Candidate ghosting is now the number one challenge for recruiters and TA teams.

That’s the inside scoop from our latest global survey of 375 TA practitioners, which we conducted in partnership with Brazen, a leading virtual hiring event and online career fair platform. Aside from their top challenges, our survey also delved into the activities, tactics, and technologies participants are leveraging to attract and source new talent these days. You can get all the data by downloading the complete research report here.

Although the ghosting revelation wasn’t a huge surprise given the state of the current talent market, it’s worth noting that TA teams have never had a significant problem with candidate ghosting in the entire decade that Talent Board has been researching recruitment and the candidate experience.

In addition to candidate ghosting, which was cited as a top challenge by 40% of our respondents, their other top attraction and sourcing challenges in 2022 are (in descending order):

• Engaging passive talent – 34%
• Candidate diversity – 34%
• Application volume drop off rates – 34%
• Finding worthwhile sourcing channels/partners – 30%

Ghost Busting via Better Candidate Experiences

The sad fact is ghosting will very likely continue for the foreseeable future due to pervasive talent shortages. Candidates now wield considerable power in the talent market, and many of them have multiple job offers, counter offers, and potential employers on the table at any given time.

However, ghosting isn’t solely driven by candidates having lots of options. Past Talent Board research shows ghosting and dropping out of the recruiting process is often a result of companies providing poor candidate experiences—e.g., slow, repetitive interviewing and screening processes, poor or nonexistent communication from recruiters and hiring managers, job offers that take weeks or months to materialize, even lousy onboarding experiences.

Employers can make serious progress toward reducing ghosting by improving their candidate experiences. For example, they can engage candidates earlier in the process (reaching out or answering questions during the research and pre-application phases) … streamline screening and interviewing timelines … and utilize smart recruiting technologies to improve candidate communications and move them through the recruiting/onboarding process more efficiently.

Another effective solution to reduce ghosting is the use of virtual recruiting event platforms, which topped respondents’ list of planned technology investments in the coming year (at 29%), followed by job distribution platform/software (26%) and programmatic advertising (25%). Plus, 32% of respondents also told us that virtual recruiting events are their top priority for bolstering talent attraction and engagement (along with in-person recruiting events, also at 32%). Engaging live with candidates, whether virtually or in-person, helps TA teams create a greater sense of connection with candidates, which helps combat ghosting and creates a lasting impression..

Virtual Recruiting Is Here To Stay

Based on our survey data, the demand for virtual recruiting event technology is practically doubling: 32% of participants’ organizations already use virtual hiring event platforms and another 29% plan to add them within the next year.

Certainly, pandemic-related concerns are driving some of this growth. However, virtual recruiting will be going strong long after the pandemic subsides for several key reasons:

• Growing numbers of employers have major talent gaps to fill.
• More and more workers are demanding remote work options and are interested in taking jobs in other states and countries.
• Innovative teams are realizing the value of leveraging virtual recruiting tools to connect with candidates on their time and their terms.
• And many employers are permanently adapting to a hybrid recruiting model that integrates virtual and in-person hiring events to gain efficiencies of scale, drive repeatability, and reap cost savings. (AdventHealth, a past Talent Board CandE winner, is a proponent of this model.)

Believe it or not, I’ve barely scratched the surface of our survey data! The complete survey report offers insights into about a dozen of the top challenges TA teams are coping with right now. We also cover the top 10 attraction and engagement activities they’ll be tackling in the coming year, we review the top recruiting technologies they’re using along with those they plan to invest in, and a whole lot more. Every TA professional will find the report well worth reading.

Download the complete research report here.

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