The past 18 months have put us through many challenges that changed our mindsets and expectations on both personal and professional levels. We learned the importance of human bonds, stability, respect, and unity – it’s all about people again. Those re-invented values are expected to be guiding the recruitment processes in 2022 and most likely in the years to come. Are you ready to succeed in the race for the best talent out there? Here are our five recruiting strategies to implement in 2022.
1. Make remote recruitment a staple
The most visible impact Covid-19 had on us all is the introduction of remote work on a daily basis. According to Pew Research Center, the number of surveyed Americans working from home grew by 51% counting from before the pandemic, to its middle stage in December 2020. Moreover, 54% of the respondents claimed they’d like to keep working remotely after the pandemic ends.
Certainly, the willingness – and sometimes necessity – of employees to work remotely forced many employers to quickly adjust their recruitment strategies to fit the demands, and it looks like this outlook is staying with us for longer.
Remote work yields several benefits for employees, but also for you as an employer. Online recruitment speeds up the hiring process and saves money. But most importantly, it makes recruitment much easier and more diverse. The fact that you can hire people from around the world means your talent pool is quite literally unlimited. That means a wider opportunity for you to find a fitting candidate as well as introduce more diversity into the company – something many companies are striving for more and more.
As they say, competition doesn’t sleep, and it couldn’t be truer in this case. While two years ago offering work from home (WFH) was an asset, now it’s more of a necessity. It no longer makes you stand out as an employer, it means you don’t fall behind. As one research shows, 54% of workers would quit their job if they couldn’t work from home. Another shows that 80% of respondents said they wouldn’t accept a job not offering flexible working.
If you want to even be considered an attractive employer in 2022, your HR needs to meet the highly demanded expectation of offering remote work, and what follows – remote recruitment and onboarding. That’s step #1. If you want to increase your chances of attracting the best talent out there, then….
2. Assure positive candidate experience
Last year, I landed an interview at a company with a good reputation and even better pay. Needless to say – I was very excited, especially since it was harsh to find a job during the pandemic. I knew this position would be a big chance for me, so I took time and prepared my best.
Long story short – the meeting was horrible. The interviewers were late, they kept exchanging smirks with each other, asked personal questions I wasn’t comfortable answering. I was promised to have feedback by Friday, yet I never heard from them again. The experience left such a bad taste in my mouth that I left a bad online review of the company and made sure to discourage my friends from applying there. Perhaps my reaction was exaggerated, but how many candidates like me do you want your company to have?
Candidate experience pre, during, and post-recruitment contributes to your employer branding and can affect your company’s reputation in the job market. It also affects the kinds of talents you attract and retain. As we mentioned in this article, by 2030 we will be faced with a talent shortage of more than 85 million people. Considering that and tight competition all around – the companies cannot allow bad reputation to cause loss of any potential talents.
As the world is becoming more and more digital, it’s the role of HR in creating, updating, and monitoring the brand’s reputation as it affects both your present and future employees.
Based on a survey conducted by Kelly Services, 97% of candidates who had a positive experience with your company’s recruitment process would encourage others to apply, and 55% of them would share their positive experiences on social media. Hence, assuring a positive candidate experience not only betters your reputation but also attracts new talents long after the interview is finished.
This is especially important now while we’re about to get out of the pandemic. People will want to join companies that show they value and appreciate their (potential) employees. Covid-19 has changed our perception of various things, one of them being the way we evaluate employers. We will now pay more attention to the organisations that show respect and appreciation – and the way to go is to start with assuring the best candidate experience from the get-go.
3. Maximise employee retention, minimise bad hires
The pandemic affected financially nearly every person in the world, and businesses were no exception. Companies were forced to lay off many employees, quite likely many of them being good. Almost every business, no matter how big, hat to cut down their budges significantly, and that’s why now – more than ever – we cannot afford bad hires and the loss of the good ones.
We mentioned in the previous blog post that a bad hire costs the employer around 15,000$, and losing a good hire is double – 30,000$. If your company makes just one bad judgment and loses one good employee in a year – you’ll lose 45,000$. It’s a lot of money that could be spent differently.
Stepping into 2022 should be marked with implementing the use of tools that prevent the two problems mentioned, and one of them is case-based screening.
Case-based recruitment to predict better applicant performance
Case-based screening is a screening tool that allows your candidates to show their potential in practice so that it’s easier for you to determine whether they have the actual skills required for the position – something not so easy to do in a ‘regular’ screening process.
