3 Recruitment Challenges in 2021 and How To Overcome Them

The impact of the global pandemic on recruitment continues to take its toll on employment and hiring. Over the past year, recruiters have had to make drastic changes to meet new demands and establish effective recruiting practices.

Recruitment challenges

Recruiting remotely

Working from home offers flexibility, agility and improves employee productivity. Over the course of the pandemic, the majority of workers (particularly those in office-based roles) have found themselves adjusting to working from home.

Recruiting remote workers comes with a new set of challenges. To assess a future hire’s ability to work well outside of the office, hiring teams now seek candidates who are:

• Self-motivated
• Independent
• Flexible
• Proactive

This can be difficult to evaluate through screening job applications alone. Job interviews offer greater insight into the candidate’s work style therefore it’s essential to ask remote hiring questions such as, ‘how do you structure your day?’, ‘What is your experience with remote working?’, ‘How do you stay focused?’.

It’s also beneficial to attract and engage with potential remote workers online. Achieve this by building a strong employer digital presence, through a careers page and social media channels. This will help to promote the employer brand by providing an insight into working life within the organisation as well as showcase company benefits.

Finding qualified talent

The ratio of applicants to jobs more than doubled last year with some roles experiencing an increase of more than 1300% according to research by Search Consultancy.

As an influx of job applications occurs, recruiters experience escalating workloads and added pressure to manage applicants and find qualified talent. Recruiters already face a very demanding role and without the right resources in place, it becomes very difficult to source talent. Challenges of recruiting qualified candidates include managing high volume workloads, risks of losing out on top talent, increases in unqualified applicants and screening inconsistencies.

In order to overcome these recruitment challenges, it’s important to attract the right qualified talent at the start of the hiring process through the job advert. Create informative ads and advertise the roles using specialist nice job boards or through social media.

Recruiters can also build talent referral techniques to help manage spikes in job applications and guide talent to the appropriate roles. By doing this, all applicant potential can be utilised by matching them to new opportunities that suit their skill set and experience.

Poor candidate experience

Due to the adjustment of remote hiring and job application increases, candidate experience has consequently suffered. High volume workloads and inefficient administration have also created challenges in achieving a positive candidate experience. Its important candidates feel connected to the employer during the hiring process to promote better relationships and a stronger brand reputation.

To achieve a positive candidate experience:

Communicate – throughout the entire hiring lifecycle. Improve the frequency of communication by using a recruiting CRM and build better candidate relationships. Regularly update candidates on the status of their application as well as provide pre-interview instructions and post-interview feedback.

Be responsive – candidates who feel ignored are less likely to reapply to the same employer again in the future. It’s important to respond to applicants to keep them informed about the status of their job application.

Speed it up – according to research, 69% of candidates want to see employer response time improve. Introduce automation to speed up elements of the hiring process and create faster response times and increase engagement.

Summary

The challenges in recruitment are a consequence of the past year. A shift in home working has meant adjusting to recruiting new soft skills to work effectively outside of the traditional office. An increase in applicants unqualified for the role means recruiters need to try and reroute them to better matching opportunities but due to a sheer volume, it benefits organisations to implement referral technology. Candidate experience has unintentionally taken a step back but to regain priority recruiters can take small actions to improve communication and speed up the hiring process through automated tools.