Countless companies of all sizes and operating in all locations are planning to expand their teams in 2024. As you make plans to recruit and bring on top talent, explore our guide to trends to expect this year. We’re rounding up the 2024 recruiting trends to expect, regardless of the industry or size of your business.
Recruiting Trends Coming in 2024
Here’s what we have covered in our five-part series, and what’s still to come:
When thousands of companies shifted to allow employees to work from home for their safety, some emphasized that the change was temporary, while others expected to remain remote indefinitely. But as the needs of businesses have changed and employees have gotten used to the work-from-home life, conflicts have arisen between those who want to remain remote but are working for companies that expect team members to return to the office.
The shift to allow workers to perform remote work caused a lot of businesses to reconsider their operations and whether people really needed to spend 40+ hours a week in the office. And while there are certainly advantages of in-office work (improved collaboration, access to resources, a sense of belonging, to name a few), many workers love the option to work from home as well.
The hybrid workplace model is an ideal blend of the two worlds, offering employees access to what they want while emphasizing the importance of the company culture and team-based atmosphere.
Benefits of Hybrid Schedules
A hybrid schedule is a more flexible option, which appeals to people in all stages of life. Parents of young children may need a little extra time in the mornings to get everyone ready and out the door. Being able to work from home allows them to use the time they might have spent commuting to take care of the necessary tasks. School pick-up is also much easier to navigate when a worker is remote. Even those without children can benefit from a more peaceful atmosphere, such as a home office that’s free from the distractions of a bustling office.
For employers, a hybrid workplace model can cut costs. You can spend less on physical office space and supplies, as well as the costs associated with keeping the lights on and the workspace fully outfitted with desks for every member of the team.
From a health perspective, the original reason behind the shift to remote work, people may get sick less when working remotely. If an employee isn’t feeling well, they may still be able to knock out a few work tasks at home without the risk of spreading germs around the office. And those who do choose to work in-office will certainly appreciate not being exposed to colds, the flu, and other concerning illnesses.
If your company can swing it, consider how offering a hybrid schedule might work for new hires. This offering can serve as an appealing aspect of an open position, particularly for an applicant who is looking for flexibility. By including the option to create a hybrid schedule, your company can appeal to top talent while aligning with what today’s job-seeker is looking for in their next role.
Talent acquisition occupies a big chunk of a company’s time and focus. Whether your company is the size of Apple or a local trucking company, hiring qualified employees demands a certain amount of attention and organization. Consider these 5 reasons why perfecting your talent acquisition process can lead to long-term benefits for your company.
1. Talent Acquisition Efforts = A Valuable Business Partner
For a rapidly growing small business, tasks like posting jobs, receiving applications and resumes, and setting up interviews can be spread across personnel in all departments. Sometimes the urgency of the task means employees are forced to take on additional roles and responsibilities. While input from various departments is valuable, a scattershot approach to hiring can lead to missed opportunities, tardy communication, and soured relationships with potential hires.
A dedicated talent acquisition team will have a tight focus on helping the business thrive. Team members will see a holistic view of all departments and staff. They will act as liaison between upper management and departments to identify hiring gaps and do the administrative legwork to find applicants to fill those roles. A tool like ApplicantStack can further reduce the time required for posting available positions, organizing the applicants’ information, and keeping a detailed log of communication.
2. Talent Acquisition Team Analyzes Pay Equity
According to the California Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, unequal pay can be a result of direct or indirect biases based on gender, race, incorrect perceptions about employees’ career ambitions, or simply on past experience. In the hustle and bustle of everyday operations, management likely doesn’t have the time available to analyze each employee’s pay status and interrogate its fairness.
From job posting to onboarding, your talent acquisition department can apply some of the following suggestions from the Commission:
Remove bias from hiring process by making sure all genders are represented at each stage of the hiring process.
Encourage a company culture where employees can discuss their salaries without any fear of recrimination.
Allow employees to be heard by management on concerns of compensation.
