The Top 10 Recruitment Challenges to Tackle in 2021

The realm of talent acquisition has always been fraught with difficulties. The situation is even worse, resuming work after a recession. And now, the present pandemic-induced economic slump has created new recruitment problems while amplifying old ones.

The COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in the unemployment of about 12% of employees worldwide and a pace of economic downturn not seen since the Great Depression.

Despite the fact that the economy appears to be in bad shape right now, businesses have started opening up, and companies that handle existing and new recruitment issues now will be in the best position to emerge from the recession with a healthy talent pipeline.

Top Hiring Problems and Solutions

Here is the list of the top 10 hiring problems, along with advice on how to overcome them. 

1. Developing a Successful Employer Brand

According to LinkedIn, a vast number of job searchers evaluate an employer's brand before applying for a position. They don't apply or consider your employment offer if they dislike what they see, even if they are unemployed.

You can recruit and connect with better applicants with a strong and successful employer brand. Employer branding makes it three times more probable for a company to tackle recruitment challenges. However, it's a lengthy process that covers everything from guaranteeing a pleasant applicant experience to marketing your organization's image on social networking sites.

It's a long-term, collaborative endeavor that demands you take time away from your regular responsibilities and gain approval from your coworkers.

General Tip

You must plan and build a comprehensive employer branding plan in order to develop your employer brand. You must convey a captivating message about your firm, demonstrate its culture, and entice prospects to join your team.

Establish a powerful employer brand so that outstanding prospects come to you instead of the other way around.

From the website to sharing the experiences or photos of actual workers on social media to developing stand-out LinkedIn Career Pages, there are many methods to create your brand on any budget. You may also construct a visually appealing, adaptive, and customized career site and career blog to showcase your employer brand and demonstrate to applicants why your firm is a fantastic place to work. You may also use these blogs and videos to allow your employees to express their stories about their jobs and hobbies.

The aim is to demonstrate how your firm can assist applicants in finding meaning and how they can advance in their careers. This is especially true if they conduct some research after you contact them or click on a link you provide them. They'll get a feel of what makes your firm special, which will encourage them to react.

Furthermore, you should always respond politely to negative and positive online reviews. 

Developing a solid employee referral program is another possibility. Nothing cuts through the clutter like someone you know informing you of a fresh job opportunity. Therefore, if a coworker were to inform an acquaintance of theirs about an opening in the company, you are more than likely going to receive a response. 

According to CR Magazine, 92% of individuals would consider changing employment if offered a position with a firm with a strong employer brand. The issue is that all of your rivals will be hammering the same eligible candidates with advertisements claiming to be the top employer. This is why employee recommendations are the way to go, as talented prospects usually place a higher value on their friends than on your recruiters.

Above everything else, be a great employer, and it will reflect on you.

The Lanteria Solution

You can attract potential candidates through branding with the help of Lanteria. With Lanteria, you can construct your ideal career site. What's even better is that you don't need any technical or design abilities to set it up. Simply choose from a variety of stunning, customizable themes, and you're ready to go. 

You can also develop referral campaigns using our service. You may send tailored emails to your current workers asking them to propose outstanding prospects with just one click. Everything after that is automatic. To keep track of who suggested which applicant, Lanteria provides distinct affiliate links for you.

2. Increasing Your Candidate Reach

Employers who wish to secure available positions with outstanding applicants will have to seek outside their workers' social networks and local communities, or in other words, broaden their talent pool due to a scarcity of competent candidates. You'll need to spread your visibility throughout all conceivable channels and venues in order to reach a larger pool of talent. To put it another way, you should begin developing a multichannel recruiting strategy.

General Tip

Ensure those job vacancies are listed in a variety of locations and platforms, regardless of if the job board is free or paid, online through career sites or offline through newsletters, internal and external employee referrals, etc. 

The Lanteria Solution

For more comprehensive search results, Lanteria's sophisticated sourcing system includes search with machine learning. It will scan numerous sources to provide you with the best prospects. Lanteria also offers a handy plugin that can import excellent prospects and all of their details into your database automatically.

