Business and economic conditions have a big impact on recruiting needs and processes. But most would agree that the worldwide coronavirus pandemic impacted recruiting in enormous and accelerated ways, along with many other aspects of business and life. Shifting to remote work and digital recruitment, stiff competition for talent, shortages of workers for customer-facing roles, and strong new demand for diversity and inclusion are the new normal in business.

Workforce recruiting is a moving target because of many changing factors including technological advances and societal impacts. Finding the best candidates for differing roles, managing a complex hiring process, and struggling with skills gaps make it a challenge to keep up and meet employer hiring goals.  

Those challenges leave recruiters with a long shopping list of holiday wishes.

Things Recruiters Wish For

Recruiters don’t have a lot of time to daydream about what would be on their holiday shopping list, but if they did, ways to stand out to candidates might be at the top of the list. It’s one of the biggest pain points that SocialTalent’s followers said they had with recruiting.

Another thing recruiters wish for is applicants who are perfectly skilled and matched to the roles to be filled. If only qualified candidates applied to perfectly described job openings, it would make a recruiter’s job so much easier.

Recruiters want tools to make their myriad recruiting tasks easier, faster, better organized, and under control. Fortunately, there are some very good tools for just these situations. Also on the list: ways to attract more candidates and what gets candidates to say yes to the offer.

Sourcing Tools That Make Recruiters’ Lives Easier

No doubt about it, sourcing candidates is near the top of the list of challenges for recruiters. That makes sourcing tools so important. Some of the top sourcing tools for 2021 according to RecruitmentTech.com include Vettery, Gem, and Crystal.

Vettery uses machine learning with remote hiring filters, bias reduction mode, role-based assessments, and candidate wish lists to present curated talent pools, reducing sourcing hours per hire.

Gem is a recruiting platform that automatically tracks every touchpoint in the recruiting process so it’s easy to build relationships with candidates and stay in good communication. It keeps recruiting data all in one place and lets recruiters build lists of top talent.

Crystal uses social media to create personality profiles and descriptions of candidates and helps recruiters understand how best to reach out to them. Based on the DISC behavioral assessment system, it helps recruiters not only understand candidates, but hire for teams, training, and culture.

Ways to Attract More Candidates

Attracting candidates to the roles and the companies hiring is a major goal of workforce development, and studies show that candidate experience has an impact beyond recruiting. Candidates who have bad interviewing experience also develop a poor opinion of the company and don’t hesitate to discuss that with others.

Consultancy Deloitte reports that poor employer reputations cost large employers millions more and that it’s well worth it to spend on improving the candidate experience. Deloitte recommends keeping experience strategy aligned with the business, defining key talent segments to focus on, and creating a superior candidate experience that is accurately measured.

Attracting more candidates is easy when there’s a strategic candidate experience that ensures candidates want to join the company and have been valued during and benefit from the recruiting interactions.

What Gets More Candidates to Say Yes

Losing good candidates at the offer is the bane of recruiters everywhere. Knowing what gets candidates to say yes is so valuable to successfully filling a role.

A recent Ceridian and Hanover Research survey of 1.600 new hires shows that employees are looking for balance, and the things that lead them to accept job offers are salary, work-life balance, and job location. Knowing this, recruiters can focus on these three areas in the recruiting process and candidate experience to get more offers accepted.

Focusing on these three areas in the recruiting process, and especially at the offer, gets more candidates to say yes. When recruiters are invested in the factors most important to the candidates they want to hire and work to get those factors aligned with the candidates’ wants and needs, more offers will get to yes.

Meet location needs of top candidates with remote or hybrid work options, or company perks like commuter benefits. Make sure salary offers are in line with or higher than the market. Help candidates understand all of the company’s work-life balance benefits.

Talk to top candidates about all the things that add to salary, such as flextime, PTO, paid training, sign-on bonuses, early review, and equity. Discuss new projects, mentoring programs, or special teams for opportunities of interest to candidates for career advancement.

Looking Forward

With the Society for Human Resource Management predicting a strong candidates’ market in 2022, recruiting shifts toward recruiting technology, diversity, and automating processes prevail. Heading into a new year, recruiters anticipate continuing pandemic challenges and don’t want to lose candidates over health and safety concerns and vaccine mandates. The holiday shopping list for recruiters will help with those challenges now and in the near future as recruiters and staffing providers get busier and busier.

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