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There will always be recruitment challenges — high competition for talent, lean budgets, candidates receiving many offers, and a lack of qualified applicants.
Even with these hiring problems, HR teams are still expected to achieve great results every year. So to succeed in the hiring world, you need to know common and new challenges. This will help you come up with strategies to overcome each challenge.
In this article, we’ll discuss 10 recruitment challenges to expect in 2024. Plus, we’ll share tips to overcome them.
Let’s dive in.
1. Potential candidates receiving many offers
Candidates, especially the qualified ones receive many offers every time. According to a 2024 Insights Hiring Report by GoodTime, 22% of talent acquisition leaders expect to have qualified candidates receiving multiple offers.
Despite the mass layoffs in 2023, experts still believe we are in a candidate market. So, that’s why it’s proving hard to hire qualified candidates.
Plus, the number of open positions outweighs the number of qualified candidates. Due to this talent scarcity, qualified candidates are getting many offers. And the big companies are offering even higher packages and compensation.
So it’s hard for organizations with lean hiring budgets to compete. For example, how many times have some of your candidates rejected your job offer for a more lucrative one? Probably more times than you’d like.
How to overcome recruitment challenges like this
To ensure your potential qualified candidates pick your offer, do this:
- Listen to what they want
Don’t assume you know why the candidate wants the position.
Let them tell you what they want. For example, if they say they need more details about your benefits, tell them everything they need to know.
Explore your packages deeper and don’t just list. This will give you an upper hand with your competitors.
- State your unique value proposition
Highlight the special benefits of working for your organization. These might be packages that other organizations hardly offer. For example, do you offer remote working options or do you offer paternal leave?
- Negotiate
If the candidate wants to pick your offer but has other options, be ready to negotiate. Discuss the salary, benefits, schedule flexibility, and other things to make the job more appealing to them.
Lastly, be communicative and transparent with the candidate. Let them know the next steps.
2. The pressure to hire fast
One of the biggest challenges in recruitment is racing against the clock.
With the high competition for talent, getting back to your qualified candidates on time makes a huge difference. You might get back to them late and find that they have already accepted another offer.
Plus, vacant positions cost money and operational delays. So you need to be fast and efficient.
How to overcome recruitment challenges like this
Hiring fast is important, but it can lead to hiring the wrong candidates. To be successful, do this:
- Plan ahead: Good talent planning can help you expect future talent needs in your business. So, efficient planning will help you avoid last-minute hiring rushes that can lead to losses in the organization.
- Create efficient recruitment practices: Build steps in your recruitment process that can ensure you move from the job application stage to the acceptance stage in time.
- Invest in a good onboarding process: An efficient onboarding process ensures your new hires get integrated into the company processes on time.
Lastly, assess the nature of the role you’re trying to hire for. This is because some specialized roles take up to 7 months to get filled.
3. High competition for talent
Talent shortage was a big challenge in 2023. According to GoodTime’s 2024 Hiring Insights Report, 32% of HR teams expect to struggle to keep top talent.
Companies with huge budgets, and attractive benefits packages tend to win when it comes to talent competition. This makes companies with lean budgets struggle to get quality hires.
How to overcome recruitment challenges like this
To attract the top talent, you have to:
- Invest in employer branding
Communicate your organization’s unique selling proposition to your candidate. Also, communicate your values, and culture on social media.
Also, share your current employees’ testimonials on social media. This will fill candidates with the desire to work at your organization.
- Target passive candidates
Contact skilled people who aren’t searching for new jobs but could be intrigued by your openings. This way, you won’t be competing with other companies for the same candidates.
- Work on your recruitment process
Make your recruitment process engaging and efficient. Practice prompt communication, and clear timelines to avoid frustrating your candidates.
Lastly, use employee referrals. Talk to your current employees to refer to you qualified candidates who might be looking for new opportunities.
4. Attracting passive candidates is one of the biggest recruitment challenges faced
With the growing talent and skills shortage, recruiters must also target passive candidates. According to LinkedIn, 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive candidates who aren’t actively job searching.
But the challenge is passive candidates are usually employed top performers who aren’t easy to snatch. And, they usually have many offers to select from.
How to overcome recruitment challenges like this
To attract passive candidates, master the art of headhunting and use these tips below:
- Personalize your outreach methods
Personalized communication is critical when reaching out to passive candidates.
First, learn about their work experience, and then create messages that talk about their goals, career dreams, and what they like. This will help your job offer get noticed.
Plus, make them valued and seen and how they would grow in your organization.
