7 Biggest Recruitment Problems in 2024 (And How to Fix Them)

Author
Recent Posts

Laurenzo Overee

Latest posts by Laurenzo Overee (see all)

7 Biggest Recruitment Problems in 2024 (And How to Fix Them) - November 12, 2024
13 Best Must-Read Books on AI in Recruitment (2024) - October 31, 2024
15 Inclusive Employee Benefits to Offer in 2024 - October 15, 2024

Recruitment problems often arise when enterprise hiring teams conduct a large-scale search for the right candidates for the right roles. Inevitably, the realities of 2024 complicate the process.

Amid a backdrop of emerging (and confusing) technologies, a challenging job market, and a recovering economy, maximizing recruitment ROI has become more pressing than ever.

To save you the fuss of overwhelming research, Ongig has identified the top 7 recruitment problems faced by enterprises in 2024. Our handy list highlights the impact of these recruitment problems on your workforce. And, more importantly, how you can fix them.

#1 – Pay Equity and Benefits Management

A competitive salary is a winning factor for attracting and retaining new hires. Employee demands have shifted in recent years post-pandemic. However, pay equity and workplace benefits remain a top draw for candidates in 2024.

In many cases, a transparent salary could still serve as the key differentiator in winning over top talent in a competitive industry. For instance, you could secure a tech specialist in IT, an industry currently facing a significant skill shortage.

Aside from competitive pay, employers must ensure equity at work to comply with statutes like the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The pay equity issue is magnified for enterprise recruiters since they constantly manage competitive and fair remuneration across large-scale hiring campaigns.

Your hiring managers can attract the best candidates by offering fair and competitive payment in the hiring process in the following ways:

Specifying salary ranges in your job description—Salary ranges offer pay transparency that aligns remuneration with job expectations. The publicly available data allows job seekers to compare pay and job expectations with industry rates to justify their applications. As such, adding a salary range to your JDs can increase a candidate’s trust in your company through internal and external hiring initiatives.

Clarifying job roles – It is essential to inform candidates about the significance and scope of their roles within the JD. Your recruiters should discuss and affirm each role’s required competencies and candidate expectations before finalizing the appropriate job titles and grades. The finalized JD should clarify role expectations and validate the offered salary range.

Regularly evaluating pay equity practices—Equity regulations change with the times, so it is important to update your talent policies constantly. Your organization should routinely review and revise payment policies to keep up with state, federal, and industry regulations. Consider backing up your policy reviews with responses from employee surveys, ERG reports, and candidate feedback. This helps you gain a deeper view of the equity landscape.

#2 – Complexities in Technology (AI) Adoption

Technology, particularly AI, has revolutionized the hiring process with reliable and cost-effective functions that can help alleviate recruitment problems. While AI could boost the interview process and candidate selection, it also brings many novel challenges. You should ensure that the rest of your recruitment process flows smoothly with your company’s technological adoptions.

For instance, an overly complex AI solution could result in technical hiccups. And, these could disrupt talent acquisition and cause recruitment problems.

These include:

Algorithmic biases – AI-based recruitment solutions that lack well-moderated training data could perpetuate inherent biases. These may result in a flawed automation system that overlooks qualified talent. Your company can avoid this by maintaining training data quality through regular AI audits and updates.

Regulatory compliances—AI usage involves vast volumes of sensitive user information, including personally identifiable information (PPI). Your recruiting teams should always oversee candidate data management practices that meet stringent cybersecurity requirements.

Integration matters – While AI expedites hiring, each element should complement your company’s other existing talent acquisition infrastructure. There are many moving parts to consider when integrating with business-critical tools like the applicant tracking system (ATS) and accounting platforms. For the best outcomes, select user-friendly solutions with fuss-free onboarding. In this case, recruiters can begin with minimal disruption to your current workflow.

#3 – The Gen Z Challenge

Gen Z is the incoming generation of talent that could soon overtake the number of Boomers in the workforce. According to the World Economic Forum, Gen Z would account for 27 percent of the global workforce by 2025.

