With regard to recruitment, 2022 was one of the most challenging years for companies looking for qualified talent. From the Great Resignation to the War for Talent, nearly every organization experienced at least some recruiting challenges last year.
In 2022 recruiters were encouraged to be more creative in their search for the best candidates. There was a significant focus on candidate attraction and candidate experience during the recruitment process. Moreover, the ongoing shift to hybrid/remote work put additional pressure on companies that were forced to adjust to new norms.
If you are a recruiter and had issues with your company's recruiting in 2022, it's time to reconsider your recruitment strategies and make them work in 2023. So, let's look at the biggest challenges recruiting faced last year.
The Shortage of Qualified Talent
The talent shortage is identified as the biggest recruiting challenge companies faced in 2022, with 47% of businesses reporting they had job openings they could not fill, according to the NFIB job report. Moreover, 40% of business leaders indicated that a talent shortage will most likely remain for the foreseeable future, followed by nearly 30% of respondents who believed it will last more than one year.
The real challenge for recruiters was figuring out where and how to find and hire qualified talent amid a labor shortage. Most HR professionals found themselves screening through hundreds of irrelevant applications and profiles. Wrong candidate choices during the pre-screening section often resulted in longer hiring processes.
However, what some recruiters learned last year is that overcoming the challenges of today’s talent shortage was far from impossible. Strengthening the employer brand, expanding the talent pool with passive candidates, and optimizing recruitment with innovative tools were identified as the most effective ways to deal with the talent shortage.
Attracting Passive Candidates
Many talented professionals tend to be passive observers waiting for an exciting opportunity. According to Zippia Research, 73% of potential candidates are passive job seekers. If recruitment methods don’t help recruiters reach these candidates, those methods are most likely outdated.
Around 44% of recruiters have recruited passive candidates as a means to cope with a difficult talent market. And another 45% said they were planning to reach out to passive candidates too.
One of the biggest obstacles recruiters incurred when sourcing passive candidates were that many traditional sourcing strategies proved to be ineffective. Recruiters had to put extra effort into persuading passive candidates to choose their company over their competitors. Many found it helpful to expand their search to niche sources of talent and use recruitment technology to communicate with potential candidates more efficiently.
Increasing Recruiting Efficiency
In 2022, many talent acquisition specialists reported they struggled to optimize their recruitment processes.
The majority of a recruiter's time is consumed by inefficient administration tasks. Sourcing potential candidates and analyzing resumes can take hours, if not weeks. For instance, recruiters can spend as much as 13 hours every week sourcing candidates for a single role. Moreover, sourcing more highly demanded professionals like product managers and project managers can take even more time, over 20 hours a week. Efficient recruitment management tools can significantly reduce time and cost in the long run and head off recruiting challenges.
Delivering a Positive Candidate Experience
With the demand for skilled professionals outweighing the supply, job seekers have become more selective when applying for jobs. With that in mind, creating a positive candidate experience was an important factor in attracting top talent but also a significant recruiting challenge in 2022.
Here are the issues recruiters might face on a structural basis
- Poor communication during the recruitment process
- A bad candidate experience damaged employer branding
- Lengthy application process
- Lack of transparency
Candidate Experience Study by Career Arc, found that nearly 60% of job seekers have had a bad candidate experience. As a result, nearly 65% of them rejected a job offer, and 72% told about their experience to others, either online or in person.
Recruiters found things like providing feedback at the application stage, updating candidates on their statuses, and outlining the steps of the interview process helpful in maintaining a positive candidate experience.