- Build relationships with them
Relationship building is important when targeting passive candidates. So, focus on nurturing a relationship with them by:
- Engaging with them on social platforms
- Arranging meetings without immediately discussing the job but getting to know them
- Focusing on knowing their goals
- Creating a relationship that feels respectful and genuine
This process will build trust and make them open to future job opportunities from you.
- Be patient and persistent
During the whole process of targetting your passive candidates, be patient. Also, ensure your communication doesn’t come off as pushy to them.
5. Ineffective employer branding
Employer branding has become crucial to talent acquisition in today’s competitive job market. For example, this employer branding statistic page from LinkedIn shows the many benefits of creating a good employer brand.
For instance, according to one statistic from the list, 75% of job seekers research an organization’s reputation before applying for a job.
However, lots of companies don’t explain what makes them special or share the job chances they offer. This makes them less visible to potential job seekers.
How to overcome recruitment challenges like this
If you’re struggling to create a good employer brand, follow some of these strategies below:
- Define your employer value proposition (EVP)
Defining an organization’s EVP has always been a challenge. An EVP is a unique combination of opportunities, rewards, and benefits a company offers its workers. To create a strong EVP, understand your organization’s culture, values, and goals.
To succeed, involve workers from different departments and levels in defining your EVP. Conduct surveys to gather insights on what your workers value most about your company. So, use the insights to write a unique EVP that resonates with your target audience.
- Consistent messaging and communication
Maintaining consistent messaging and communication is important in creating a strong employer brand. Inconsistent communication can damage your reputation and confuse employees and potential candidates.
Make sure all messages, like social media posts, internal notes, and job ads, match what your company stands for.
- Encourage employee advocacy and engagement
Employee advocacy is an important component of a successful employer branding strategy. To get this step right, make a safe place where your employees feel good about sharing their accomplishments on professional websites and social media.
Plus, train the employees on how they should share their experiences online. This will create a good consistency.
6. Candidates’ preference for remote work is among the top recruitment challenges
There’s a growing problem—employers want employees to return to the office while employees want to work remotely. Some employees are willing to take pay cuts as long as they get to work remotely.
The bottom line is candidates want flexibility. Whether it’s flexible working hours or working from home.
How to overcome this recruitment challenge
Flexibility in the workplace is important to the future of work. So to put in place flexibility and offer it as a package to your candidates, follow these steps:
- Don’t build a one-size-all solution
What’s flexible for one candidate may not be workable for another candidate. For example, some candidates may prefer working from the office for half the day, and return to their homes to finish working from there.
Others may prefer working from different destinations. While other candidates may prefer working from home every day.
So, find a way of creating a workplace flexibility scheme that will favor all employees.
- Invest in tools and technology
After deciding on the flexible workplace program, invest in technology to enable employees to do their work. This could be project management tools, cloud-based storage software, and conferencing software.
- Be open to feedback
Building a flexible workplace is an ongoing process. So, get feedback from your employees and adjust any policies.
Remember to add the workplace flexibility program to your compensation benefits.
7. Technology is evolving
New technology especially AI in recruitment has brought both challenges and opportunities. Despite the challenges, you can’t be caught up using outdated hiring technology.
Another problem is the increasing number of hiring technology tools out there. With all the options, it becomes hard to know which hiring tools you need.
How to overcome this recruitment challenge
The future of hiring is going to be a mix of advanced technology and human recruiters. To keep up with the evolving technologies and reduce tool overload, put in place these strategies:
- Identify important hiring tools
Evaluate your recruitment needs, and select 3 to 4 tools that can cater to all your needs. For example, if you need to eliminate boring, and biased job descriptions, you can use Ongig’s Text Analyzer tool.
The tool reviews the language of your job descriptions and identifies gendered language. So you can make your job descriptions as gender-neutral as possible.
Also, some words and phrases commonly used in businesses might make people from different backgrounds feel unwelcome when applying for jobs. Ongig’s Text Analyzer helps identify these biased phrases and words. This allows you to attract diverse groups of candidates and also avoid racial bias in recruitment( and 12+ other types of bias).
- Integrate and connect
Select AI tools that can integrate with your existing HR tools. This simplifies the overall process and eliminates data silos.
- Upskill your teams
Provide your HR team with workshops, courses, and conferences that can equip them with the knowledge needed to work with the new tools.
- Emphasize the human need
Don’t completely rely on the AI tools. Ensure there’s a human touch to reduce technology bias. This will also make candidates more engaged while applying for the job.
