How to Overcome the Recruitment Challenges

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If you called a thing like your biggest attitude puzzle, what would it be? It’s true that your answers may vary depending on the size of the company you work with or the type of positions you fill. However, most recruiters would be tempted to face some common challenges.

Here are the 8 most common challenges we hear most often and the solutions to overcome them to make your recruitment more effective:

1. Finding the right candidates

If you have already tried to find the right candidate from a pool of unskilled talents, you know that your possibilities are limited. You will choose the best person you can find at that time, not the person who is best suited for the job. But it’s not always about the number of candidates; the best way to hire the right people is often to use a smaller pool of more qualified talent.

Advice: Find out about the requirements of your job offers and give a concise overview of the position. Use an application form with “breathtaking” questions to answer your most important concerns directly. For example, do you need someone with a clean driver’s license? Add a yes/no question to ask candidates if they have one. This is a quick way to find people who are not the right people for the role.

2. Recruitment of qualified candidates

Good candidates are often regularly contacted by recruiters, which makes it difficult for your own email to stand out. In addition, candidates with hard-to-find skills often consider multiple vacancies at the same time. You need to make additional efforts to convince passive candidates to choose your company over your competitors.

“Advice: Before contacting a passive candidate, look for what motivates him and makes him happy at work. With this knowledge, you can customize your sourcing emails to describe what you can offer them, rather than what they can do for your business.”

3. Quick recruitment

Recruitment teams want to hire as quickly as possible as vacancies cost money and delay operations. However, depending on the industry, recruitment can take several months, increasing pressure on recruiters and frustrating team recruitment. A long recruitment period can be a by-product of a lack of qualified candidates. The hiring process can take too long or hiring teams can be difficult to reach consensus, leading to the best candidates finding another job.

“Advice 1: Review your hiring process and ask yourself if all the steps of hiring are really necessary. Are we looking for the right positions to fill our candidate pipelines? Do we communicate quickly with the candidates and with each other? You can answer all these questions with the recruitment parameters of your Applicant Tracking System (ATS)”.
“Advice 2: It is sometimes normal to take a long time to fill hard-to-fill vacancies. Explain this to recruitment teams and set expectations at the outset. Let them know what a realistic timeline is and stress the importance of careful recruitment for positions where poor recruitment could be very expensive.”

4. Data-based recruitment

Companies can use recruitment data and measures to continuously improve their recruitment process and make more informed decisions. However, data collection and processing can be problematic. Spreadsheets are a way to track hiring data, but they require manual work, are subject to human error and are not compliant. This makes it difficult to accurately track data and trends. Hiring teams need ways to enter and organize data in an efficient and simple way.

“Advice: You can store data and export useful reports with systems such as ATS, Google Analytics or personal marketing software. You do not need to track all the recruitment indicators that exist. Talk to management to agree on measures that are appropriate for you and your company.”

Try Workable for free to find out how you can improve your recruitment process with our all-in-one recruitment software — with candidate searches, job posting, candidate tracking, interviews, and recruitment analysis tools.

5. Building a strong employer brand

A good image of the employer brand helps you to attract and recruit better candidates. Companies that invest in the employer’s brand image are three times more likely to hire high-quality employees. However, it is a complex process, ranging from ensuring a positive experience for the candidate to promoting your culture in social media. It’s a continuous collaborative effort that requires you to get away from your usual tasks and get your colleagues on board.

“Advice: Always (courtesy fully) answer online reviews good and bad. Give your colleagues the opportunity to tell their stories about their work and what they like (e.g. through blogs and videos). And above all, be a good employer and that will come out.”

6. Ensuring a good experience for the candidates

The candidate’s experience is not only important for the employer’s brand image but also a factor when your best candidates evaluate your vacancies. The way you treat candidates during the recruitment process reflects how you will treat them after recruitment. If they have had a bad experience, they are less inclined to accept. Conversely, positive experiences can improve your employer’s brand image and encourage good candidates to apply and accept your vacancies.