Review and establish fair and equitable compensation packages for every position so pay is reflective of the job requirements rather than subjective criteria.
Competent talent acquisition professionals can create a comfortable atmosphere around compensation from a candidate’s first interaction with your company. Transparency during the hiring process helps weed out any employee who turns out to be unwilling to commit to an undisclosed salary.
According to Aptitude Research, a whopping 44 percent of candidates drop out of the process if pay isn’t disclosed from the beginning and it doesn’t meet their criteria once revealed. Transparency and open dialogue help weed those candidates out from the beginning.
3. Talent Acquisition Teams Facilitate Succession Planning
In addition to hiring outside talent, your TA team can identify action plans for employees within the company to fill roles now or in the future. Promoting from within the company takes a great deal of the unknown from the process and can be an encouraging experience for a valued employee.
The University of Washington created a toolkit for assessing how succession planning could benefit your business. Aside from immediate positions that need to be filled, the tool helps company leaders identify a holistic view of current and future goals. It then helps identify which employees can be trained or mentored into filling positions that support those goals. They’re tasked with working with upper management to quantify the value and urgency of those roles to create a long-term strategic plan.
4. Talent Acquisition Teams Identify Successes and Failures in the Hiring Process
Whether your company is consistently hiring to meet growth or hires in bursts such as seasonal work, there is always room for improvement in the process. A dedicated TA department will review and evaluate each hire. A tool like ApplicantStack produces detailed reports that give your company valuable data.
“Source Performance” helps you know where your applicants came from.
“Time in Stage for Active Candidates” shows how long applicants sit in any section of the workflow.
“Hire Metrics” gives percentage hired, among other metrics.
“Stage Conversion” reveals where each candidate sits in the hiring process.
These reports are not only useful for the active hiring process but provide a window into the overall efficacy of the team’s efforts. It can help identify repeated breakdowns in the process and point to places with needed improvement.
5. Talent Acquisition Teams Contribute to Employee Retention
A report published by Madeline Laurano at Aptitude Research revealed that 49 percent of companies surveyed set employee retention as a top priority. Companies that link talent acquisition with employee retention see vast improvements in metrics like employee turnover (60 percent vs 32 percent) and employee production (62 percent vs 20 percent).
The report also found that many companies still see hiring and retention as a job for separate organizations. In fact, a quality TA department can recognize strategic initiatives that ensure retention of those employees your company worked so hard to hire. It takes many worker hours to recruit, gather resumes, interview, negotiate, hire, and onboard new employees.
Retention has a direct impact on an organization’s stability, long-term success, and productivity. High turnover rates are disruptive to operations and impact growth. Using the metrics reports from ApplicantStack along with personal interactions between employees, hiring managers, and management, employee retention becomes a collaborative effort that benefits worker and company alike.
Businesses of all sizes can benefit from a thoughtful look at their hiring processes. Even if your staff and budget feel small, an investment in dedicated talent acquisition professionals may make all the difference to company culture, productivity, and retention.
In the first part of our coverage of recruiting trends to expect this year, we highlighted the importance of upskilling as a hiring and retention tool. Part two outlined the value of automation and how much time it can save when seeking and bringing on top talent.
Next up is the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will impact the hiring process this year and into the future. Review the benefits of utilizing a platform that harnesses the power of AI to filter applications and identify top talent based on specific, pre-determined factors.
Recruiting Trends Coming in 2024
Here’s what has been covered (and is still to come) in our five-part series:
Trend #3: More Artificial Intelligence in the Recruiting Process
In a study performed by Korn Ferry, more than 80 percent of CEOs and senior leaders of companies reported expecting AI to have a major or extreme impact on their organizations. Respondents specifically mentioned the expectation of relying on AI in the recruiting process, as it brings many appealing benefits. Using AI can save money, speed up processes and identify top candidates, even those who don’t have the traditional experience that was once expected.
