Working as a recruiter can be a rewarding but challenging job. You spend most days trying to find the ideal candidates to enhance the quality of your company.
You’d think with so many individuals working from home now, it would be easier to find employees, right? However, there are times when you may hit a rut and cannot find any qualified candidates.
With constant technological advances, your job as a recruiter is to stay on top of current trends to navigate potential recruiting challenges. If you don’t, it could seriously hinder your employer.
Do you know common problems faced during the hiring process? If not, we’ll discuss those and how to deal with them in today’s article. Read on to learn more.
1. Attracting the Right Applicants
One problem most employers face through the recruiting process is finding the right applicant. It sometimes feels like although you have a vast pool of applicants, none of them are fully qualified for the job.
As a result, you select an individual from that group who’s not fully qualified for the job you’re offering but better than the other applicants. However, try hiring from a smaller pool with seasoned talent.
To weed out less experienced employees, be precise about the requirements and certifications required for your job. You can also post these search qualifications on various sites to attract potential employees.
If you’d like to directly address concerns your company may need, try using an application form with “knock out” questions. For example, do you need someone able to lift 50 pounds? Include a yes or no question asking if they can.
2. Engaging Qualified Applicants
One of the recruiting challenges most employers face once they find qualified applicants is engaging with them. Exemplary candidates are often contacted by employers regularly, so it can be more challenging for your email to stand out.
So what can you do? Before contacting any potential employees, research what motivates them to do their job and the environment they’re looking for. Having this knowledge will allow you to personalize your outsourcing emails.
Instead of saying what they can do for your company, you’re describing what you can offer them. It may be the deciding factor in their decision.
3. Accelerated Hiring
Hiring teams are tasked with filling roles as quickly as possible because vacant positions cost money and delay business operations. However, there’s often a delay because companies are looking to hire perfect candidates.
According to a study from LinkedIn, the industry you work in will determine how quickly you’re hired. For example, the average hire time for a person working in engineering is 49 days.
But compared to someone working in customer service, the average wait before they’re hired is 34 days. Jobs with complex processes require more skill, adding to hiring delays.
But some businesses realize that although some candidates may not have the necessary experience, they’re eager to gain more knowledge in their role. So take a step back, look at your hiring processes and ask yourself:
- Are we looking in the proper pipelines to find candidates?
- How quickly are we communicating with qualified applicants?
- Do we need all hiring stages?
By tracking all of the questions with recruiting metrics, you’ll be able to identify ways to increase your hiring efficiency. That way, your business won’t miss out on potential employees.
4. Using Data-Driven Environments
Most successful companies today focus on using data-driven environments to enhance company decisions. However, it can be a hassle collecting the data and trying to process it.
Usually, companies would use spreadsheets to track the data. However, it’s prone to human error, making it hard to follow the trends affecting your efficiency.
You can use an applicant tracking system (ATS), Google Analytics, or recruitment software to simplify the process. By identifying key metrics your company needs to focus on, it’ll enhance the capabilities of your recruitment strategy.
5. Having a Strong Employer Brand
You’ll always attract better candidates if you take the time to invest in your employer brand. However, there are various steps you need to take before building a successful image.
You can start by building your online presence. It would be hard for you to land employees if they’ve never heard of your company. So begin by replying to business reviews, whether good or bad.
By replying courteously to customers, you show potential employees how engaging your business is when it comes to customer service. You can also give current workers a chance to tell their stories about the work environment.
Doing so gives an interested candidate an inside look at the company from an employee’s eyes. You can use blog posts or videos to showcase your employees. However, as long as you continue to be a good employer, it will show.
6. Providing a Positive Candidate Experience
Ensuring a candidate has a positive experience is essential to employer recruitment. How you treat potential applicants throughout the hiring process will weigh on their decision to choose your company.
If they experienced an uncomfortable time during your process, they might associate that feeling with your company’s work environment. On the other hand, positive experiences will allow them to accept the job more quickly.
How can you ensure a positive candidate experience? You can set clear communication expectations. Let candidates know when they will hear from you and use an ATS to remind you of your duties.
You can also coordinate with candidates and provide them with the information they’ll need. If you’re hiring remote workers, using hiring software can simplify your onboard process even more. Visit https://workbright.com/verify-i9-remote/ to learn more.
7. Fair Recruiting
Some businesses may not be aware of certain biases they may have while seeking out new employees. However, these unconscious biases can be another reason for hiring delays.
It’s your legal obligation as an employer to provide equal opportunities for all jobs. Practicing objective hiring can ensure you hire the right person for the job without stereotyping.
