Each year, Jobvite surveys over 800 recruiters to find out the latest trends in talent acquisition for our Recruiter Nation Report. This year’s survey illustrated how dramatic shifts in the job market – hiring surges, reduced resources, and changes in candidate expectations – have forced recruiters and talent acquisition (TA) professionals to become more agile. As recruiters move towards a candidate’s market in 2022, here are four trends they need to keep an eye on in order to quickly fill roles with top candidates.
It’s (still) a candidate’s market
With the economic recovery in full swing, the job market has bounced back from layoffs and downturns in the previous year. And recruiters are feeling the stress of that switch. Employees are leaving their current roles in search of things like remote flexibility, better benefits, and a stronger commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) from companies. In fact, 59% of recruiters said their organizations have experienced increased turnover since the onset of the pandemic in 2020.
With a short supply of qualified workers and a high number of open positions, candidates are enjoying the power to choose employers based on who best meets their needs and aligns with their values. So, what are candidates prioritizing in their evaluation of an employer?
- Commitment to DE&I – Candidates continue to ask about a company’s DE&I priorities during the job search process. Forty-nine percent of recruiters reported that job seekers are inquiring about the company’s DE&I initiatives, an increase in 16 percentage points from 2020.
- Benefits and perks – Long gone are the days of candidates accepting low-quality benefits from an employer. Recruiters shared that medical/dental coverage (51%), 401(k) (49%), and work from home flexibility (44%) have all been effective benefits in attracting new candidates.
- Salary negotiations – Along with perks and benefits, 73% of recruiters are seeing candidates ask about negotiating higher salaries. This is up a whopping 20 percentage points from 2020.
Challenges in recruiting
The increase in hiring activity, higher candidate expectations, and shortage of qualified talent in the market have taken a toll on recruiters in 2021. Not surprisingly, 65% of recruiters reported that their stress levels have increased at least somewhat since the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Recruiters are pressured to fill roles quickly with qualified talent, but the right candidates are in short supply – and they’re being wooed by competitors with sign-on bonuses, remote work, and good benefits.
Current hurdles in recruiting include a lack of qualified candidates (47%), employer competition (40%), and requirements for in-office work (33%). These challenges have shifted since 2020 and continue to change with the job market. New challenges in 2021 that stand out include:
- Misalignment between recruiters, hiring managers, and/or interview panelists (23%)
- Communications with candidates throughout the hiring process (28%)
- Health and safety concerns including COVID-19 (23%)
Improving recruiter efficiency with automation and AI
Even with new stresses and challenges, recruiters are adapting to changes in the market by being agile. Agility brings improvement to key recruiting metrics like time-to-hire, quality-of-hire, and cost-of-hire. This year’s Recruiter Nation Report showed that in order to compete for top talent in a candidate’s market, improved efficiency is the name of the game. And recruiters are using automation and AI software for more recruiting processes in 2021 than the previous year.
Recruiters use these tools to source, screen, schedule, and chat with candidates during key times in the hiring process. The most popular tools among TA teams? Automated texting and chatbots. In fact, 60% of recruiters believe that texting is an effective way to engage and communicate with candidates, and 51% report that their organization uses chatbots in the recruiting process.
Priorities for recruiters
Around 78% of recruiters reported that their priorities have shifted over the past year. So, where are TA teams now focusing their efforts?
Here are the top priorities for recruiters over the next 12 months.
- Improving quality-of-hire: (48%)
- Improving time-to-hire: (28%)
- Increasing retention rate: (26%)
- Growing talent pipeline: (25%)
- Updating recruiting technology: (21%)
- Improving diversity: (18%)
Final thoughts
This year’s Recruiter Nation Report is packed with the latest recruiting challenges, priorities, and best practices. Download the report and look for more deep dives into the numbers! Also, subscribe to Jobvite’s blog and resource library to stay up to date on the latest in talent acquisition.
