Is your recruitment strategy optimized? It doesn't matter how much time you spend on perfecting your processes, recruitment challenges always find their way in. So, is your recruitment strategy optimised?
Recruitment is integral to building a sustainable and growth driven workforce that scales the company to new heights. That being said, the entire process can be daunting for sure. More specifically when you are juggling multiple roles. In fact, a study by LinkedIn indicated that 76% of hiring managers admit that attracting quality candidates is their greatest challenge. So, how can HR professionals overcome these hurdles?
Before you develop a winning recruitment strategy and build a hiring process that pulls top talents, you need to know the recruitment challenges in depth and prepare a deep understanding of the common obstacles. Whether it’s the initial process of sourcing top talents or building positive candidate experience, each step in the recruitment poses its own set of challenges. Despite recent market shifts that have introduced new complexities, with the right strategies, you can still attract the best candidates and make your company stand out.
How? Our list below will help you pinpoint relevant recruitment challenges. Once identified, apply the corresponding solutions to enhance your hiring process, build a better hiring team and create a qualified talent pool.
12 Common Recruitment Challenges (Fixed)
Shortage of Skilled Applicants
A lack of a skilled applicant pool resulting in reduced quality of hires is one of the most common issues that every recruiter is facing today. Moreover, the scenario hasn’t changed for the good. In fact, the global talent shortage has more than doubled since 2014. Such shortage can result in an inefficient recruitment process with increased time to fill and recruiters settling for less-than-ideal candidates. This ultimately leads to a slowed business process and propels the attrition rates.
Fix: A Broader Job Posting Strategy
Maximising the reach of your posts is the first thing you can do to tackle a lack of skilled talent. Start by posting your vacancies on multiple job boards including several niche job sites. Don’t forget to share them across your social media platforms. This strategy can increase your chances of finding the right candidates.
Using recruiting software like Skima AI can simplify this process. Skima allows you to manage all applications in one platform. This keeps your recruitment process organized and ensures you don’t overlook any promising candidates. A recruitment technology to electrify your talent pool.
Attracting the Right Talents
Recruiters, no matter how experienced they are, often come to a road block of sorts where discovering and attracting the right talent just seems impossible. This happens for some jobs more often than others. Thus, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed looking at a sea of unqualified candidates.
Fix: Create Better Job Ads
You can fit this shortcoming by creating job ads that speak not only about the job but also the company. Be clear and outline the job requirements and responsibilities. This approach can help attract a smaller, yet more qualified, pool of candidates. You can start detailing the specific qualifications and skills required for the role. By practising this, you can set clear expectations from the beginning. Additionally, use targeted 'knock-out' questions in your application forms. These questions help you quickly identify the best-fit candidates, streamlining your hiring process.
Lack of Employer Branding
If you can’t see an end to your struggles to attract top talents the issue might not be with your recruitment process but with building a strong employer brand. A majority of the job seekers today are millennials and Gen Z and where are they? They are online. Today’s professionals are socially aware and prioritize working for reputable employers who genuinely care about their employees. Many often value this as much as a competitive salary.
There are studies that show 96% of employees would consider applying for a position at a company with a strong employer brand. In the same aspect, 87% also say that negative employee reviews from current or former employees is a dominant factor in considering applying for a job. A positive and inviting employer brand helps you stand out in a highly competitive job market and enhances your ability to attract passive candidates.
Fix: Make Inclusive Employer Brand
Start by building a solid employer brand displaying everything that makes your company an excellent workplace.While practising recruitment marketing, highlight the training opportunities and career advancement options available to employees. Online, share pictures of happy employees at work and feature their testimonials on your career page, website and socials. This approach will drive the best talent to your pipeline and reinforces your company’s positive image in the job market, adding more value to your job offers.
Keeping Qualified Candidates Engaged
You might have a candidate pool filled with qualified candidates but ever wondered why, when you reach out, they never respond? It’s because, as we discussed, skilled candidates are few, so, they frequently receive messages from recruiters which makes it challenging for your email to stand out. Also, candidates who are highly skilled juggle multiple job offers simultaneously. Thus, persuading passive candidates to choose your company over competitors requires extra effort.
Fix: Find the Motivator
In Order to grab your unicorn’s attention, do a thorough research about what motivates them and what they value in their current job. Once you are aware of these factors, prepare personalised emails that focus on what they can do for your company and what your company can offer them. A tailored message to their needs and desires makes your outreach more compelling and increases the likelihood of them considering your offer.
Soaring Time To Hire
An extended time to hire is a major challenge for recruiters resulting in the loss of high quality candidates and a lack of good candidate experience. The first reason that comes to light for this is a lengthy recruitment process. The more time you take to communicate with your candidates and leave them unnoticed, the high candidate disinterest, potential productivity losses, and creativity stagnation within the organization grows.