But two of the risks associated with relying more heavily on AI relate to accuracy and strategy. Growing concerns around the security of AI-powered tools have led to identification of inaccuracy, especially if intruders can adjust how the platforms function. Hiring strategy is unique to each individual organization, and the capability of AI may not quite align.
In addition to recruiters and hiring managers relying more heavily on AI, jobseekers may take part in what it can offer in the process of finding employment. Candidates can utilize the functionality built into AI tools to tailor cover letters and resumes to specific roles, as well as identify positions that might be good fits.
But security remains a risk for anyone relying on AI, as scammers have found ways to leverage these tools to seek personal information and trick trusting candidates into sharing financial details. It’s vital to cross-check any job openings found with AI tools on company websites to ensure that they’re genuine.
Relying on AI will take more of a front seat this year among those involved in hiring. But as is the case with any other up-and-coming resource, verifying the information is essential.
ApplicantStack is a powerful applicant-tracking system designed with the needs of small business owners in mind. It incorporates the functionality used by big business, allowing smaller organizations to compete for top talent. Plus, the platform includes a few standout features, including text messaging to meet candidates where they are, prescreening and knock-out questions to save time, and the ability to schedule interviews instantly.
Quality employees can make or break a business of any size but are vital to the health and success of a small business. Whether you need to replace a worker who’s left or your business is expanding, hiring top talent takes energy, time, and company resources.
According to benchmark studies conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management, the average cost per hire is $4,683. Though that number might feel like it applies more to large corporations, consider that the median cost came in at $1,244. If your budget for recruiting feels small, here are five ways to help stretch it a little further.
1. Consider Hiring From Within
Small business owners and managers often have the advantage of personally getting to know the strengths and talents of their employees. As businesses grow and change, employees may want to take on new roles within the company but may not see a clear path for a changing job description. As you define the parameters of a new job in the company, consider looking around at the employees you already have. It may require some creativity to add or subtract responsibilities from an existing employee into a newly created job description, but it’s possible a perfect candidate or candidates are already a part of your team.
If your business is undertaking a multiple hire situation, something like an anonymous survey of employees may reveal current employees’ hidden career goals or talents. This information can provide clarity on both promoting from within and drafting a job posting.
2. Optimize Your Job Postings
Armed with data from your existing employees, current and future business plans, and immediate hiring needs, spend some time carefully crafting your job postings. You could involve current managers or department leaders to help describe specific duties and desired skills. Watch out for common buzzwords in both job titles and descriptions that could be interpreted more than one way. An applicant with extensive customer service experience, for example, may apply for a vaguely described “account manager” position, but in your business, that job requires bookkeeping experience. Be sure the posting includes detailed information about requirements for:
Qualifications
Education
Experience
Skills
Special requirements (such as atypical work hours or travel)
And include details for:
Flexible work arrangements (in-person or remote work possibilities)
Paid time off (such as company holidays, starting vacation time, and sick leave policies)
Salary range
An Indeed survey revealed that employers often felt the need to revise job postings because they received too many under-qualified candidates. It will save both yours and the applicants’ time if your posting is clear about non-negotiables.
3. Evaluate Where Your Budget Is Best Spent
Small business owners often carry the load of performing various tasks. Whether your business is just starting out or you’ve seen quick growth that outpaced the hours available in a day, it’s likely there are helpful tools that you may not have had time to research. A personal approach to identifying and crafting job descriptions may feel like a valuable use of your time. Once the applications and resumes start pouring in, however, delegation of some tasks might ease some of the additional load. That’s where an applicant tracking system (ATS) like ApplicantStack comes in.
We’ve all been there: sifting through a long email thread with multiple people to locate some nugget of information about an applicant. Or trying to remember where and how you saved a resume file on your hard drive, only to come up with an empty search box. From your first application to making offers, ApplicantStack organizes and sorts relevant information for all involved to evaluate. It makes for smooth collaboration and prevents dreaded errors that can cause your company to miss out on a perfect hire.
