It goes without saying that workplaces of every kind have experienced massive disruption over the last few years. From record unemployment to mass resignations, and from fully in-office to entirely remote teams and back to in office or a hybrid model – the constant flux has everyone feeling fatigued.
To help overworked talent teams focus on proven strategies for successful workforce planning, HireVue surveyed over 3,800 talent leaders across the globe. Our 2023 Global Trends Report found that 50 percent of companies experienced higher employee turnover this past year than the year before, and 40 percent of talent leaders say a lack of qualified candidates is the biggest barrier to finding top talent right now.
Here’s what companies are doing to win the fierce fight for their most valuable resource:
-
Targeting candidate skills over education and experience
A lack of quality candidates has forced many employers to rethink not just how they’re hiring, but who. Faced with a new set of constraints, many employers are exploring alternatives to their traditional hiring habits. Nearly half (48 percent) of the leaders surveyed are adopting a skills-first approach to talent acquisition, forgoing educational and past work experience unless they’re actually relevant to the job at hand.
Not only have these methods widened the talent pool, they’ve also raised the quality of that pool by attracting a more diverse workforce. With persistent talent shortages, our survey respondents said they’re now targeting historically overlooked workers by paying more attention to: neurodiverse candidates (61 percent), internal candidates (44 percent), diverse employees (45 percent), mature aged workers (41 percent) and interns and undergrad workers (32 percent).
-
Turning to technology to automate tedious tasks
Another way employers are responding to either smaller candidate pools or smaller hiring budgets is to outsource tedious hiring tasks to technology. Over 30 percent of the HR professionals we interviewed said they chose to increase technology budgets in 2022 in order to improve productivity and allow recruiters to focus on the human side of hiring.
From AI to automation to robotic assistance, technology is transforming the modern workplace. It streamlines the most complex workflows and processes and takes on repetitive and time-consuming tasks. And it allows people to communicate, no matter where they are in the world. There’s a misconception that technology is replacing human roles. Instead, it’s fulfilling mindless work, boosting employee productivity, and allowing talent teams to focus on the most impactful parts of their job.
Here’s how talent leaders are using technology to up their talent game:
- 70 percent – Virtual interviews
- 58 percent – Standardized assessments
- 53 percent – Job matching technologies
- 46 percent – Automation
- 40 percent – Chatbots or text
- 38 percent – AI
- 32 percent – Game-based assessments
-
Increasing focus on retention of existing employees
If a lack of qualified candidates is your primary problem, then part of the solution is to stop the bleeding. Yet over the past year employees were still voluntarily leaving their jobs at higher-than-usual rates, just as they had in 2021. In fact, 50 percent of respondents said resignations were even higher at their company than they had been the year before.
So now many talent teams are facing challenges from two sides:
- A competitive market, where quality candidates are still hard to find.
- Roles need to be filled, yet budgets and other hiring resources have been cut.
It’s no secret that hiring new employees can be costly — roughly $4,700 per employee according to SHRM data. At a time when budgets are limited and employees are leaving, switching gears to a more comprehensive employee retention strategy is key. To address these issues, many employers refocused their energy on the employees they already had. And instead of looking outward to fill job roles, they started looking inward.
- 48 percent of employers prioritized internal mobility
- 41 percent have invested in learning and development and 27% have invested in tuition reimbursement
- 45 percent added employee recognition programs
- 58 percent increased employee compensation
As we re-evaluate the trajectory talent teams are taking, there seems to be one overall consensus: In today’s world of continued uncertainty, the most successful hiring teams are the ones taking an agile hiring approach that focuses on skills and potential vs just experience. Hiring teams need to be adaptable and quick. This means acting efficiently, connecting with candidates authentically, and being open to hiring practices that align with candidate goals.
