Jobvite’s annual survey of hundreds of recruiters and HR professionals shows that recruiters face a dramatic shift from last year, when layoffs dominated the first half of the year and recruiting budgets were cut.
Today, the US is experiencing a continued surge in hiring and more than 18 million workers have been employed since May, 2020. Yet over 10 million posted jobs are unfilled. And job seekers are making it clear that they expect a new status quo with hybrid work, higher salaries, equity, flexibility, and diversity.
When I attend HR Tech, I always enjoy visiting the Jobvite booth and discussing new trends in recruiting. I used Jobvite’s recruiting metrics in my book Hack Recruiting and appreciate their annual Recruiter Nation Reports.
According to this year’s report, recruiters will face new challenges to win over top talent while also managing increased stress levels, higher employee turnover rates, and applicant shortages in many industries, such as health care, professional services and leisure and travel. In short, recruiters and recruiting leaders will need to remain agile if they hope to succeed.
Jobvite reports that 78 percent of recruiting priorities have shifted to address new job searcher demands, and 40 percent of recruiting budgets have increased.
Recruiting organizations are spending more on automating the recruiting processes to increase the speed and communications with candidates. Recruiters are concerned, however, that their organizations are not moving quickly enough to meet the demands for remote and hybrid work and equitable workplaces. Most recruiters have seen candidates turn down an interview or job offer due to a lack of flexibility or the absence of remote work options.
Three out of four surveyed recruiters report an increase in negotiating for higher salaries among candidates and current employees – more than 20 percent jump in one year. Sixty percent of recruiters are concerned that their organizations will lose the best employees for failing to make necessary changes. Forty percent of recruiters have said candidates have turned down an interview or an offer due to a lack of diversity in the organization.
Jobvite’s report shows that improving quality-of-hire, time-to-hire, retention rate, and growing the talent pipeline remain top priorities. These are also the top metrics used by recruiting organizations. (See Hack Recruiting for a complete list of effective recruiting metrics.) Seventy percent of recruiters report hiring candidates in 30 days. The top challenges are finding skilled and qualified candidates and intense competition from other employers. Please see the chart below.
Companies are supporting recruiters with higher budgets, and 40 percent of recruiters report higher budgets as a result of Covid-19, and 64 percent expect budgets to increase in the next six to 12 months. Social media, LinkedIn, and employee referrals are used more often to find job candidates than job boards, such as Indeed. Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok continue their upward momentum as social media platforms for finding job candidates. Please see the chart Jobvite chart below. However, recruiting search strategies are heavily dependent on the type of job and industry. About half of recruiters plan to increase texting in the recruiting process in the next year.
You can download the full Jobvite report, which I recommend, at https://www.jobvite.com/lp/2021-recruiter-nation-report/.
Victor Assad is the CEO of Victor Assad Strategic Human Resources Consulting, managing partner of InnovationOne, and Sales Advisor to MeBeBot. He works with companies to transform HR and recruiting, implement remote work, and develop extraordinary leaders, teams, and innovation cultures. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Hack Recruiting: the Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process, and Digitization. Subscribe to his weekly blogs at www.VictorHRConsultant.com.