To achieve long-term talent acquisition success, your hiring team could benefit from identifying and fulfilling the expectations of the Gen Z crowd. Hiring managers may need to consider the behavioral differences between Gen Zs and millennials. So, millennials currently make up the majority of the workforce. However, recognizing these minor differences between millennials and GenZ can help your recruiters tweak hiring campaigns. In so doing, you can better connect with Gen Z candidates and avoid recruitment problems.

The following are some strategies to boost your JDs and career pages in attracting Gen Z talent:

Talent development is a priority. Gen Z talent prioritizes growth opportunities during employment. You could attract talent from the demographic by listing learning programs and career development pathways in the openings across your job boards.

Offer job flexibility—Potential Gen Z talent pool candidates value remote and flexible work conditions more than any other generation. So, adding these work options to a role could raise interest and establish a Gen Z-friendly employer brand.

Workplace flexibility should begin with remote hiring processes. So, this includes initial interviews conducted via Zoom and online candidate assessments. And, these help new hires assimilate with the work culture from any location.

Implement seamless communication—Thanks to social media’s prevalence, most, if not all, of Gen Z’s top talent are used to near-instantaneous communication. Your hiring team can leverage this trend by exercising digital savviness in Gen Z candidate interactions.

For example, your recruiters could replace traditional correspondences (i.e., email and mobile text) with popular mobile communication platforms (e.g., Skype, Telegram, or Slack ). These can help your team respond quickly to job applicants with personalized responses while they are still interested in your open positions. Thus, avoiding recruiting problems such as candidates losing interest or accepting another offer.

#4 – Skill Gap Among Talent

A skills-based approach to hiring is crucial for maximizing the quality and productivity of your talented workforce. Finding the right person for the right job has become especially tough in 2024, with a fierce industry demand for specialized skills. Over 75% of leaders from the financial industry in America report a skill gap, with 73% of tech leaders making the same observation.

Skills shortage remains a major quandary for industries like IT, where companies frequently need talent with the knowledge to adapt to evolving technologies.

Experts expect these skill gaps to cost $5.5 trillion in workforce delays, quality issues, and revenue loss. These issues could worsen with AI technology’s introduction and mass adoption, which require a new set of competencies.

Your recruiters should consider a candidate’s soft skills (e.g., decision-making, communications, teamwork), core competencies, and professional abilities to advance your organizational goals. Therefore, finding the right people with a skill-based approach to hiring equips your workforce with the know-how and survivability to navigate the most unpredictable business environments.

Your organization can improve the hiring rates of skilled hires with a proactive recruitment approach that includes:

Reframing job descriptions—Inclusive job descriptions with engaging employee value propositions (EVPs) can help win over skilled individuals in a competitive industry. These would include JD content that responds to employee trends like remote/hybrid arrangements and work-life balance.

Collaborating with external institutions during the hiring process – Consider collaborating with institutions affiliated with underrepresented groups, which could broaden your talent acquisition outreach. These collaborations may include community resources, training programs, and networking opportunities to ease skilled hires into your company culture.

Chris Kille, founder of virtual staffing company EO Staff, recommends behavioral interviews, “when evaluating a candidate’s responses to these questions, pay attention to their ability to provide specific examples, their ability to work well under pressure, and their problem-solving skills.”

Prioritizing skills assessments when filling a role – Objective skill assessments enable your hiring team to identify a candidate’s suitability for a role and your workplace culture. Implementing these assessments offers your company a better perspective of how hires can adapt to real-world challenges at work while reducing hiring biases.

Improving DEIB hiring practices – Focusing on inclusive hiring practices can significantly broaden your talent pool and avoid overlooking candidates with highly sought-after skill sets. You can improve DEIB practices with employee surveys, particularly via open feedback forms where respondents can fully express their opinions.

For instance, you could present direct questions like, “What can the company do to improve diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for you?” or “Have you felt excluded in a workplace scenario? If so, could you describe the situation?”

#5 – Issues With Employer Branding

Employer branding is more than just a fancy buzzword. A robust employer branding strategy supercharges your process to resolve recruitment problems and enhances job ads. Organizations with a thoughtful employer branding approach can better attract top talent to their company. These organizations can also improve their retention rates by keeping them engaged in their roles.