Lanteria is designed for successful job marketing. You may publish your positions on numerous free and paid local and worldwide job sites with one click. You may also advertise your job vacancy on social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and others. 

3. Targeting Passive Talent

A challenge recruitment teams face is targeting the right talent who may not be looking for a job right now. As per a LinkedIn study, 70% of the worldwide workforce is made up of passive talent who aren't actively looking for employment, while only 30% are actively looking for work. The good news is that, according to LinkedIn, up to 90% of these passive applicants are keen to hear about new work possibilities.

However, you won't discover passive applicants checking out your career site or job postings because they aren't actually pursuing work. You must instead reach them via social media. According to a LinkedIn poll, almost half (49%) of all professionals follow firms on social media in order to keep informed about their jobs.

General Tip

You should start marketing your employer's brand using the power of social media. This does not imply just publishing your job opportunities on various social media platforms. You should also post stories, images, and videos that highlight and showcase your firm as a wonderful place to work, interact with people's social media comments and messages, and send them relevant email campaigns. You should also host various recruitment events, such as meetings, seminars, and other similar activities, as well as invite possible applicants to join.

This kind of continuous candidate interaction will be critical to recruitment success, and it may attract both active and passive candidates. Candidate engagement is a long-term strategy and practice of interacting with your candidates on a regular basis. Your objective is to spark potential employees' interest in working for your firm and keep them interested until the perfect position becomes available.

The Lanteria Solution

You can simply build email campaigns that keep your applicants interested and involved with Lanteria's CRM system. You may create customized campaigns for different groups of your talent pool and various phases of the recruiting process. You may also plan your email campaigns to ensure that the appropriate candidates see your message at the right moment. Moreover, sophisticated analytics will reveal which applicants have viewed and acknowledged your emails.

You may also use Lanteria to develop a unique landing page for your recruitment events and social media to distribute information regarding recruitment and job opportunities.

4. Attract the Right Job Applicants and Repel the Wrong Ones

According to Glassdoor, finding the right job candidates is the most difficult hiring problem for 76% of hiring managers. They squander valuable time sifting through a flood of applications from people who aren't a good match for their available positions.

Rejecting the wrong applicants wastes time that could be better spent on prospects who are a good fit for the role. Although intentionally repelling applicants may seem contradictory, it provides a better outcome than enticing everybody and not having enough time for anybody.

If you can't seem to find someone with your desired skill set, look for people who have a can-do attitude and are willing to take on new challenges. Look for training courses and programs that will help individuals get ready for the duties that come with their job. Offer in-house mentoring and training opportunities whenever applicable to assist them in getting up to speed. Employers must be willing to teach and cross-train a possible suitable applicant as technical abilities are easier to teach than soft skills. 

Keep in mind, however, that there may be times you don't require a candidate with the precise skill set you need, especially because technical capabilities are always changing. Instead, look for individuals that have soft talents that will be beneficial regardless of how the job evolves. Look for talents that will last a lifetime, such as learnability, communication skills, and flexibility.

General Tip 

Even if their qualifications aren't a perfect fit, people frequently apply for jobs. At the start of the application, use "knock-out" questions to verify essential abilities. This allows applicants to self-select out of the process early on, ensuring that neither employers nor applicants waste time on a bad fit.

When it comes to job postings, go for honesty. Being upfront about the disadvantages of your available roles will help you screen candidates, but it will not prevent the right person from applying. Your negatives will be viewed as stimulating challenges by the appropriate individual who is enthusiastic about the position.

In addition to this, your hiring staff can analyze candidates quickly and pick individuals that best match the position and business culture by using various skill assessment tests, performance measures, and conducting interviews. 

The Lanteria Solution

You may tailor your hiring and evaluation strategies with Lanteria based on particular demands for certain job positions. You may also utilize scorecards that are customized, collaborative, and organized. Finally, you can order exams from your preferred external assessment sources and obtain results all from within the Lanteria platform. 