“Tip 1: Define communication expectations: Tell candidates when they want to hear from you, and if you have a ATS, set reminders and use email templates to keep that promise. Don’t leave them in the dark throughout the hiring process.”
“Tip 2: Coordinate your efforts with those of the candidates. If you are planning a personal interview, give it all the necessary information (e.g. who to ask and what to bring). Explain what you should expect from the interview and what the next steps are. Inform the reception that they will arrive and don’t let them wait in the lobby.”

7. Fair recruitment

Many companies find it difficult to attract and hire different candidates, and unconscious prejudice is often the reason. In addition to your legal equal opportunity obligations, objective recruitment is good for business because it helps you recruit the best person for the job without stereotypes. The result will be an inclusive workplace that shows potential candidates that you are a meritocracy and that you can benefit from the positive effects of diversity.

“Advice: Implementation of objective recruitment techniques such as structured interviews and “blind” recruitment software such as GapJumpers.

8. Creating an effective recruitment process

Recruitment teams need to communicate quickly, evaluate candidates easily and know what is happening at each step of the process. Recruiters are responsible for coordinating all this communication and it’s not always easy. This is especially true when relationships between recruiters and recruiters are tense. In addition, administrative tasks (such as interview planning) often waste valuable time that recruiters could have used to coordinate the recruitment process and ensure a good experience for candidates.

“Tip: Consider investing in an ATS that will help your team coordinate and display the status of the recruitment process at a glance. This system allows your team to leave ratings and view comments from other team members. And it will facilitate some administrative tasks through built-in email templates, calendar integration and more.”

Best recruitment methods to address common challenges

Building a talent pool

Talent pools are groups of candidates you have already hired who can fill future positions in your company. This can help you reduce the time it takes to hire and hire people since you already have qualified and pre-screened candidates when you fill the position. Build talent pools:

  • Take a look at previous recruitment procedures for candidates who have reached the final stage or who find new candidates. Previous candidates are of course qualified, while new ones will help you build a more complete and diversified database of candidates. You can also consider candidates who have turned to your company by submitting their CVs. If the candidates are based in the EU, make sure you comply with data protection laws such as GDPR.
  • Inspire old and passive candidates. Your pipelines are stronger when candidates know you are considering them and when you stay in touch. Let them control how often you communicate with them, either through face-to-face meetings or by sending them useful content and information.

Training of recruitment teams

Even experienced recruitment managers and investigators may need to improve their recruitment skills. Combating prejudice is a common reason to form recruitment teams, but it is also important to coach candidates in interviews or build relationships with them.

Here are some ideas for training recruitment teams:
  • Ask interviewers to prepare for interviews. It is useful to give them a checklist.
  • Encourage them to take the Harvard Implicit Association Test to identify their hidden biases. It is also a good idea to educate them about how prejudice works.
  • Organize fake interviews. This is particularly useful for inexperienced interviewers.
  • Dissemination of recruitment resources. Ask each member of the recruitment team if they are interested in receiving interesting articles or videos with recruitment tips. Set expectations for the amount you need to read, for example, send an article once a month.

Diversify your recruitment strategies

It’s good to advertise on a job board that, as you know, will attract good candidates. But this is a missed opportunity to create a really strong hiring process. Remember. Remember:

  • Use social media to post your jobs or promote your business.
  • Introduce your culture, benefits and employee stories on your career page to attract more candidates.
  • Attend job fairs and organize recruitment activities whenever possible.
  • Use tools such as people search to select candidates based on their workplace, skills and other work-related criteria.

Investment in an ATS

An ATS can streamline your recruitment process by allowing your recruitment team to collaborate and store all candidate data in one place.

Good ATS has done the same:

  • Reporting features that can help you extract useful information from your past processes to improve future processes.
  • Calendar planning and integration tools that can help you quickly schedule phone screens and interviews and minimize back and forth communication.
  • Integrated templates that allow you to publish job postings and quickly send emails to candidates without having to rewrite the text each time.
  • Interview dashboards that can facilitate the transition to structured interviews.
  • Assessment integrations that help you evaluate candidates more objectively.
All these features (and more) optimize your attitude and help you make faster and better decisions.

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Dashboard
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