So, optimizing your employer branding is an impactful and sustainable talent acquisition measure in 2024 and beyond. This can help overcome many recruitment problems.

Elevating Employer Branding

Managing your company’s employer branding is similar to promoting a consumer brand. The crux lies in building a reputation that nurtures trust in customers, or in this case, your prospective hires. As with any branding campaign, you should implement a proactive and multi-pronged action plan for the best results. Your employer branding measures could include:

Enhancing JD content by listing inclusive hiring practices, DEIB statements, and ERGs.

Featuring employer awards like the Great Place to Work certifications on your social media, JD, and career pages.

Presenting authentic employee testimonials and feedback (particularly behind-the-scenes video content, which humanizes your company’s storytelling process).

Optimizing your organization’s social media accounts and integrating them with your careers page and job boards.

Evaluating employee experiences and responding to online rating platforms like Glassdoors and Google My Business (GMB). These provide valuable social proof of your company’s reputation from an employee’s perspective.

With a well-established employer brand, you can improve the overall candidate perception of your organization and boost job application rates.

#6 – Less Than Stellar Candidate Experience

Successfully recruiting passionate and quality candidates to your organization requires a seamless job application process. But, AI recruitment solutions are being released rapidly. So, it can prove extremely difficult for organizations to optimize the candidate experience in 2024.

Yet, the same emerging AI technologies and tools can help you streamline the steps needed to fine-tune the candidate experience. It is a matter of pairing the right automation and human expertise that integrate well with your existing candidate experience infrastructure.

With that said, enhancing your candidate’s experience revolves around two main factors. Firstly, you should ensure that your job applications remain accessible for every applicant regardless of their background and technological skills. Your career sites and online application process should comply with accessibility standards like the Web accessibility initiative guidelines (WGAG).

Secondly, your team should align every candidate engagement touchpoint with your employer brand to drive a cohesive experience.

For instance, your recruitment team should apply thematic colors, fonts, and images to tell the same company story across every candidate interaction and device. By doing so, interested candidates can expect optimized experiences via mobile or desktop, whether through the company’s career website or social media.

Drive Faster, Smoother, And More Seamless Job Applications

Establishing a compelling candidate experience lies in simplifying the job application process and improving your recruiter’s response rates. You must also focus on collecting employee/applicant feedback to continuously improve the recruitment workflow.

To further enhance your candidate experience, consider providing resources like task-specific job assessments and interview guides to prepare job seekers for a role. You could also include a Q&A section on your career page. This could cover topics like the estimated time for an HR response, application process guidelines, or interview venue information.

Ongig elevates the candidate experience by optimizing your career site with user-friendly recruiting widgets, such as support chat boxes and Glassdoor ratings.

#7 – Underestimating Long-Term Talent Experiences

Talent is vital to your company’s success in every industry. Unfortunately, the ongoing skill gaps in 2024 might cause hiring teams to consider recruitment a short-term productivity fix. Yet, this is not the case, as each talent on board affects your organization’s team dynamics and culture.

Today’s fresh hires eventually leave the company with powerful opinions that could sway the opinions of an entire crowd of job seekers. According to Glassdoor, 86% of employees and job seekers research company reviews and ratings before applying for a role.

As such, it is necessary to evaluate every candidate carefully to determine if they are a good fit for your company’s growth and values. Assessing each hire beyond their immediate contributions is critical. It is important to consider the person’s career journey and how their testimonials could influence future recruitment campaigns.

Starting Each Hire On The Right Foot to Combat Recruitment Problems

Job satisfaction is a major factor determining a candidate’s commitment to their roles and turnover. The Arbinger Institute’s 2024 Workplace Trends Report highlights the following as the top five factors that influence employee satisfaction:

Work-Life balance (51% of respondents)
Salary (47% of respondents)
Meaningful work (38% of respondents)
Recognition and appreciation (34% of respondents)
Opportunities for growth (33% of respondents)

Addressing these factors in your job descriptions could boost job applications by promoting a positive work culture. For example, highlight flexible working opportunities and emphasize how a specific role contributes to the overall mission and success of the organization. A well-structured job posting proactively engages candidates with the winning elements that keep hires satisfied in their roles.

