Common Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Issues 

In our collective years of experience our firm has conducted 2000+ searches for a multitude of companies in every industry. At Reputable Recruiting, we have heard from hundreds of leaders in Human Resources, Talent Acquisition, Management, and Executive Leadership on these key talent acquisition issues. What we have learned from this experience is that employers are in a constant battle with managing three primary recruiting pain points:

  • Speed-to-Hire
  • Cost-per-Hire
  • Hiring Frustration

We have spent many hours analyzing the three primary issues and the underlying root to these pains. Take a look below too see if you can relate.

Strategic Planning is Disconnected from Hiring Strategy

Organizational alignment and effective strategic planning is not just for large companies.  Where most companies go wrong, is their inability to craft a corporate strategy, which makes it impossible to define a people strategy to help reach their goals. Hiring is poorly defined and avoidable hiring mistakes are made, which adds to the aforementioned recruiting pains.

Poor Succession Planning

Organizations and department heads struggle with strategic planning, so why would succession planning be any different?  The reality is many departments and businesses fail to hire and develop great talent so when their key employee leaves, they have no one in place to assume the abandoned duties.  As a result, the common hiring challenges and recruiting pains are often multiplied.

Human Resources and Recruiting are NOT the same

Yes, recruiting is an element of Human Resources. However, most organizations are busy handling basic HR administration (payroll, benefits, compliance, employee relations).  Let me put it to you this way, if HR is a basket of fruit, then recruiting is the watermelon in the basket! If that is true, then adding recruiting to an already full plate for your HR team doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. To juggle it all, companies deploy job advertisements while hoping and praying it will yield that unicorn you are looking for. If that fails, then there’s always contingency recruiters, right?

Systems, Processes and Data

Many organizations, even Fortune 500 companies, lack the necessary people, process, and technologies to keep them ahead of the hiring curve.  Companies are unable to understand their hiring challenges without the proper systems and recruiting metrics in place. The result of this is a frustrating and inconsistent process that increases time and cost per hire. This leaves them unable to pivot quickly, which leads to the loss of key talent in your candidate pipeline.

Recruiting is Reactive, Not Proactive

Most companies fail to forecast their hiring, so inevitably they wait until they have a critical need to start recruiting. Here’s the problem with this approach. If you begin recruiting when you have a need, you are already too late. 

Post and Pray is Not a Strategy

Posting jobs is easy and relatively inexpensive, so it is widely adopted as the primary method for attracting talent to your organization.  Unfortunately, this is a passive approach that can increase your time to hire. Companies are waiting for applicants, instead of proactively seeking them out.   Waiting increases time to hire, cost per hire and often the candidate quality leaves companies empty handed.

Contingency Recruiting has its Flaws

In another article we address the myths of contingency search recruiters. Simply put, if you are banking on consistent and affordable success using this model you may want to reconsider. When recruiters and talent acquisition professionals work on a contingency model, they will default to working on the newest and easiest position to fill. Ultimately, this keeps them from focusing on complex and difficult searches.

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