Recruitment has always been and will be a challenge for Recruiters. But, with different times come a different set of challenges that arise as a direct result of events happening during those times. History is a cruel reminder of this.

During the recession of 2008, HR teams faced unique never-seen-before challenges like initiating large downsizing quickly, operating with stringent budget freezes, keeping employee morale high, maintaining brand value, re-hiring after the recession, and many more such internal as well as external problems.

Today, we stand in the middle of a pandemic that keeps on giving. Economies worldwide have suffered significant setbacks due to this event, but the good news is that most of them are showing signs of recovery. Businesses around the world, especially ones of small and medium sizes, are starting to show signs of recovery, and with growth comes the need to hire people.

So, let us look at how employee/employer expectations have changed in the past 20-25 months, how they will shape the future, and most importantly, what challenges recruiters should expect in 2022.

EMPLOYER BRANDING

Social proof is a powerful phenomenon. It is a psychological and social phenomenon wherein people copy the actions of others in an attempt to undertake behavior in a given situation, and it works incredibly well in most scenarios, including recruitment. But you must beware, it is a knife that cuts both ways. Negative Social Proof can be equally powerful too.

LinkedIn Jobs and Glassdoor are two of the most popular tools that candidates use to gauge a company’s culture, especially before joining that company. The brand value and employee value proposition (EVP) of a company can easily be judged on these two platforms because of their ability to post unbiased, anonymous reviews about company culture and policies.

If enough people who have worked in the same place say the same negative thing about a particular issue in your company, then recruiters must first work to shed some light on the issue and work towards solving that problem first, both internally and online.

On the other hand, positive social proof, boosts employer branding, encourages people to look forward to joining your company, and in some cases, might even be the deciding factor for candidates to choose your company over a competitor’s.

REMOTE-FRIENDLY

The pandemic slowed down the general momentum of things and gave people time to think and test stuff, both on the employer’s and the employee’s side. With remote work, two myths were busted, and these realities were revealed:

• Reality 1: Remote work does not hamper employee productivity (employer side)
• Reality 2: Better work-life balance helps de-stress and perform better at work (employee side)

People quickly realized these realities, and as a result, since the mid-2020s, job postings started to include remote work as an added benefit. Today, more companies have started giving candidates the option to work remotely.

As people, especially those with families, opt to work remotely, recruiters must be able to keep up as well. A recent Monster.com survey showed that recruiters under 30 today complete 75% of their recruitment process online. This number is only going to increase in 2022.

Recruiters will find talent online on social platforms, interview them over video calls, onboard them without using paper, and then train them using collaboration software applications as seamlessly as they did offline. Therefore, your recruiters must get ready to invest in remote-collaboration tools and services to nurture and collaborate with future talent.

Also Read: The Ultimate Guide to Efficient Payroll Management

COMMUNICATION

Good communication is an extension of remote working. When recruitments happen face-to-face, communication is natural and seamless. But when communication related to recruitment happens online, it is often linear and boring.

Recruiters must identify techniques to keep the flow of conversation natural and interesting. Not only that but informing applicants of their status in the interview process is paramount.

More often than not, bad communication on the part of recruiters keeps the applicants confused and guessing. This delivers a terrible experience to applicants, which they might express online, which, coming back to our first point, hurts company branding. Therefore, swift and clear communication, especially when hiring remotely, is vital to delivering a superior hiring experience.

ATTRITION

If you work in HR, you have most likely heard about a movement called “The Great Resignation of 2021”. For those who don’t know, this movement started in the US, where workers across multiple industries quit their jobs in a very short time amid strong labor demand and low unemployment, which led to an acute shortage of workers in many industries like medicine, IT, retail, etc.

Although this situation has recessed today, the idea of leaving an undesirable job is still fresh and alive. Many studies conducted by experts in this matter have indeed concluded that millennials today, especially after the pandemic, will not stop until they find an employer that prioritizes employee needs over anything else.

The focus, therefore, shifts towards attrition – an extra variable. Recruiters are no longer just looking at people who could do the job well. They are looking at people who could do the job well AND who have the history and character traits that dictate a higher likelihood of them staying with a company for multiple years at a time. Add to this the complexity of different roles.

Roles that require specific skills will witness this problem the most because the rarer the skill, the harder it is to find good people who have experience in that skill. Example: Organizations will have to work harder to retain a data scientist as compared to a customer service rep.

Take good care of your millennial data scientists as well as your customer service reps!

MEANS OF COLLABORATION

This is a mix of two of the earlier mentioned points: Remote working and communication. As we learned earlier, communication is the most important component in teams whose members work remotely. Free flow of information is vital to make any remote working arrangement a success.

Achieving this success implies sizeable investments in developing and maintaining complex technological systems that are both fast as well as secure. This should be the number one priority for any remote-first organizations because any glitch in these systems directly disrupts the flow of vital information, and without flowing of important information, everything eventually comes to a grinding halt.

CONCLUSION

Recruitment has undergone several major as well as minor changes since the pandemic started in 2020, and remote working became mainstream. These changes created new problems that require newer strategies and techniques to get solved. To recap, here are some problems that were outlined throughout the blog:

• Employer Branding: Enough negative social proof online may seriously damage the reputation of any company that does not prioritize employer branding. The final result could be that people won’t be willing to apply to your open positions.
• Remote Friendly: Remote work is growing in popularity and could very well be the future of working. Therefore, it is better to invest in building sustainable and efficient remote working environments in your organization instead of choosing to ignore them completely. Always err on the side of caution!
• Communication: It is easy to lose track of unfinished conversations, topics, and discussions while working remotely. Put in extra effort to manage and then close every conversation, topic, or discussion that gets started. Follow up whenever necessary.
• Attrition: Post-pandemic millennials are relentless at switching jobs they find undesirable. Try to find and fix every undesirable aspect of your working at your company to make your employees stay longer.
• Means of Collaboration: Information means nothing if it does not reach its destination on time. Consider investing heavily in making your communication lines faster and safer because it is the only way remote teams will be able to collaborate effectively.

Exela HR Solutions is a global leader in recruitment outsourcing and other HR-related functions. Contact our experts today to get full access to our hiring strategies for 2022! Click here to connect with us - https://ehrs.exelatech.com/contact-us 

Sources: google.com | en.wikipedia.org | reddit.com | forbes.com | medium.com | talenthub.io | lanteria.com

DISCLAIMER: The information on this site is for general information purposes only and is not intended to serve as legal advice. Laws governing the subject matter may change quickly and Exela cannot guarantee that all the information on this site is current or correct. Should you have specific legal questions about any of the information on this site, you should consult with a licensed attorney in your area.