Why is hiring so tough right now?

Hiring managers and recruitment professionals alike are coming up against a myriad of difficulties when it comes to filling their vacancies at the moment. The question is, why?

From finding people with the right skill sets to avoiding counter offers, every step of the recruitment journey faces potential complications, and current talent market conditions are likely to be intensifying that.

Candidates are in the driving seat

You may have heard many recruitment professionals declaring that it’s a “candidate-driven market” at the moment, and this is why getting across the hiring finish line is so tricky right now.

But what does “candidate-driven market” actually mean?

Essentially, it means that jobseekers hold a lot of the power. Job opportunities are in abundance, therefore businesses are competing for talented professionals to join their teams as they look to bounce back after the trials of the pandemic and work towards their strategic goals.

However, people are not looking for new roles right now. Workers are staying put, not browsing the career market thinking that the grass could be greener.

Reasons for this are broad and plentiful, such as:

Having just settled into new positions following loss of employment due to the pandemic
Believing it is still too risky a time to leave the security of a current employer
Generally just being content in their present situation

The latter point is something that is increasingly common as employers pay more and more attention to their workforce’s desires for better benefits, greater flexibility, stronger D&I strategies, etc.

This lack of active candidates in the recruitment landscape means that those who are on the lookout or can be tempted away from their current position have a lot of opportunities to choose from when picking the next step of their career.

They can play the field, assess a range of roles and employers, and compare every detail of each opportunity – salary, benefits, career path, company culture, location, working from home flexibility, diversity and inclusion ethos, ESG values, etc.

They can be incredibly selective in which direction they decide to go because they know that if one employer can’t meet their needs, another one probably will, so why settle for less?

This translates to businesses being in heavy competition with each other to attract, secure and retain the top professionals, so they need to dig deeper than the usual tactics to stand out from the crowd.

Ultimately, if you want to secure the best talent in the industry, you have to set yourself apart as the best employer in the industry.

What next?

We want to help clients overcome these challenges and successfully recruit the right people for their teams. There are plenty of actions and strategies that can be put in place to improve your hiring process and increase rates of success, and we’re going to share them with you over a series of articles.

To kick this off, we’re asking our LinkedIn network to let us know exactly what challenges businesses are facing during the recruitment journey, so answer our poll, let us know your thoughts and stay tuned for our next article.