Lastly, remember to be agile and quick to react as the hiring technology evolves. This will help you stay on top of your game and attract quality talent.
8. A growing skills shortage
Skills have become a hot topic in the recruitment industry. According to employers interviewed by HR Daily Advisor, skills shortage will still be a challenge in 2024.
And it’s not just the technical skills shortage but also the soft skills shortage. Many job seekers lack important skills like communication, flexibility, and solving problems that are needed for today’s jobs.
How to overcome this recruitment challenge
To address the skills shortage in your organization, put in place these strategies:
- Create training and development programs
One of the best ways of tackling the skills shortage is fostering a culture of learning and development. So, allocate enough resources toward the training programs. Also, ensure the program aligns with the current industry trends and business goals.
- International talent acquisition
Hire candidates from continents other than yours to supplement the domestic workforce. This will ensure you get a pool of qualified candidates. Also, check your country’s laws and policies about international talent acquisition to be on the right side of the law.
- Explore internal mobility
Encourage your employees to take up opportunities in the company requiring different skill sets. This will reduce recruitment costs and encourage employee morale.
- Recruiting from non-traditional pools
Diversify your recruitment methods to tap into underutilized talent. For example, look into job boards serving women, LGBTQ people, veterans, and women.
This will give you access to skills that you would have missed from popular job boards.
- Use contingent workers
One easy way to fill your skills shortage problem is by recruiting contingent workers. With contractors, freelancers, and consultants you can fill the skills gap in time.
Because they are available, flexible, and skilled, they can work on any project, within any budget, and meet any deadline.
9. Teams struggle to prioritize diversity and inclusion
Demand for equity and inclusion in the modern workplace is higher than before. Different organizations have made the right steps but progress has been slow.
This leaves DEI as one of the most significant recruitment challenges. For example, according to a 2024 State of People report by Lattice, only 17% of HR leaders say DEI is a top priority, this is half of the number that said DEI was important in 2022. But at the same time, according to the same report, only 10% of HR leaders say that they’re putting less effort into DEI.
How to overcome this recruitment challenge
To overcome DEI challenges in recruitment, do this:
- Assess your current DEI state
Check your workforce demographics to identify any underrepresented groups in your organization. A DEI dashboard tool can help in this process.
Plus, review your current recruitment process by examining all the stages of your hiring funnel. So, you can identify the stage that has challenges.
- Reduce unconscious bias
Provide unconscious bias training tools to your recruiters. And, put a structured interview process in place to ensure objective and fair assessments of all candidates.
Finally, partner with DEI experts to give you more insights on your challenges.
10. Budget constraints in hiring
Economic uncertainty is still affecting different regions around the world. So organizations will find themselves with limited hiring budgets just like in 2023.
A lean hiring budget means companies won’t manage to pay employees well. And, they won’t manage to offer a competitive benefits package. This will lead to failure to attract top talent.
How to overcome this recruitment challenge
To overcome hiring budget constraints, put in place several strategies. For instance, you can start with the strategies below:
- Prepare an appealing business case
Gather data that can advocate for the resources required to attract, hire, and keep top talent. Also, show how new workers will help close the skills gap in your organization.
- Hire project specialists
When you only need help for a short time or for certain projects, hiring specialist contractors can be cheaper than hiring someone full-time.
- Internal secondments
If the expertise exists within your organization, consider your internal employees to fill the gaps. This builds internal talent pipelines and reduces hiring costs.
- Create an efficient recruitment process
Use phone calls, video chats, and tests before meeting candidates to find out if they’re a good fit for the job. This will save you resources because you won’t hire unqualified candidates.
Finally, write clear job descriptions. Good job descriptions will ensure you only attract qualified candidates hence reducing the hiring costs.
WHY I WROTE THIS:
Ongig’s mission is to make your recruitment process easy. Our commitment is to support you in writing inclusive job descriptions with our Text Analyzer software to help you solve your biggest recruitment challenges. Book a demo today to learn more.
SHOUT-OUTS:
- State of 2024 People Strategy Report by (Lattice)
- 2024 Labor Market Outlook: Skills Shortages and Flexibility by (HR Daily Advisor)
- KPMG 2023 CEO Outlook by (KPMG)
- Employee Advocacy: 10x Your Company’s Reach on Social Media by (Hootsuite)
- The Ultimate List of Employer Brand Statistics by (Linkedin)
- The Ultimate List of Hiring Statistics by (Linkedin)
- 2024 Hiring Insights Report by (GoodTime)