52% surveyed HR leaders stated that the hardest part of recruitment is to determine which candidates from a big pool are the best choice. Why is that? Well, the answer might be that a great deal of recruitments is still based on resumés and cover letters which don’t seem to be the best indicator of one’s potential. In fact, following the article by Talents Unlimited, the correlation between experience and job performance in the future is only 0.06 on a scale from 0 to 1.
Meanwhile, in contrast, a study by Schmidt & Hunter from 1998 proved the predictive validity of case-based screening combined with the GMA (General Mental Ability Test) to be a whopping 0.63!
The way to go now – and post-pandemic – is to work on maximising employee retention and minimising bad hires. Looking for the right talent is a tough job, so why not focus on keeping the ones you already have? And to make sure you avoid hiring the wrong candidates, start applying the tools that work – such as case-based screening.
4. Put soft skills into the spotlight
Following McKinsey, over the next decade or so the implementation of automation and AI, combined with a talent shortage, will transform the workplace specifics even more than they have so far. Machines and the overall automation will bring certain benefits such as higher productivity, but they will also contribute to the change of skills required of human employees. What is one thing that (so far!) machines lack, compared to humans? Soft skills.
For a very long time hard skills were considered the most important in any recruitment process – the higher the competencies, the better. But with time it became clearer that while hard skills can be learnt, soft skills must be earned, mostly through experience. Shortly – hard skills without soft skills don’t assure success.
In a report from 2017, mentioned in the article by Torque Business, it is estimated that soft skill-based professions will make up at least two-thirds of all jobs by the year 2030. It is therefore logical to assume that it’s time to start adjusting the recruitment approach now and focus on more than degrees.
The soft skills that will matter the most in 2022
According to the article mentioned above, some of the soft skills that will matter the most in 2022 (and onwards) are:
- Emotional intelligence
- Adaptability & resilience
- Integrity & ethics
- Creativity
- Teamwork
With the skill deficit deepening year by year, it’ll be a hard task for HR to find individuals with the right soft skills. Finding and retaining the right talents for your business is crucial for long-term success. Hard skills such as education are currently of no concern. In 2018 alone, approximately 4 million European students graduated from tertiary education. It’s therefore important to look past that and focus more on soft skills to ensure a well-trained workforce that can take your company to the next level.
5. Target Gen Z
Knowing how to target different generations with your recruitment process is a key factor for successful hires. And now, as Generation Z (zoomers) is entering the workforce, it’s time to start tailoring your recruitment process to suit them.
Gen Z, like any previous or future generation, is characterised by specific values and expectations that need to be considered when attempting to attract them. Not surprisingly, the biggest trait defining Gen Z is undoubtedly technology, and it’s through its implementation in the recruitment process that you can become an employer of interest in their eyes.
Millennials were to ones to see technology grow, but zoomers are the ones that have been immersed in it since they were born, they are digital natives. Hence, to target them successfully, you need to know their technology and get fully online. Based on the report by WorkForce Institute, 21% of zoomers would not tolerate outdated technology in their workplace. The best way to prove them wrong, therefore, is to fully adapt the recruitment process to the technology they use.
Be digital
Start simple – make sure your application process is fully mobile-friendly. The youngest generation considers e-mails to be passé, they grew up with instant messaging and sending quick Snapchat, not novels. According to this brief by BenefitsPro, 70% of job seekers search for job offers using smartphones and tablets. Therefore, you should make it possible for them to apply on their phones within a few clicks.
You’ll also find that recruiting this generation will require you to post bite-sized content, preferably in a high-quality video format. They’d rather watch a quick video presenting your company than read your career portal. The year 2022 may be the high time for your company to revamp the website and make it more GenZ-friendly.
It feels like yesterday when Millennials were ready to change the world, but now we need to get ready to welcome another generation. One, that is an absolute must for HR teams to attract, since they will soon make up most of the workforce.
Conclusion
Your recruitment process needs to change together with the world to keep pace, and nowadays the HR industry is now less about paper-pushing and more about diversity, modern technology, and adaptation. Rapid changes in recent years have brought about new trends that should be adopted to attract and maintain the right talents, bringing profit to everybody involved.
Regardless of what recruitment strategies are trending, the final objective is always the same – building your brand with the right talents in a way that enhances their experience.
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