The past year was filled with ample challenges for companies, from navigating a remote workforce to operating during a global pandemic and rising to meet the new challenges of an ever-shifting world. Out of all of this, a new challenge has emerged—hiring. This pattern shows no signs of slowing in 2022.
Companies around the world will continue to struggle to keep up with rapid demand and growth, while employees who delayed leaving jobs during the pandemic are seeking out new opportunities. As a result, the strong demand and supply gap when it comes to hiring talent will not subside, especially in certain industries like technology.
Author Rena Nigam
Here are four tips for surviving the ongoing hiring struggle as we enter the new year.
- Focus on retention.
The easiest thing you can do to get ahead of hiring issues is to focus on retaining the employees you have. With the increase in demand, many companies are offering financial and educational incentives in order to lure candidates. Get ahead now by offering these same incentives yourself, keeping your employees feeling valued and motivated. Ensure that your company is an exciting and attractive place to work by offering opportunities to grow professionally, giving high-performing employees “stretch” roles to grow into, and listening to your workforce on issues of remote work and office hours. Both lateral and upward internal mobility has been shown to boost employee retention. Employees will be more likely to stay with your company if they believe they couldn’t find a better opportunity elsewhere. Make it a priority to make sure this is true.
- Invest in your hiring capabilities.
After 2021’s record employee turnover rates, growing your hiring function is incredibly important. Human resources teams are stretched thin trying to source candidates and meet this growing demand. Strengthening your HR team ahead of time will help you avoid needing to play catch up later next year. If you find your company with a gap in internal resources, seek out alternate solutions, recruitment firms, hiring events, and niche job boards to help support your internal HR function. In addition to hiring capacity, your talent brand is more important than ever. Marketing around careers and talent is often overlooked, but investing in marketing strategies for your HR efforts can help attract new talent. Build your brand by being active on social media, highlighting employees, company culture, benefits, and more.
The interview, offer, negotiation and onboarding process often take far too long. Companies sometimes get stuck in their patterns and fail to realize that their lengthy interview process is costing them strong candidates. In this market, you can assume that candidates are interviewing with multiple employers, and an efficient and thoughtful hiring process can help you stand out. A few ways to streamline the interview process are to record interviews and share them internally rather than having candidates continuously interview, minimize unnecessary or redundant steps (such as technical tests and technical interview questions), and create a standard set of questions for each candidate you interview. This will allow you to identify what’s really important to your company, quickly analyze candidates, and make more accurate hiring decisions.
- Widen your pool of potential candidates.
At the end of the day, you’re competing for a finite pool of candidates. Get creative and expand your potential list. There are plenty of underemployed populations in the workforce brimming with potential, including older workers, employees returning from breaks for childcare or senior care, young people, and more. Providing training programs, financial incentives and educational opportunities can help you bring on talent and train them for your organization.