The Hiring Manager’s Guide to Common Recruitment Problems and How to Fix Them

Hiring can be challenging enough, and according to a Harris Poll survey from 2021, 52% of US employees are considering changing employment this year. Furthermore, 44% of this talent has concrete plans to make the transition.

That means this is the year to ramp up your recruitment efforts, identify common recruitment problems and figure out how to fix them by devising a strategy to make your job opportunity stand out from the crowd. It’s now all about the candidate experience when it comes to hiring.

Furthermore, “roughly three-quarters of Americans (75%) have worked in jobs where they didn’t feel they were a good match,” according to the study. 

Here are some of the most typical concerns that hiring managers and recruiters confront, as well as possible solutions to assist them in resolving them.

The 6 Common Recruitment Problems Solved

Regardless of how well-tuned your recruitment approach is, every hiring manager encounters the same recurring obstacles. The most prevalent recruitment issues that hiring managers face, as well as ways to overcome them once and for all, are outlined below.

Problem 1: Lack of Defined Job Ads

Recruiters frequently don’t have a clear job description for the role, or it is only two lines or old. Owing to the incomplete/wrong/no information, job seekers are shuffled back and forth between the recruiter and the hiring manager, slows down the process. It also hurts measures like time to hire and quality of hire. “A bad hire can cost a company roughly a third of the employee’s first-year profits,” PWC UK said in a tweet. “Can you afford to hire the wrong people in your company?”

How You Can Fix It:

• The recruiter should request a written job description via email on the first attempt.
• If the domain manager is too busy to construct one, seek at least a phone call or a meeting to help frame out key responsibilities and the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities required for the post so that the best candidates may be identified.

Problem 2: Getting in Touch With Passive Candidates

According to LinkedIn, passive candidates comprise up to 75% of the existing candidate market, so sourcing them is worth the extra effort.

All recruiters target applicants who are widely available on job boards, but locating a passive lot and capturing their attention on social platforms where they are engaged can be difficult.

However, taking the road less traveled may lead you to a talent pool for your next recruit.

How You Can Fix It:

• You may need to go straight to the source of the best talent and create a candidate engagement environment to stay in touch and keep them informed about the company. It’s a never-ending process.
• Employer branding may be able to help you attract the right person.
• To establish an image about your company and develop candidate interest, you should sprinkle recruitment marketing with the material in the form of videos/blogs/new employee testimonials/success stories/career pages, etc. all over social platforms like Facebook, and Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and others so candidates can search for them.
• A recruiter can also act as a brand ambassador by regularly posting content about the company on LinkedIn or other sites to attract potential candidates’ attention.
• A rewarding employee referral program may also assist in nudging some of the employees’ passive resources.

Problem 3: Candidate Last-Minute Surprises Like Rejecting/Declining Offer/No Show

This is one of the most challenging aspects of a recruiter’s job. Recruiters had seen countless cases when prospects backed out on the day of their interview or postponed their interview date for various reasons and then did not join.

According to a 2019 survey, 61% of respondents were “ghosted” — had an experience with hiring managers who ceased reaching out and replying to them after an interview, which dramatically increases the odds of them becoming discouraged and declining the offer beforehand.

The part that hurts the most is putting in the effort to get this far to finish up back where you started.

How You Can Fix It:

• Attempt to understand why the candidate declined the offer and see if there is anything you can revise in the form of a counteroffer if you want to keep the candidate, like a salary negotiation if they have an alternative offer, extra benefits, and so on.
• Always have a second and third-in-line possible candidate as a backup for the offer you’ve made, as this will save you the time and effort of having to redo the process if something goes wrong.
• It’s critical to communicate with applicants weekly to keep track of the date of joining and foresee risk if any exists. Request a copy of the accepted resignation letter within one week as verification.

Problem 4: You Experience Hiring Delays

According to the AICPA Economic Outlook Survey, 82% of business leaders stated their businesses had trouble recruiting and retention, with 17% saying it was extremely tough. The report claimed that mid-level employee positions had been the most difficult to fill, according to 31% of poll respondents, while 28% indicated the problem is widespread.

Unfilled positions cost a lot of money and lead to delays in procedures. Therefore hiring teams aim to fill vacancies as soon as reasonably practicable. Recruiting can take months, depending on your industry, putting a burden on recruiters and hiring managers.

Some small employers are hesitant to invest in automating the recruitment process, instead prefer to rely on old-fashioned excel sheets for tracking and reporting and thus waste a lot of time on tedious administrative chores such as paperwork, reporting, and responses.

As a result, it leaves them with little time to devote to more profitable recruitment activities such as cultivating connections with candidates prompting them to look for work elsewhere.

Organizations that did not have a computerized recruitment procedure were the ones who suffered the most during COVID.

How You Can Fix It:

• Hiring managers can present a business case study to upper management on how embracing technology, and digitizing recruitment can save money and time.
• They can collaborate with the technology team to choose a suitable ATS based on the personnel’s strengths, the organization’s size, and the budget.
• Hiring managers will benefit from even the most basic automation. It’s also necessary to provide a positive applicant experience when applying for jobs through career pages linked to ATS.

Problem 5: Employ a Data-Driven Recruitment Strategy

Companies can use data and metrics from the hiring program to enhance their recruitment system and make better hiring decisions.

Spreadsheets are one approach to keeping track of hiring data, but they require manual labor, are prone to human mistakes, and are inflexible. It’s challenging to maintain an exact track of data and trends.

So, where do we look for a solution to this problem?

How You Can Fix It:

The answer is straightforward: “data-driven recruiting.”

“Human capital data can be leveraged to identify and hire more great people more quickly… but the vast majority of companies have yet to fully embrace data as a strategic asset in talent acquisition,” says Glen Cathey, SVP, Talent Strategy and Innovation, Kforce.

Thus, hiring managers are looking for strategies for quickly compiling and arranging data.

• Use tools like ATS, Google Analytics, or recruitment software to store data and export valuable reports.
• You don’t have to keep track of every possible recruiting metric. Consult with upper management to develop a set of KPIs that are meaningful to you.

Problem 6: Insufficient Time to React to All Inquiries

Recruiters have a lot of responsibility, which can lead to burnout and a poor work-life balance during their careers. Every day recruiters are engaged with hundreds of application sourcing, screening, interviews, offers, events, and so on, which leaves them with little time to respond to each email. This leads to poor candidate retention.

How You Can Fix It:

• Examine your hiring process and determine whether or not each stage is genuinely necessary. Are you looking for individuals in the right places to fill our pipelines? Do you communicate with applicants and one another promptly? Your applicant tracking system’s recruiting analytics can assist you in answering all of these questions (ATS).
• Create an automated reply template to respond to these emails, so you don’t have to type each one individually. ATS sends automated emails that may be modified to react with a single click. This will, at the very least, keep candidates updated on their application status, such as whether they were rejected, shortlisted, interviewed, or received an offer.
• To prioritize your tasks, organize your email account and add relevant filters.

Improve Your Recruiting Process Today

It’s still a work in progress to ace the art of hiring altogether. However, starting with a solid basis will allow you to strategize and fix the most common recruitment problems.

It all boils down to the point that you need to be fully aware of the recruitment problems your hiring managers are facing and streamline strategies best suited to overcome such challenges.

Recruiter.com can help clients overcome common recruitment problems by guiding and streamlining strategies for your company to fix them. We have the resources to find your new hires, so make sure you contact us today to find the resource that is right for you.

Get the top recruiting news and insights delivered to your inbox every week. Sign up for the Recruiter Today newsletter.