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Technology in the human resources and recruiting industry is big business, but most importantly new technologies in recruiting provide movement towards a real change and opportunity in this industry. An opportunity that Towers Watson says is an $8.1 billion industry by 2015. The need to grow, update and invest in new technology for human capital can no longer be ignored especially since our employees are of the expectation that workplace technology should be just as new, shiny and advanced as consumer technologies like Nest for energy efficiency and home climate control and Oculus, the virtual reality headset technology purchased by Facebook for a cool $2 billion earlier this year.

Sadly, the technology adoption curve of HR and recruiting isn’t always cutting edge, and I estimate the adoption curve lag to between the consumer and recruiting industries to be in excess of 36 months with social recruiting only now being accepted as a must have tool we recruiters can’t live without. Below is a visual example the reality of technology adoption by HR and recruiting practitioner versus the consumer industry.

Because of that I look to current consumer trends to help shape and grow the next 2-10 years of recruiting innovation and recruitment technologies. Here are four crazy predictions and innovations that you haven’t even thought of yet for recruiting technology.

Wearable Technologies as Part of Interview Process and New Hire Training

At this year’s consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, wearable technologies like fit bands and smart clothing were all the rage. Imagine hiring managers fitting their interview candidates with small wearable devices to measure stress levels as part of a post offer physical fitness test for certain positions. Using these wearable technologies as part of the hiring process gives a whole new meaning to the stress interview.

Sometimes new hire training can be a bore especially when it comes to training foundational skills or positions that must be super focused on safety and body positioning. Wearable technologies like the Leap Motion Sensor and Xbox Kinetics will be adapted to train new hires in the importance of safety or ergonomic positioning in an office or other workplace setting.

Multi-screen Recruiting

While not a single technology, recruitment follows consumer trends. One trend I am most interested in is multi-screen recruitment. It goes beyond mobile and candidate experience trends is used to allow for a more complete experience on any and all devices especially those used at the same time. This could be using a desktop computer to apply for a job in tandem with a mobile device or as a recruiter streaming a job interview from their Google Glass while also viewing a candidate’s application and scoring their interview in real time using a tablet or mobile device.

Employee Engagement Tested Through Neuroscience

At SXSW, I witnessed a live demonstration of a glass brain where session attendees were able to see the brain’s responses and neuron interconnectivity of a volunteer’s brain in real time. With the use of virtual reality technology combined with a cap custom fitted to map brain activity, HR, hiring managers and bosses alike could literally get inside the head of their employees. No longer must executive leadership teams rely on costly and time-consuming employee engagement surveys. Employers can uniquely understand if employees are truly happy with their work as well as the optimum times when employees are most productive to optimize workplace office hours and scheduling.

Even better still, imagine the possibilities of putting your employees through a virtual reality test drive of their new jobs all without leaving their face-to-face job interview.

Self Predictive Analytics Based on Public Social Networking

Big data and the information gathered from leveraging large amounts of data presents great opportunities to streamline processes and anticipate changes based on patterns of data. It’s the public data available that I’m most excited about as a growing number of our employees and candidates provide intricate details of their lines shared in great detail online. Imagine using this public data to predict turnover patterns, the impact of a quarterly layoff on a workforce and anticipate the workplace productivity changes based on past sporting events like the Super bowl and March Madness so that you can limit down time and focus on driving efficiency. It’s just capturing, processing and presenting that data that proves the most challenging.

As recruiting innovations continue to grow, I’m excited about the new and emerging technologies yet to be developed and how they will disrupt our industry. How do you see consumer technology trends shaping the future of recruiting?

On a side note, we are already beginning to see this type of technology being introduced into the marketplace first with HireVue’s Insights product that examines over 1,500 data points to help you fully examine your pool of recently interviewed candidates.

Heading to the HR Technology Conference? Download our HR Tech Las Vegas Guide to get all the skinny on Vegas, baby!