Covid-19 appears to have made the struggle by employers to find qualified candidates more difficult as well as increased the frustration faced by job candidates when they don’t hear back from potential employers, according to the “State of Online Recruiting Report” released by jobs website iHire.
“As recently unemployed professionals flood the job market, employers are poised to experience an applicant overload,” iHire President and CEO Steve Flook said. “Although this will intensify the quest for qualified candidates and attribute to the ‘applicant black hole,’ we are optimistic that organizations will continue to make progress in addressing these challenges.”
The survey found 77.1% of employers are struggling to find qualified talent. In addition, 39.0% of employers said “receiving unqualified/irrelevant applicants” was their No. 1 challenge when recruiting through a job board. Also, 38.1% said “finding qualified candidates in my area” was their main concern.
Still, when it comes to hiring, 72.8% of employers said they were actively hiring despite the pandemic.
For job applicants ,18.8% said they were most frustrated by not hearing back from employers after applying or interviewing. And iHire noted that employers will face more of a challenge getting back to applicants because of “mass applies” from unemployed workers.
The survey also found 21.5% of candidates said they first go to industry-specific platforms when searching for a job, up from 17.1% in a similar survey in 2019.
Included in the survey were 343 employers and 2,841 job seekers across 56 different industries.