5. Constant Communication Within the Talent Pool

A talent pool is a database of people who want to work for your business. Since you already have applicants to pick from, creating a talent pool allows you to fill job openings in less time with minimum expenses. Therefore, it is important to continuously communicate with those within this talent pool. 

Recruitment challenges include knowing when to connect with candidates and what to say. Transparency and maintaining an open line of communication are the best practices for this. In the aftermath of a recession, for example, your employment opportunities may swiftly fill up. Even if you aren't recruiting, you should continue to cultivate applicants. Keep your talent pools updated since you'll be hiring again at some point. Up until then, spend time generating material that is valuable to your applicants while you aren't actively hiring. This may be in the form of career advice or employee experiences. 

It is also important to be entirely open about the process, even if it is a message informing a candidate that their application has not progressed to the next round. Continued contact keeps prospects engaged in your company and establishes the foundation for a successful relationship.

General Tip

Invite potential applicants to join your talent network so they can learn more about your firm and keep track of vacant opportunities. This can be done through a quick application form provided in various locations online, asking them to join your talent network.

The Lanteria Solution

You'll need a landing page for individuals to apply to your talent pool of prospective job candidates, whether you're hosting a local career event, a webinar, or a hackathon. Using Lanteria, you can effortlessly design a customized landing page on your job site, recruiting events, and the like that can act as an invitation to join your talent pool.

Furthermore, Lanteria's CRM system has a variety of capabilities for actively managing your talent pool, like segmenting your talent pool, controlling pool stages, and delivering engaging email campaigns, among other things.

6. Creating a Lasting Impression on Candidates

According to CareerArc's Candidate Experience Study, when a candidate has a bad experience, they are more likely to reject the job offer, tell others about it online and in person, and even cease using or buying goods and services from that firm.

In other words, if you don't enhance the applicant experience, you potentially lose not only top prospects but also your reputation, consumers, and revenue.

Moreover, numerous offers are frequently made to great applicants at the same time, so standing out as a company is crucial. 

Candidate experience is essential not only for company branding, but it's also a consideration when your top candidates are weighing job offers. The way you handle applicants throughout the interview process reflects how you'll treat them once they've been hired. They're less inclined to accept if they've experienced a terrible encounter. Positive applicant experiences, on the other hand, may boost your employer brand and inspire qualified prospects to apply for and accept your job offers.

Use the technology that you have to support human touchpoints, especially communication.

General Tip

To begin, review your existing employee experience before taking the necessary actions necessary to enhance your applicant experience. There are a few strategies to guarantee that the candidate has a positive interview experience.

According to a LinkedIn study, the most important thing for applicants to understand during interviews is the role's duties, so make sure to give specifics and address all of their concerns.

They also want to see how they'll integrate with the team, so make time for them to meet the individuals they'll be dealing with on a daily basis. This includes speaking with the recruiting manager who may become their boss in the near future. Even if it's only a handshake and a hello, getting some face time with top leadership may make a lasting impact.

It's critical to keep applicants updated after the interview to avoid them becoming upset and accepting another offer. Give them a clear timeframe for when they may expect to hear from you, and give them constant updates to let them know you don't forget them. In the end, if you do decide to give them the position, they will have nothing but positive sentiments about your firm, which will increase the likelihood that they will accept. In fact, according to a CareerBuilder survey, an overwhelming 81% of applicants believe that companies sending progress updates to them on a regular basis will substantially improve their overall candidate experience.

In other words, ensure a human touch. As more organizations shift their recruitment procedures online, technology continues to play an increasingly important role, even for recruiters who have never worked with technology before. But don't allow the human touch to slip through the cracks. Giving applicants a positive candidate experience must remain a top objective as recruitment procedures evolve. Regardless of how you hire or what technologies you use, the candidate experience is the foundation of your hiring process. Your technology stack is unimportant to candidates. They simply want to be included, valued, and informed.