4. Hire Young Talent
Experience and education are hard and fast requirements in some sectors, but consider if your company has room to grow by hiring young people just entering the workforce. These individuals may bring an level of enthusiasm and willingness to learn that benefits the team, and come in prepared for a starting salary commensurate with their position. Your company may consider mentorship as one of its core values to prepare new workers for a long and fulfilling careers.
5. Re-Evaluate Your Public Brand
Ask yourself (or your marketing team) some probing questions about how potential candidates are introduced to your company. It’s common practice for a job candidate to start their research with the basics.
How do you present yourself publicly?
If you have social media accounts, are they updated regularly with useful and informative posts? If you don’t post regularly, do they look neglected? Are they an important part of your business identity?
Does your website accurately reflect the current course of your business? Are hours of operation, contact information, or staff pages updated? Does it function properly or are there broken links or pages?
In terms of cost, social media and website updates can take anything from company time to the investment in an agency rebrand. Low-cost solutions like courses from a social media coach or simple text and photo website updates might make a big difference in your public persona.
New hires in a small business represent exciting growth. Hopefully these five tips can help you recruit quality talent even on a budget. Success awaits with careful consideration of your internal resources and external tools like ApplicantStack. You’ll be organized and on the way to hiring the best workers for your company.
In the first part of our coverage of recruiting trends to expect this year, we highlighted the importance of upskilling as a hiring and retention tool. Next up is the value of automation, specifically in hiring.
The recruiting process can be very time- and labor-intensive, often involving multiple people within the organization. Between posting open positions, sifting through applications, scheduling interviews, and conducting all the work on the back end, your team could end up spending hours to fill just one role. Explore the advantages of automation in the hiring process and how this trend can cut the time and energy spent on finding and bringing on top talent.
Recruiting Trends Coming in 2024
Here’s what has been covered (and still to come) in our five-part series:
According to a talent survey focused on the future of work, more than 90 percent of HR professionals plan to increase their use of automation in the hiring process, among other everyday tasks. In the recruiting world, automating certain processes can minimize the time spent on tasks substantially, freeing up bandwidth for team members to focus on other things. Additionally, automation can shorten the time-to-hire and reduce the cost-per-hire when used effectively.
So, how will automation factor into your hiring processes in 2024? The answer to that question depends on what you want to adopt. Using an applicant tracking system like ApplicantStack allows you to simplify many of the steps in the process of bringing on a new team member. The system can post job listings to multiple boards instantly, as well as support candidate outreach and follow-up efforts.
When you want to schedule an interview, you can meet candidates where they are with text-based communication. Some outreach efforts happen automatically, based on workflows set up early in the process. You can also utilize integrations to handle background checks and other tasks.
Screening candidates is easier than ever with automation, as the platform can look for specific keywords and phrases to weed out candidates who may not be qualified. The result is an automated process that is highly convenient for all involved, including applicants.
The Benefits of Automation in Hiring
Every organization aims to improve productivity among its team members. And hiring automation can help you move closer to that goal, as it eliminates manual processes that take a lot of time and effort. Those involved in recruiting can focus on more meaningful tasks rather than spending hours sifting through resumes or posting to multiple job boards.
Another advantage is the ability to boost the quality of each hire made. When your team members focus on the quality of the candidates, they can identify individuals with characteristics that align with the company culture and job responsibilities. Automation can also eliminate some of the variables that don’t necessarily predict performance, making it a must-implement in high-volume verticals like call/contact centers, quick-service restaurants and retail facilities.
Explore how ApplicantStack can help you feel more prepared for this 2024 hiring trend and stay competitive with the countless organizations that are planning to expand their teams this year. You can even try it for free! Post your job, utilize the tools built in, and enjoy an easier hiring experience from start to finish.
Keep an eye on our blog as we cover the next four 2024 recruiting trends to expect. In the next post, we’ll highlight the use of artificial intelligence among recruiters.
