What’s Ahead in Recruiting for Q4 2015

The success of your company depends on a team of qualified, competent, and engaged employees who keep every aspect of your business running smoothly. But according to the Jobvite 2015 Recruiting Nation Survey, the ability to be fully staffed and productive is getting much harder. Fifty-six percent of recruiters are hurting for skilled or qualified candidates. In many industries the problem is much worse.  The CEO of the National Association of Home Builders describes the situation as “an epidemic.” The Associated General Contractors survey reports 86 percent of commercial builders are having trouble filling hourly and salaried positions. Sixty-five percent of HR officials at small companies are struggling.
hiring Stories like this pop up in the news on an almost daily basis. And it doesn’t seem to matter if the company is large or small, product- or service-oriented, domestic or international.
There are a number of reasons why filling open positions quickly is getting worse in the U.S. as well as in many other countries.
Growth:  While the economy is not robust, it has been growing at a steady pace and is expected to continue.  Many companies are hiring especially in skilled positions. While this is great news for their companies – and the economy in general – it can be a challenge for hiring managers to fill many positions quickly enough to keep their companies operating efficiently. But 95 percent of recruiters expect the hunt for talent to remain or grow more competitive.
 
Recruiting Options:  The growth of the Internet has led to an explosion in recruiting opportunities.  Job seekers used to rely on classified ads and word of mouth; now, they can use job search engines like Indeed, job boards like Craigslist and Monster; social media, online recruitment agencies, and corporate recruiting websites.  This onslaught of new job-seeking opportunities has made it made it ridiculously easy to apply for jobs and more difficult for companies to screen and vet a high volume of applicants efficiently.
 

Time:  Most hiring managers are bombarded with multiple tasks, from placing ads to screening and interviewing potential job candidates.  The average hiring manager spends 4.5 minutes reading each resume that lands on his or her desk and 15 hours each week sourcing candidates.  And yet, because of the high volume of resumes coming in combined with inadequate applicant management capabilities, the time to hire hit an another record high recently at 29 days.  For jobs requiring more advanced skills and for companies looking to find candidates who have the right skills and fit the culture, 6 months or longer is fairly common.

As you can imagine, there are several business-changing consequences to these trends:

  • Too many unqualified applicants congest the hiring process, making it harder to find qualified applicants.
  • While jobs remain unfilled, related tasks are either delegated to inexperienced staff, or not performed at all.  In both cases, the company’s overall productivity and profitability suffers.
  • Conversely, jobs are filled by people who are a poor fit for the job, either temperamentally or professionally.  This leads to poor organizational synergies, low productivity, and overall inefficiency.
  • HR teams spend too little time with applicants to determine whether they’re right for the position, resulting in the hire of unqualified or poor fit candidates.
The new reality is if your business is going to compete effectively for and hire the most talented people in your industry, traditional recruiting practices are no longer good enough. They must be multi-faceted, streamlined and responsive too.

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Ira S Wolfe

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