The Lanteria Solution

Sustaining centralized communication via an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can aid recruitment challenges by staying in touch with candidates and giving updated information by setting reminders, email templates, and automatic messaging, and even allowing them to know if they are falling out of your selection process with just a click of a button.

You may also snooze your applicants to be alerted to reach them at the appropriate time, such as when their present employer's contract expires.

Utilize this technology to address hiring problems and treat applicants as individuals rather than applications.

7. Diversity and Inclusiveness

A challenge that recruitment can also face is eliminating bias. According to research by the National Bureau of Economic Research, resumes with white-sounding names receive 50% more invitations for interviews than similar resumes with black-sounding names.

Unconscious prejudices are frequently the cause of many organizations' struggles to recruit and hire diverse personnel. Aside from meeting your legal duties to give equal opportunity, hiring objectively is excellent for business since it allows you to choose the best individual for the position without prejudice. As a reward, you'll have a more inclusive workplace. 

General Tip

Use a variety of techniques to eliminate prejudice from your hiring process. Educate all human resources staff and managers by providing diversity training to prevent prejudice from creeping into your recruitment process.

You might also want to consider posting your job openings on specialty job sites like DiversityWorking to attract a diverse pool of candidates. Other methods would be to make contact with diverse college and professional groups. You can also request diverse referrals from your current workers.

Make a point of emphasizing your company's commitment to diversity in order to attract diverse applicants on your employment site and social media accounts, post quotations, photographs, and video testimonials from your current diverse workers.

Implement objective recruiting approaches such as organized interviews and software that allows you to hire blindly. You can also do this by making your interviewing procedure more consistent. Make sure you ask identical questions to all of the prospects. You may then compare them using the same criteria and select the best prospects rather than ones that are just appealing.

Finally, make sure your interview panel is diversified. Including a broad group of individuals in your hiring process will help you identify unconscious prejudices and enhance your recruitment process's fairness and equality principles.

The Lanteria Solution

You may use Lanteria to highlight your company's diversity initiatives on your career site and write about them on your career blog. You may also design a custom landing page for each type of candidate you wish to target, such as previous servicemen and servicewomen, people with disabilities, ex-offenders, LGBTIQ persons, aged individuals, and so on. Aside from this, you can also locate diverse candidates with ease. 

You may conduct organized interviews and utilize scorecards to evaluate candidates impartially based on previously established criteria with Lanteria's Applicant Tracking System. You may also track and assess your diversity and inclusion indicators automatically. This thus reduces the risk of prejudice influencing your hiring choice. It also facilitates successful team cooperation by allowing recruiters to quickly exchange their thoughts and assessments of prospects via notes and comments, minimizing the likelihood of making an illogical recruitment selection.

8. Outdated Technologies and Processes

The way we employ is changing as a result of technological advancements. Modern recruiting technology has the potential to enhance and make hiring more efficient and productive. While this is wonderful, implementing these new technologies may be daunting and frightening. This is why many companies continue to employ the same recruiting methods they have for years. Older procedures are often out of touch with the demands of today's applicants and recruiters, and many have grown too complex over time. Recruiters are hampered as a result, and it is harder to obtain excellent applicants.

When conditions change, the recruitment role should alter as well. Cleaning up and streamlining hiring processes now will give a clean slate for future adjustments. Furthermore, recruiters may expect a huge surge of applications when the economy recovers. Solving hiring problems like this can improve efficiency while reducing the workload of recruiters.

General Tip

Make use of all the advantages that current technology has to offer. Invest in an all-in-one recruitment software that is smart and simple to use.

The Lanteria Solution

Lanteria is the new wave and definition of contemporary recruitment. It's easy to use, mobile-friendly, and designed to deliver a positive applicant experience. Lanteria, which is powered by machine learning and AI, allows you to find prospects across various channels, develop an appealing corporate career website, connect with active and passive applicants, and manage and measure your recruiting statistics automatically.

But if you think it's all just a computer, you've got it wrong. Lanteria also provides the greatest customer service ever. We have a specialized staff that will provide you with all of the assistance and coaching you require to seamlessly integrate the most recent recruiting technologies.

