Employers involved in the recruiting process are focused on onboarding, candidate experience and DEI in 2023, according to new research from Talent Board, a research organization focused on candidate experience.

Time will tell if those efforts help decrease resentment among candidates and new hires. The Jan. 11 Talent Board 2022 North American Candidate Experience Benchmark Research Report found that job seekers had negative experiences globally for the second consecutive year. In North America, the only region where candidate resentment didn’t climb in 2022, candidates still reported a historically high resentment rate of 12%, the report said.

“Although candidate resentment lessened during and immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s higher than ever globally,” Talent Board President Kevin W. Grossman said in a news release. “Employers need to keep in mind that resentment has major repercussions to their brands and the bottom lines such as whether or not candidates will apply to their jobs again, whether they’ll refer colleagues and friends, whether they’ll be brand advocates and whether they’ll buy a company’s products and services.”

Ron Machamer, Talent Board director of global programs, said it is “very telling” that onboarding is the top priority for talent acquisition teams in 2023.

“Too many employers lost new hires in 2022 before they even started or shortly after day one; that’s how competitive the talent market has gotten, and that’s how important it is to get onboarding right,” Machamer said.

The report, which analyzed anonymous feedback from more than 150 companies and nearly 200,000 candidates, found that 34% of candidates had to wait at least one to two months after submitting an application to find out about next steps in the hiring process. That was 48% higher than in 2021.

To try to improve the recruiting process, talent acquisition teams are turning to AI tech, the report found: 79% intend to purchase tech that removes bias from the application and screening processes; 72% want to buy tech that predicts employee job-changing behavior; and 57% plan to buy tech that predicts job performance.

Read the full report here