Using Employee Advocacy to Solve Recruitment Problems

One of the biggest recruitment problems is finding the best talent that not only meets the job requirements. It is also crucial to find the best fit for your work environment. So, a great way to tackle this common problem is by turning your team members into brand ambassadors.

How Does Employee Advocacy Help Solve Recruitment Problems?

When team members actively promote open roles on their own social media platforms or in their networks, they become an extension of your recruiting team. This is one of the best ways to reach a wider audience, which can help attract many candidates. These recommendations come from trusted employees, improving the credibility of the company. And, it can also improve the positive candidate experience. So, for many potential candidates, hearing directly from team members is far more authentic than a formal job posting.

Cost Effective and Credible Recruitment

Leveraging employee advocacy is also an affordable option, especially for companies with a limited budget. Therefore, with employee referral programs in place, companies can save on costs related to advertising and administrative tasks. So, this approach can reduce the cost-per-hire while increasing quality hires by bringing in suitable candidates who are already somewhat familiar with the work environment through their connections. Additionally, it helps the hr team focus more on sourcing the right talent rather than sifting through numerous applications from bad hires.

Employee Advocacy as a Key to Attracting Top Talent

Encouraging new employees to share their experiences helps companies build a strong employer brand that can attract great candidates. The good news is that having new hires share their positive experiences is likely to draw in top candidates who value a company that supports its employees.

A competitive market can make it hard to fill every open position. However, with team members as ambassadors, companies have a great way to reach out to their networks. The source of hire data also shows that candidates referred by employees are often the best person for the role because they understand the specific skills and job requirements.

Best Practices for Employee Advocacy to Combat Recruitment Problems

For hr professionals, setting up structured employee referral programs and providing necessary information about vacant positions is essential. Therefore, ensuring that your team members have all the recruitment data and application forms makes the entire process easy for them to refer quality hires.

In addition, encouraging employees to share their experiences about the recruiting process can also strengthen your employer brand. So, employees can talk about things like what makes the work environment unique. They could also highlight equal opportunities and your DEIB culture. Nowadays, employees can easily share about their roles, the company’s values, and the benefits of remote work. So, it’s important to equip them with interview questions and other job requirements for each open role so they can help promote the right talent.

Navigate The Biggest Recruitment Problems With Ongig

Ongig’s Text Analyzer offers a centralized platform for optimizing job descriptions at scale to resolve some of the biggest recruitment problems on our list.

Our cloud-based platform integrates with your existing ATS to streamline your talent acquisition process and standardizes the JD library for easy management to expedite future hiring campaigns.

The Text Analyzer flags exclusionary JD content and provides neutral and engaging alternatives that connect with diverse job seekers, including passive candidates. The AI solution also presents real-time feedback that rates your content’s readability and gender-neutrality score (Text Analyzer also identifies over 12 biases, including ageism and racism) so you can make minute changes for the best candidate experience.

With Text Analyzer, you can cost-effectively overcome some of the lingering recruitment problems in 2024 through the power of AI automation by:

Ensuring that your JD contains every critical section that attracts a target crowd, such as Gen Z candidates. Our job description software provides a user-friendly interface where your hiring team can immediately generate salary ranges and diversity (equal opportunity employer) statements.

Keeping your job descriptions compliant with the latest inclusive hiring regulations so you can attract top talent while avoiding legal penalties. These could also improve response rates, as seen with Ongig’s collaboration with a global employment website. The study revealed that our inclusive JDs led to a 13% increase in total applications, specifically a 21% rise in female candidates.

Customizing and standardizing JD templates to launch an employer brand-specific hiring program according to your organizational needs. The Text Analyzer enables employers to maintain a polished and professional identity across every job posting.

Reformatting/updating old descriptions to fit your new and improved JD library frictionlessly with a user-friendly approach.

Why I Wrote This?

Ongig offers an advanced and reliable AI solution that boosts your candidate experience and increases the number of quality applications. Our Text Analyzer cost-effectively optimizes the hiring process by optimizing the quality of your JDs and eliminating biased and boring job descriptions forever. Request a demo to experience the Ongig difference today!

Shout-Outs:

November 12, 2024 by Laurenzo Overee in HR Content