a third-party organization to handle HR functions, allowing companies to focus on core business activities.
  • Human Resources – The department within an organization that deals with the people aspect of the business, including hiring, training, compliance, and employee relations.
  • Internal Recruiting Terms – Specific jargon or phrases used within an organization’s recruitment process, important for candidates to understand during the hiring process.
  • Group Interview – A recruitment method where multiple candidates are interviewed simultaneously, useful for observing interpersonal and problem-solving skills.
  • Whiteboard Interview – A technique often used in tech recruitment where candidates are asked to solve coding problems on a whiteboard, demonstrating their thought process and expertise.
  • Inbound Recruiting – A strategy where companies create engaging content and use social media to attract candidates to apply, building a strong employer brand.
  • Turndown – The act of rejecting a job offer or candidate, an inevitable part of the recruitment process.
  • Retained Recruiters – Recruitment professionals hired on a retainer basis to fill high-level or specialized positions, providing expertise and dedicated search efforts.
  • Corporate Recruiter – An in-house recruiter responsible for filling vacancies within the company, as opposed to agency recruiters who serve multiple clients.
  • Deferred Compensation – A portion of an employee’s compensation that is set aside to be paid at a later date, often used as an incentive for senior-level employees.
  • Panel Interview – An interviewing technique where a candidate is interviewed by multiple company representatives simultaneously, allowing for diverse perspectives in the assessment process.
  • Median Wage – The middle value in the list of wages of employees in a particular job or sector, providing insight into compensation trends.
  • Agency Recruiter – A recruiter who works for a recruitment agency and is tasked with finding candidates for client companies.
  • Purple Squirrel – A term used to describe an ideal candidate with precisely the right education, experience, and qualifications that perfectly fits a job’s requirements. The rarity of finding such a candidate makes the purple squirrel more of a recruitment myth than an expectation.
  • Incentive Pay – Additional compensation awarded to employees for achieving defined performance targets or for exceptional work. It’s designed to motivate and reward employees above and beyond their base salary, often linked to productivity, sales targets, or company performance.
  • Job Hopper – An individual who frequently changes jobs, typically spending a short duration at each position. While often viewed negatively as a lack of loyalty or commitment, job hopping can also indicate adaptability and a breadth of experience across various roles and industries.
  • Hidden Job Market – Employment opportunities that are not advertised or publicly announced. These positions are often filled through internal recruitment, networking, referrals, or direct contact with job seekers, underscoring the importance of networking and establishing professional connections.
  • Total Remuneration – The complete pay package awarded to an employee, encompassing not only the base salary but also any bonuses, benefits, incentives, and other financial rewards associated with the role. Total remuneration reflects the full value of compensation for work performed.
  • Layoff – The termination of employment of an employee or a group of employees for reasons unrelated to personal performance, often due to economic downturns, company restructuring, or cost-cutting measures. Layoffs can be temporary or permanent, depending on the circumstances.
  • Halo and Horns Effect – A cognitive bias in which an observer’s overall impression of a person influences feelings and thoughts about that entity’s character or properties. In a recruitment context, the halo effect might lead to an overestimation of a candidate’s abilities based on a single positive trait, whereas the horns effect can cause undervaluation due to one negative aspect.

More Staffing Buzz Words

  • Free Resume Management System
  • Globalization
  • Employee Agreement
  • Boolean
  • Big Data
  • Brand Ambassadors
  • Gamification
  • Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Thought Leadership
  • STEM
  • Applicant Tracking System for Small Business
  • Talent Communities

Bad Buzzwords

Sometimes, words are used when they shouldn’t be. Either they’ve been phased out or they’re played out. Whatever the case, make sure you get familiar with them so that you can steer clear of these terms in a conversation.

  • Accountemps
  • At the end of the day
  • Bailout
  • Circle back
  • Customer-centric
  • Depression
  • Disconnect
  • Do more with less
  • Downsizing
  • Game changer
  • Gloom and doom
  • It is what it is
  • Leverage
  • On the same page
  • Overworked
  • Pay freeze
  • Reach out
  • Recession
  • Restructuring
  • Socialize
  • Solution
  • Synergy
  • Think outside the box
  • Value-add
  • Viral
  • End game
  • Educate the customer
  • World-class
  • Granularity
  • War game
  • Deep dive

Have you heard these words around the workplace this year?

If so, which ones?

Do you use them, yourself?

Remember to visit back with us next blog post to learn more about the buzzwords of 2016 as well as ones that shouldn’t be used, as they’ve become irrelevant.

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