Fix: Build A Talent Pipeline
Start by automating administrative tasks like resume screening and interview scheduling, among others. A much faster and reliable method to pre-screen individuals for open positions can help you identify and attract candidates for open positions. This way you not only reduce the overall time-to-fill, but also create an efficient recruitment process.
Difficulty Being Diverse
Despite companies around the globe singing songs about diversity, equity and inclusion in their hiring process, creating a diverse workforce remains a significant recruitment challenge. Reports indicate that achieving gender equity is a top priority for 71% of talent acquisition professionals. However, there is still a notable disparity between male and female applicants.
Moreover, recruiters and hiring managers often fail to acknowledge the difficulties surrounding the acceptance for individuals from different sexual and gender orientations. There are also the racial and ethnic biases which discourage people from underrepresented groups to apply for jobs. This lack of diversity can also deter candidates from diverse backgrounds from considering your company.
Fix: Set DE&I Guidelines in Your Hiring Process
The best way to identify and account diversity related challenges is to incorporate and communicate clear DE&I policies into your talent acquisition strategy. Go a step further and engage in diversity related employee referral programs. Spend time with employees from underrepresented groups and team members from diverse backgrounds. Also, take a look back at your job descriptions and see if they are to ensure your recruiting panel includes individuals from various genders, backgrounds, and races.
Not Using The Latest Recruitment Tools
If your team is using the same few tools like a decade old applicant tracking system and an outdated resume parser, how do you expect to fight the challenges of the modern day recruitment strategies? Many companies hesitate to invest in the latest recruitment software, or if they do, the software lacks essential features like AI driven resume screening or automated job description generation.
Fix: Research and Re-stack Your Recruitment Tech
Take a closer look at your current software systems. features. Check if they are at par with the latest in HR and upgrade accordingly. If you are a manual recruiter, choose a reliable recruitment software that matches your long term needs. A step like this can enhance the overall recruitment experience which leads to an efficient process.
Ghosting
Ghosting is not a good sign, especially when it comes to candidates leaving you mid way and disappearing. Has it happened to you? Ever wondered what triggered it?
A 2022 survey indicates that 39% of recruiters reported candidates cutting off communication mid way of the recruitment process. The winning reason for this includes anything from a poor interview process, receiving another job offer, misalignment with job expectations, and strict office policies.Fix: Simplify Your Hiring Process
The right way to tackle candidate ghosting is to create a simpler recruitment process and put an effort in reducing time-to-hire. Start by providing flexible working options, bonuses among other competitive benefits. Also, make sure the job descriptions are clear and aligned with candidates' expectations.
Not So Great Candidate Experiences
Developing a positive candidate experience is amongst the most essential tasks for recruiters. It not only gives an opportunity to build a better employer brand and pull top talents towards you. To implement this, start by streamlining communication expectations and use recruitment software to further simplify other processes. Ensure that the application process is mobile-friendly to cater to candidates on the go.
Fix: Focus on Candidate Coordination
First, you must find a way to improve your coordination with candidates. When interviewing you must also give them all necessary information for interviews and keep them informed about the hiring timeline. By building the overall candidate experience you not only strengthen your employer brand but also create a positive reputation in the talent market.
Offer Hunters
There are passionate candidates who are in it for their love of the job they do. Then, there are also candidates who are in your mailbox shopping for offers. And the latter is certainly disappointing.
Fix: Make An Offer They Can’t Refuse
Building a recruitment journey that motivates the candidate to join your organization is necessary. You can go the extra mile by organizing a meet-and-greet session with their prospective team members and providing an introduction to company leadership. Furthermore, ensure they stay informed and engaged even after the final interview.
Unable to Tackle Resume Tsunamis
Working your way through a tsunami of resumes can present a significant challenge in the recruitment process and certainly overwhelm you. Also, with less time in hand and competitors closing in on the top candidates, selective resume screening comes into play and makes the hiring process biassed.
Fix: Use Skima AI
Employ Skima to save time and boost overall team efficiency when handling large volumes of applications.
A Fairer Recruitment Plan
Recruiting fairly isn’t easy and often stems from unconscious biases. Besides being forced to follow your legal duty of being fair, it should also be a moral responsibility. A fair recruitment plan offers an inclusive workplace, showing the potential candidates that your company values meritocracy and embraces diversity's positive impacts.
Fix: Be Objective
Whether it’s interviews, screening or onboarding, consider applying an objective hiring approach. Use 'blind' hiring software like Skima to mitigate biases and ensure fair evaluation based on qualifications and skills.
End Note
Sooner or later, you will face some form of recruitment challenges and if you don’t have a fix for it, you might jeopardize your entire recruitment journey. Identify and solve the challenges beforehand to enjoy a continued recruitment journey.
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