Findings from the 2022 Hiring Insights Report: Tech Industry Spotlight include:

• In 2021, tech companies met just 46% of their hiring goals.
• 47% of tech companies agreed that in the past 12 months, meaningfully connecting with candidates has become crucial.
• 45% said that creating candidate relationships will remain a top priority in the coming year.
• While 47% of respondents stated building better candidate relationships over the past 12 months was a priority, only 34% prioritized it and only 35% plan on improving relationships with candidates in the months ahead.
• Only 33% of respondents say that they show an interest in a candidate’s well-being during the candidate nurturing process.
• Making DEIB a measurable priority was the lowest priority with only a 33% response rate.

The Hiring Landscape

Against a backdrop of economic uncertainty, many tech companies have gone through a series of cutbacks ranging from layoffs to hiring freezes. Globally, the tech industry has laid off 44,000 workers as of October 2022, according to a TechCrunch news tally.

Hiring will invariably rebound. And when it does, tech companies need to be in an optimal position to win the best talent. Talent leaders are taking advantage of this time to assess processes and refine their hiring strategies.

Hiring Goal Attainment

According to GoodTime’s findings, hiring teams at tech companies recognize the importance of cultivating strong relationships with candidates (47% state that it’s a top priority), but they aren’t willing to take action (just 35% consider it a priority for next year). These teams want to deliver an efficient hiring experience, but they continue to see their time-to-hire increase. And the result? Poor hiring goal attainment. If tech companies want to make the most of this downturn in hiring, they cannot choose inaction. It’s time for less talk, and more action.

Candidate Relationship

With hiring slowing down across the tech landscape, talent teams have new bandwidth to double down on the quality of their hiring process. A tell-tale sign of a high-quality process is its ability to cultivate genuine, strong relationships with candidates. Neglecting to prioritize these relationships means bad news for company hiring goal attainment. Hiring leaders recognize that connection is key: 47% of tech companies agreed that in the past 12 months, connecting with candidates has become crucial. Likewise, 45% said that creating candidate relationships will remain a priority in the coming year as well, underscoring the need to focus on the core elements of candidate relationship building.

DEIB

With the increased awareness surrounding DEIB in hiring over the last couple of years, one would think that tech as a whole would’ve made great strides. The data, however, fails to demonstrate any meaningful level of progress. When asked which aspects of their hiring process they looked to improve over the past 12 months, making DEIB a measurable priority was the lowest response (33%). The next 12 months don’t look promising, either; prioritizing DEIB was the second lowest response at 34%.

Read the full report here