Potential candidates will also be able to see how you value an inclusive workplace. As a result, you can build start building a culture that can attract many suitors.
8. Smooth Team Collaboration
Hiring an employee requires a complete team effort starting from the recruiter to the hiring manager. Applicants expect turnaround times to be quick, but as we’ve already established, it tends to be longer depending on the industry.
However, it will be more challenging to get the entire team collaborating with more people working from home. Relationships may become strained from the constant back and forth about which candidates should get selected.
So what can you do? You can implement an effective team hiring model. Gather your hiring managers together to develop clear criteria for prospective candidates.
Allowing each to discuss a candidate under the established guideline can increase the efficiency of remote team efforts. It can also help facilitate extra time for other processes since everyone is on the same page.
Since multiple hiring managers know the recruitment strategy, other manages can allocate time towards training employees or building the company brand. That way, you can continue building strengths in other areas.
9. Protecting Sensitive Data
Whenever an individual applies for a job, they share a lot of sensitive information, which could impact them in a security breach. So you need to ensure your IT infrastructure has substantial protection against cyberattacks.
It’s also important to note that you may come into accessing sensitive data issues if your company wants to expand in the European market. Due to the change in data protection laws, certain information is legally blocked from the public.
So continue to follow all data protection regulations to ensure your company does nothing to incite a breach. It might result in potential employees losing interest in your business.
Best Practices to Negate Hiring Concerns
Now that we’ve covered common challenges hiring teams face, it’s time to address direct ways to deal with other challenges you’ll encounter throughout recruitment processes.
Depending on your industry, you may prefer specific methods to others. However, using a combination of techniques can ensure the highest efficiency while hiring employees. Let’s take a look at these practices below.
Building a Talent Pool
Your talent pipeline comes from the numerous candidates that have already engaged with your company for a position. It reduces hiring costs since you already have pre-screened candidates ready to take up any available roles.
If you want to build a successful talent pool:
- Look at past hires that have advanced to the final stages
- Source new candidates
- Engage past applicants
By looking into past hires, you can see which qualities of that employee stood out to you. Comparing it with new candidates can help you source a more comprehensive list of traits you want in your employees.
You can also reach out to past hires to increase the strength of your pipeline. If candidates know you’re interested and you communicate with them often, they may be inclined to listen to your company’s offer.
Training Your Hiring Teams
Regardless of if you’re an experienced hiring administrator, it’s always important to increase your skills. As we mentioned earlier, biases are a common problem employers face in their hiring processes.
So it’s essential to train your hiring teams by giving them good interview questions to ask and showing them how to build rapport with candidates. Here are a few other ways you can train your hiring teams:
- Educate them on hiring biases
- Facilitate mock interviews
- Provide recruiting resources
A great tool to overcome hiring biases is Harvard’s Implicit Association Test. It asks you specific questions about your beliefs on certain topics. Once you’re aware of any implicit biases, you can further education by doing mock interviews.
It’s a great way to put practical application towards your new knowledge of hiring biases. If employees seek more information, you can always provide helpful insight about hiring practices.
Expanding Your Recruiting Strategy
Think about the primary way you attract employees; do you post on a job board known for landing high-quality candidates? If so, while it may work for you now, it won’t be sustainable against competitors.
So to be proactive with your recruitment strategy, you can:
- Promote your company and jobs on social media
- Host recruiting events and go to job fairs
- Showcase company employees, culture, and benefits on your site
According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, over 72% of US adults use at least one social media. So by posting on your channels, you’ll be able to showcase why interested candidates should work with your company.
Invest in an ATS
We’ve mentioned an ATS a few times already, and it’s for a good reason. An ATS can help streamline your hiring processes, making it easier to collaborate with hiring teams and keep employ data at a central point.
But how can you determine what ATS you should invest in? A good ATS will have:
- Reporting capabilities to help you improve past processes
- Scheduling tools to keep you on track and minimize unnecessary communication
- Assessment integrations to allow for more objective candidate evaluation
- Templates to help you post ads on job boards and send emails to multiple candidates
So if you haven’t invested in an ATS yet, it might be worthwhile. Having all of these features can help make your hiring processes faster and your decision-making better.
Overcome Recruiting Challenges With These Tips
Tackling recruiting challenges while trying to improve your business efficiency isn’t easy. However, by following the suggestions above, you’ll be able to streamline hiring processes and get the right employees for your company.
If you’re interested in more business recruiting tips, feel free to check out our other blogs.