What is the biggest recruitment challenge?

Recently, we did an extensive audit to find out what is the biggest recruiting challenges HR professionals struggle with. To find out, we talked with our customers, reached out to the talent acquisition community and consulted global talent acquisition studies and research.

What we found out is that talent shortage is the No. 1 hiring challenge today. A study by the National Federation of Independent Business has found that 87% of HR professionals reported “few or no qualified applicants" for the positions they were trying to fill.

Unfortunately, this problem will only get worse. According to the McKinsey Global Institute study, in 2020 companies in Europe and North America will need 16 to 18 million more educated employees that are going to be available.

So what can you do to successfully tackle this common recruiting challenge?

Top 3 strategies to tackle the talent shortage

Here are the top 3 strategies guaranteed to help you tackle the biggest recruiting challenge - talent shortage:

1. Attracting passive candidates

According to LinkedIn’s research, 70% of the global workforce is made up of passive talent who aren’t actively job searching. If you want to attract these passive candidates, you need to define and implement an effective employer branding strategy. You need to tell a compelling story about your company, showcase your company culture and get candidates excited to join your team.

Create an attractive, responsive and branded career site and career blog, where you can present your employer brand and show candidates why your company is a great place to work. You’ll do that by presenting photos of your employees and your office, sharing employee testimonials and writing about the interesting projects and new technologies your teams are working with. 

2. Sourcing candidates

Unfortunately, building and presenting an attractive employer brand isn’t enough. Passive job candidates aren’t actively looking for a job, so they won’t be checking your career site - unless you give them a reason. In order to get their attention, you need to proactively reach out to your perfect candidates.

But first you need to find them. Luckily, with modern recruitment tools such as TalentLyft, you easily scour the web and find great candidates with just a single click. Once you find them, make sure that you send them effective, personalized cold recruiting emails. 

3. Building talent pools

Finally, you need to build your talent pool and fill it with candidates eager to join your company. That way, you will have a pool of interested, qualified candidates you can tap into when you have a job opening. 

There are many ways to build your talent pool. You can invite potential candidates to join your talent network, fill your talent pool with attendees of your local events, workshops and meetups, organize online webinars, open career days and job fairs, etc.