Employing and retaining the right candidates are the two most important factors in Recruitment that distinguish a great company from a mediocre one. Inability to occupy open positions for an extended 
period harms a company’s reputation and becomes a recurring issue in talent acquisition. If you are a recruiter and have previously had issues with your company’s recruitment strategy, look no further. 

What are the challenges of hiring?

Hiring is a dynamic and diverse process that needs coherence, structure, and ongoing optimization. As a result, numerous challenges arise at each stage. These hiring challenges revolve around finding the best candidate for a specific role, getting them excited about working for the company, and keeping them. Another pressing issue is ensuring that the company receives a good return on investment when hiring specific professionals.

The following section delves deeply into ten such challenges confronting HR (Human Resources) departments and recruitment agencies around the world.

With evolving global markets and talent requirements, HR strategies too need an upgrade. Identifying gaps in the strategies and making efforts to fix them is key to overcoming most challenges of recruitment and selection listed below.

Challenges in hiring employees

Utmost efficiency is necessary for grabbing candidates’ attention and inspiring them to look out for a new role. Therefore, your recruitment strategy should be innovative and relevant if you want to overcome the challenges in hiring employees.

1. It is hard to grab the ideal candidate’s attention

Without a confusion, the most tricky recruitment challenge is capturing the attention of a talented candidate. Even if you are successful in informing them about the position, convincing them to apply and join your company is a different matter. There is far too much noise in the world. So how do you stand out from the other 200 recruiters competing for the same person?

How to overcome this obstacle

Building a strong employer brand is the long-term solution. The latter allows you to enhance the candidate experience. It also assists candidates in making hiring decisions that are consistent with the values of your company.

Social media can be a great place to discuss what it’s like to work for you. You could, for example, highlight your wellness initiatives, how inclusive and accommodating you are to your employees’ needs, and so on. Such factors are extremely important for the majority of candidates.

2. The good ones are getting multiple offers simultaneously

The best candidates have a lot of choices, which means they are also very fussy. They will not choose to work with a company that has a poorly managed recruiting process. It is important that your company makes a great first impression. It is imperative to treat candidates well right from their first interaction with you.

Pro tip

Improving your interview process is one effective strategy. Being cordial and transparent will help you to stand out. You must also respond quickly when you find someone promising so that they do not fall through the cracks, especially if they are being pursued by other employers. If you work with a recruiter, make sure they are also responsive.

3. There is a shortage of qualified candidates

A large number of applicants but insufficient qualified candidates is a recipe for HR disaster. The most common challenge that recruiters face is a skills gap among job seekers. As a result, human resource professionals are forced to screen and weed through irrelevant applications and profiles. This frequently leads to multiple rounds of interviews, which can be time-consuming.

How to fix it

Spend some time crafting job descriptions that are deliberate and intentional. Employers are looking for employees with a wide range of competencies, from technical to soft skills, which contributes to the talent shortage. You can solve this by writing flexible job descriptions that prioritise specific skills based on the requirements of the position.

4. Not everyone is actively looking for a job

Many talented candidates are passive observers, waiting for a fantastic opportunity. If your recruitment methods are not assisting you in reaching these candidates, they may be outdated. For example, if you continue to rely on traditional advertising strategies, you may be missing out on a large number of qualified candidates.

How to overcome this recruitment challenge

Social media is a great platform for targetting passive talent as it helps improve your employer brand. Additionally, you can utilize the data collected from your company website to see how many people are viewing your job listings, how often.

5. It is hard to keep up with the competition for talent

“Talent supply could influence whether organisations are likely to invest in reskilling; to what extent workers will seek changes in their employers or careers; how organisations could use the alternative workforce to access the skills and capabilities they require; and how heavily an organisation might rely on technology to replace, augment, or collaborate with their workforce,” according to a Deloitte report.

Several global disruptions have led to the peak of the global talent war, with endless competition for the best people. Furthermore, it can be costly.

How to overcome this hiring challenge

Experts advise being proactive instead of reactive by always having an active pipeline of potential talent. An effective way to do this is by using your current employees’ networks — they relate to many people who would make great employees. That way, when you have a job opening, you will already have candidates in your system who are qualified and interested in working for your company.

Challenges in selection process

Once you overcome the initial challenges in hiring employees, there is another set of obstacles related to shortlisting the top talent and streamlining the selection process.

1. It is hard to figure out the accuracy of your interview and testing process

Interviewing is difficult. It is easy to be swayed by your own biases or to become engrossed in a delightful story that has nothing to do with the job at hand. If you are not careful, you may end up hiring the best interviewee but not the best candidate for the job.

How to avoid this mistake

Utilize assessments that measure candidates’ skills, culture fitment and more. Use SMART metrics. You need to develop a structured interview process that provides ways to evaluate candidates more reliably. Research has shown that structured interviews — where you have a clear set of questions to ask each candidate and assess them against the same criteria — increase your chances of hiring quality employees.

2. You are not able to answer the candidate’s technical questions about the job role

It is not possible for every HR manager to know all the technicalities of each job role. However, you must acknowledge that it causes a credibility issue when recruiting. Candidates feel unclear and unsure of what their job entails when their questions do not meet satisfactory answers.

How solve this problem

Get an expert on board. It is great to have one or two specialists from each team available during interviews, so they can answer all questions directly. It will also give the candidate an idea of whom they will be reporting to or working with in the future. They will know what questions they can ask and who will be answering them, reinforcing their faith in your credibility as an employer.

3. Maintaining high retention rates

Employee turnover can cost your company a lot of money in terms of recruitment costs, new-hire training, and losing employees who were doing a great job for you. While employee satisfaction surveys can provide useful information, you may need to devote more time to one-on-one communication. The latte aids in better understanding of candidates’ professional needs and aspirations.

Pro tip

Employers should offer tangible and intangible benefits apart from the salary as one of the measures to reduce turnover rate. For example, if your employer-sponsored health plan is subpar, many talented workers will look elsewhere. And even if you do not want to offer more money upfront, you should at least consider offering other types of compensation like flexible work hours or work-from-home options. It goes a long way in showing you care for your employees.

4. Not having a system to track and measure the recruitment success rate

How to overcome this recruitment challenge

Employ a recruitment marketing platform that allows you to manage job postings and applicant responses in a single location. Most platforms will also track how many times a job ad was viewed and clicked on, allowing you to cut costs where they are ineffective. It is critical to establish a routine of checking and studying analytics to determine which sources bring in the most qualified candidates and conversions.

5. Slow and multiple stages of the selection process

If you want to attract excellent prospects, you must employ them quickly and shorten your hiring process. To speed up, it is important to develop a recruitment plan that defines exactly what skills and experience you are looking for in the candidates, how much time and resources you can devote to the search, how many candidates are required and how much time is necessary for interviews. Moreover, each member of your team must be aware of this plan.

Pro tip

Using plain language in the job description is a great start. Your job ads should describe the tasks, responsibilities and qualifications you expect from the candidate. To take it a step further, you could personalize your description by highlighting a project or success story related to the open position. Your job ad should be both informative and engaging for potential candidates.

Conclusion

Your recruiting experience is the driving force that shapes a company. By overcoming the above recruitment challenges, you will be setting the exacting standards your company needs to stay competitive in today’s market.

What we have said above boils down to this piece of advice: when you are planning recruitment strategies, you must keep candidate psychology at the forefront. At the same time, what has worked for others may not be suited for dealing with your own candidates. Thus, you must keep a close eye on the distinctiveness of your company and the industry it operates in.

Always hire a recruiting agency like Razzaq Enterprises to overcome these challenges.