Struggling to hire in this market? Four key takeaways from those who are effectively hiring right now.

We’re in a very competitive market right now for hiring and hiring is one of, if not the biggest, pain point for businesses. Here’s some evidence for why:

• 47.4 million people quit their job voluntarily in 2021. Also known as the ‘Great Resignation’
• In a survey by CareerPlug, 55% of workers will be looking for a new job in 2022 to get a payrise.
• In 2020, the average time to hire was 24.7 days, but in 2021, that number dropped to 18.4 days. This means that employers were hiring nearly a week faster than they were the previous year.

So here’s what you can do to improve...

Flexible working and remote hiring

Our working culture has changed. Long gone are the days of 5 days working in the office as the world has adjusted to remote working, very effectively! The best hirers right now are those that have also fully adjusted to this for their workforce.

Since the pandemic started, a large amount of the workforce have chosen to move out of the cities and to areas with more space and less rent costs meaning hiring in the cities has become more challenging. According to Floridapolitics.com, in 2020, 167 people moved to Florida for every 100 that left. This increased in 2021 to 210 people moving to Florida for every 100 that left. In early 2022, 20% of those movers were from California or New York.

This shows that if you are hiring in California or New York you’re likely to have lost 10% of your candidate pools from each of those cities if you are hiring for staff to come back into the office. Flexible and fully remote hires really will make your hiring process easier!

Find out what your candidates want, and sell to that

The tables have turned in the hiring process. No longer are we expecting candidates to sell to you, in fact, the opposite is what needs to happen to secure talent.

With how competitive the market is it is very likely that the candidate in front of you will have 3-5 other interview processes happening that week if they are actively looking and you can bet your bottom dollar those other companies are selling to them. This can be done in a variety of ways:

• Asking candidates what they are looking for in a role or what motivates them, and selling back to this
• Introducing them to members of the team that are in the same role to talk about how they are doing
• Inviting them in to see the office or meet the team once an offer has been made to put them more at ease
• Demoing your product to them or going above and beyond to immerse them in your company

Move fast

This is arguably the most important change to make if you are struggling to hire. Processes now are wrapping up in days, not weeks, and those who drag it out will miss out on talent. The best processes we see are:

• Initial screening call with the hiring manager
• Team interview/Panel interview to dig into more detail
• Final closing call with senior leadership or the hiring manager to sell back to the candidate
• Presentations or tasks can be quite standard to do but really do think about how this may slow down your process and if it really does allow you to find out more about a candidate that you can’t do through a conversation.

When you start a hire, ensure you have clear timelines with your interviewers and your recruitment team to work to and be aware of any holidays internally that could slow this down!

What else can you offer to candidates?

This market has forced hirers to go the extra mile for candidates when making offers so it’s good to understand what else you could be doing here too. Here are some examples that we are seeing in the market:

• Salary increases. Unfortunately for employers, we are in a market where candidates are king and we need to reflect this in the offers we make. Good offers financially will always put you in the best position to hire the best talent.
• Start date flexibility. Does that candidate want to take a couple weeks off before they start to reset? Or are they waiting for an end of quarter bonus before the move?
• Benefits. Fully covered health insurance, a decent 401K and other benefits like home office set up allowances and training budgets outside of work will all help your hiring.
• Sign on bonuses and/or guarantees for commercial roles are also becoming more and more common in the market to secure talent. We find about 30% of our clients are now implementing this in some form.

So, to summarize, we are in a challenging market for hiring good people. Candidates are aware that they are in the driving seat, and we need to respond. Selling to your candidates in a slick interview process when you can make a competitive offer will no doubt improve your hiring.

For any more information here or for free feedback on your hiring process please do reach out! We’d love to provide any advice or support.

Daniel Bolter (VP, North America) danielb@spheredigitalrecruitment.com