9. Being Data-Focused

Employing analytics is a critical business activity that may assist your firm in achieving its goals. You're missing out on a chance to assist your firm in achieving a competitive edge over its competitors if your hiring department isn't data-driven and well-versed in analytics.

Companies may utilize recruitment data and metrics to enhance their hiring process and make better selections. However, gathering and analyzing data may be time-consuming. Spreadsheets are one approach to keep track of hiring information, but they involve manual labor and are vulnerable to human error. This makes it difficult to correctly track data and forecasts. Hiring teams want methods for compiling and organizing data in a simplified and effective manner.

General Tip

To discover the best areas to recruit, you can use data. This does not have to be a recruitment challenge at all. You may use systems like ATS, Google Analytics, or recruitment marketing software to store data and export useful reports. You don't need to keep track of every single recruitment metric available. Have a discussion with top management to come up with a few KPIs that are meaningful to you and your organization.

All hiring staff should also adopt a data-driven attitude so that they can track and measure important recruitment indicators if they want to obtain a comprehensive view of the whole recruiting process.

By concentrating on data, you will be able to make better and more educated recruiting decisions, as well as increase your growth and profitability.

Begin by establishing your desired recruiting metrics and keeping track of them on a regular basis. You may gain useful insights and set objectives based on actual facts by monitoring every stage of your hiring process. You won't waste resources on ineffective initiatives this way.

The Lanteria Solution

All of the essential hiring indicators are automatically tracked and monitored by Lanteria. This information is presented in the form of appealing visual reports that are both comprehensive and easy to grasp. Lanteria's reports give relevant and practical information about your hiring strategy. You'll be able to pinpoint what actually works and what might need tweaking.

10. Facilitating Team Collaboration

Recently, there has been a movement in the talent acquisition industry from traditional recruiting approaches to collaborative hiring strategies. Executives, hiring specialists, IT experts, and others are needed to collaborate effectively in the modern hiring process.

Furthermore, the incidence of remote employment has risen dramatically. With an increasing number of employees working remotely from all over the world, guaranteeing efficient team collaboration is getting increasingly difficult.

Recruiters must seek out people who can flourish in this dramatically altered workplace. Both supervisors and team members must have a distinct skillset and commitment while working remotely. To work from home, candidates must be self-sufficient. Identifying individuals who possess the psychological qualities required to succeed in a remote work environment is essential for avoiding stress and attrition in the long run.

General Tip

Create a collaborative recruiting and hiring approach that works. For starters, assemble your entire team and create precise recruiting criteria. You should also provide each team member with the opportunity to offer their thoughts on each prospect. Lastly, ensure that everyone on your team has the resources they need to connect effectively and efficiently.

If you're interviewing applicants for remote employment that requires daily communication through phone or video conversations, consider employing that method for the interview. This will allow you to determine which applicants are the greatest communicators and are most likely to succeed in a remote work setting.

It's critical to find the proper supervisors to help remote teams succeed. Handling remote workers necessitates the acquisition of additional skills. They must be aware of the nuances of remote work, such as the heightened need for connection, and be ready to provide virtual assistance for their colleagues. Employers will benefit from recruiters that understand this and know what to look for.

The Lanteria Solution

You may give various responsibilities to your team members using Lanteria's Applicant Tracking System to manage who has access to what information. You can exchange candidate information with team members that require it. You may even share the profiles of applicants with internal or external parties that aren't using Lanteria.

You may also construct detailed application profiles, utilize shared scorecards to assess candidates, and write notes and comments about them.

About Lanteria

Recruiting might be difficult, but Lanteria's all-in-one recruiting software will assist you in overcoming your greatest difficulties and achieving your hiring objectives in 2021.

With all of the issues mentioned and more, we are confident that we can find a solution for you. We're here to help you with anything from system navigation to application tracking and customer service. Just leave all your hiring problems to us. Reach out today to learn more!