Recruitment in a Post-COVID World: Change Is Coming

What Awaits the World of Talent Acquisition?

The physical office is quickly becoming a thing of the past, and new theories and practices are quickly taking the stage, leaving professionals with little time to adjust to them or implement the changes.

Change is happening in every sphere of human resource management — including talent acquisition. In this article, we will tell you about what the future might hold for recruiters and recruitment tactics. Read on to make the most out of the situation and lead your company through a strong and stable 2022!

Make Way for Automation

There will be greater volatility in the market due to political decisions made around the world. The first fundamental concept that talent acquisition and recruitment leaders should apply to hiring is automation.

Try automating as much as possible – there are plenty of areas within talent acquisition that can be streamlined. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Automated pre-screening of candidates
• Simplified scheduling
• Seamless applicant tracking system
• Automated evaluation process

Adapt, Improvise, Overcome

We believe there is an opportunity to intensify efforts to strengthen the “flexible shell” surrounding recruitment characteristics. Many recruitment teams have become one-trick ponies, which is unfortunate. The same thing has been done repeatedly for years because that has always worked for them. 

Your recruitment team should begin learning new tricks as soon as possible in order to remain adaptive. Although retraining and reskilling are vital in most industries, it is especially important in recruiting to ensure that you are not entirely replaced by many of the rapidly growing RPO businesses. More on this in the next section!

How Will Recruiters Adapt in 2022?

Building upon the need to learn new skills, the question remains: how? What can be learned in the face of such rapid change? Here are some things your talent acquisition team should absolutely focus on.

Covid Concerns

The pandemic is expected to continue posing issues for recruiters in 2022, including health and safety concerns, COVID-19 vaccination obligations, and determining whether positions are entirely remote, onsite, or somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

Organizations will certainly lose talent if they do not adjust to candidate and employee expectations in these areas. More than ever, candidates are turning down job offers that do not include any flexibility. It is becoming more and more common for people to anticipate some kind of flexibility in their jobs; 48% prefer to work fully remote, while 44% would like to work partially from home.

Extend Empathy and Understanding

Stress and burnout continue to be severely felt by those working in the talent acquisition industry. Ten new roles will present themselves for each one you successfully fill. Senior executives constantly criticize the recruitment and retention teams for not filling positions quickly enough.

One simple solution is for higher-ups to start doling out more recognition. Greater technological investment and more budget for job advertising are undoubtedly needed for recruiters, but simply expressing gratitude goes a long way in gaining their trust.

Even though recruiters are tasked with hiring more people from smaller applicant pools, you cannot forget that they are people too, juggling kids, school, and home duties. What’s more, they are not exempt from the other challenges that everyone else is experiencing during the pandemic. Empathy will lead to understanding, and that paves the road to true understanding.

Focus on What Candidates Need

The expectations of candidates and employees have also changed in the last few years, with employees expecting more from their employers. Most recruiters report an increase in prospects and current employees bargaining for better compensation — a rise of more than 20 percentage points since 2020. Companies are being forced to pay much more for the same roles than they were previously. Furthermore, candidates are well-informed about their market value.

Recruiters need to become more adept at negotiating with applicants earlier in the process and pre-closing candidates. Pre-closing is a difficult skill for novice recruiters to master. However, it only takes a few bad experiences with applicants before you begin to understand the importance of securing salary expectations early in the recruitment process.

When it comes to perks, the standard offers — such as health insurance and a 401(k) — continue to be the most frequently requested by candidates. Still, new advantages, such as family planning, child care, and parental leave, are becoming increasingly popular. Employers are becoming more and more expected to provide flexibility and child care assistance. More job applicants are inquiring about DE&I efforts this year than they did the prior year, and this trend is not going anywhere anytime soon.

The Rise of Tech

Employers must increase the efficiency of their processes and require recruiters to be agile. This year, recruiters are relying more heavily on automation and artificial intelligence technologies to source, screen, schedule, and converse with applicants than they did the year before.

The majority of businesses need more candidates, which necessitates them casting a wider net. To be successful in this endeavor, you must have an automated technology platform that can efficiently reach five times or even ten times the number of prospects. Alternatively, if there is an abundance of candidates for a post, corporations are tasked with finding the right one amongst a plethora of contenders. 

Through automated technology, businesses can screen and qualify the top candidates for available roles more efficiently and swiftly than ever before. It is possible and recommended that anything a recruiter does more than five times a day should be automated.

Chatbots are one of the most widely utilized tools available today. Through the use of chatbots, recruiters may better qualify candidates prior to engaging in any human interaction. What's more, when a chatbot is used on a career site, 95% more job seekers end up becoming leads. 

When looking for work, candidates want employers to provide them with a good experience. They require current and accurate information — as well as the ability to recall and relate their choices to openings that are a good fit for their skills and experience. All of that and more can be achieved by investing in the right technology.

Keeping Up With Shifting Paradigms

Over the next 12 months, your recruitment team’s main objective should be to improve the quality of the hires they bring on board. Companies are still putting a strong emphasis on diversity and higher-quality talent, but the dedication has waned since last year. Due to the overwhelming number of available positions, recruiters cannot devote sufficient time to this task. While sourcing better talent is still theoretically a priority, some companies consider it more of luxury.

The Great Resignation and the Importance of Recruiters

When it comes to internal mobility, we're seeing a lot of traction. Everyone is terrified of the “Great Resignation,” and businesses are scrambling to figure out how to keep their finest employees. This includes recruiters.

When the pandemic struck, a large number of recruiters were laid off. The hiring cycle then restarted, and businesses have been scrambling to figure out how to hire with fewer resources ever since. Almost all heads of Human Resources say that now is the most difficult time of year to locate recruiters and that compensation for recruiters has increased dramatically.

A growing number of businesses, including some that would not have considered hiring a recruitment outsourcing agency in the past, are now doing so.

Weather the Storm With Lanteria

Though the times are tough, they will pass. The most important thing to remember is that you aren’t alone, and you can still take steps to maintain (and improve) your position in the industry. There are more recruitment-boosting tools available than ever; you just have to find and use them! 

One such tool is Lanteria: the #1 HR system. This Sharepoint and Office 365-powered platform automates many areas of your HR department, including talent acquisition. If you’re ready to streamline your recruiting via smart interview scheduling, screening tools, and a candidate self-service portal, reach out today for a demo!