Most Common Recruitment and Retention Challenges and Solutions

Hiring and retaining suitable candidates are the two biggest challenges that distinguish a great company from an average one. The right candidate is the most valuable asset to an organization.  A  start-up or even a well-established enterprise can face issues in talent acquisition and retaining qualified people in the organization.

These hiring challenges revolve around identifying the suitable match for a specific role, determining how passionate and excited they are about working for the company, and retaining them. Another serious challenge is to ensure that recruiting a  professional also brings good revenue to the company.

Challenges in Recruitment

If your company lacks effective recruitment strategies, look no further. In this article, we will address the most common recruitment and retention challenges and how to overcome them. These recruitment strategies can help HR departments boost recruiting efficiency by automating time-consuming and crucial HR processes.

Attracting the Right and Qualified Candidates

According to a survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business, 87% of HR professionals says that they had “little or no eligible candidates” for the roles they were attempting to fill. In the pool of unqualified candidates, the chances to find qualified ones are limited.

Among the sea of candidate applications, HR professionals find themselves screening through irrelevant applications and profiles. This results in multiple rounds of interviews, which can be very time-consuming. This happens when employers are looking for employees having many competencies, from technical to soft skills

How to overcome this issue

• You can fix this by creating job descriptions that prioritize certain skills depending on the requirement of a position.
• Be clear about the requirements in your job ads and include a brief overview of the role for better screening of candidates during the initial hiring stages.

Multiple options for qualified candidates

Getting talented candidates amongst too much noise and attention is a big recruiting challenge.  Ideal candidates are often approached by recruiters. They have a lot of choices, which means they are also very fussy. They will not opt to work with a company that has a poorly managed recruiting process. 

To cut through the other 200 recruiters trying to reach the same individual and convincing them to apply and join your company is a huge issue. So those who put extra effort into persuading the candidates with the right strategies often win the game. 

How to overcome the issue

• It is important that your company makes a great first impression by building a strong employer brand. In today’s era, a company’s reputation and popularity mainly depend on its employer brand and its social media presence. Amidst a highly competitive talent market, a compelling employer brand is a key to attracting qualified talents.
• Highlight the wellness activities you have in your company. Tell them how inclusive and accommodating you are to your employees’ needs, etc. such factors are immensely important for most candidates.
• One effective strategy is to improve your interview process. Being transparent will make it easier for you to stand out among your competitors. 
• Respond swiftly when you find someone promising, this way their probability of slipping through the cracks will reduce especially if they are pursued by other employers as well.
• If you work with a recruiter, make sure that person is responsive as well.

Attracting passive talent

Several extremely talented candidates tend to be passive observers. They keep on waiting for a wonderful opportunity. If your recruitment methods are not aiding you to reach out to these candidates, your methods could be outdated. If you are still relying on traditional advertising strategies, then you might fail to reach many potential candidates. It is critical to reach out to the proper prospects and persuade them to select your organization over the competition.

How to overcome the issue

• Social media is a great platform for targeting passive talent. Increase your social media presence.
• Don’t rely on a single advertising method. Publicize your job opening on multiple platforms. It helps improve your employer branding.  This way you can also determine how many people are reaching out to your company.
• Use Retargeting Ads to Stay Top-Of-Mind
• Build Hype Internally Using Employee Referral Programs
• Emphasize Branding, Culture, and Growth Potential

Slow hiring processes

If you want to attract excellent prospects for your job openings,  you must employ them quickly and shorten your hiring process. Positions that stay vacant for a long time cost money and delay operations. It also put a negative impact on the company. A long-time hire may be a cause of qualified candidates’ drop-off. The hiring process may be too long or hiring teams might be struggling to reach the best candidates to fill up the vacant role. Ask yourself questions like:

• Are all the hiring stages really required?
• Are the platform where we looking for candidates to fill our candidate is appropriate
• Is there a communication gap between the recruiters and the candidates

How to overcome the issue

• Reevaluate your hiring process
• Hiring carefully and also fixing a timeline for the hire is important to improve the slow hiring process.
• Streamline your application tracking process
• Optimize Your Recruiting Process.  If you fill a vacancy faster than your competitors, it is likely that you will get the top candidates first. Streamline the recruitment procedure by replacing manual recruiting processes with automated filing and workflow. Automating the recruitment procedure allows your HR team to take the decision quickly and find the right candidates for open positions.
• Using clear language in the job description is a great start. Your job advertisements should describe the tasks, responsibilities, and qualifications you expect from the candidate.
• Personalize your job description by highlighting a project or success story related to the open position. Your job add should be both informative and engaging for the potential candidates.
• Set Automated notifications & reminders for prompt action. Automating the recruiting workflow process removes the need to send and track files manually. This enables HR personnel to spend more time finding the best candidates for open roles
• Creating offer letters with document templates to speed up hiring proceeds.
• Invest in recruiting software and the latest technology

Use of traditional recruitment methods

The effort of screening through the voluminous resumes and applications and then picking the right candidate is also time taking. These tests tend to involve tedious and lengthy procedures, which can be frustrating and bothersome for the applicants. All of this can delay the recruiting process. When healthcare companies don’t provide applicants with a brief and concise screening process, applicant drop-off increases

How to overcome the issue

• Develop a recruitment plan that defines exactly what the job requirements are. What skills and experience you are looking for in the candidates?
• How much time and resources you can devote to the search, how many candidates are required, and how much time is necessary for interviews? Each member of your HR and recruiting team must be aware of this plan.
• Switch to automation for the purpose of simplifying repetitive tasks and reducing admin work. By automating such tasks, these tools help streamline recruitment, which makes it more efficient and faster. These integrated technology solutions help to locate, attract, engage, and nurture the candidates so that they become applicants.

Employer branding

Amidst a highly competitive talent market, a compelling employer brand is a key to attracting qualified talents. An engaging employer brand helps you attract and engage top candidates.

Implementing robust branding strategies is becoming more crucial to creating an attractive employer brand. Nowadays,  job seekers research employer brands and reputations before they apply for a job.  It helps in building a dynamic workforce and influences a brand’s success.

According to a survey, businesses with excellent employer brands and great brand images receive 50% more qualified applicants. Whereas businesses plagued with a bad reputation find it hard to attract new talents and retain hired ones.

How to overcome the issue

• Make a prominent social presence.
• Encourage your team to be active on social media platforms, such as LinkedIn. Posting content like engaging blogs, articles, videos, etc is more likely to gain clients’ attention.
• Noise on social media displayed about a company proves that it has a vision and a motive. Whereas companies having no social standing have no popularity.
• Keep up-to-date with changes in the market, and encourage your team to be thoughtful leaders online.
• Invest in training and courses to keep your team ahead. Agencies with a strong brand name are those that have specialized and are known for a specific niche.
• Reply courteously to online reviews whether bad or good.

Ensure a good candidate experience

When your best-chosen candidates are preferring your job offers over your competitors, it is important that they have a great hiring experience throughout. The way you treat candidates during recruiting process mirrors the way you’ll treat them after hiring. If they had a bad or frustrating experience, they’re less likely to accept your offer

Positive candidate experiences can also help enhance your employer brand and encourage other good candidates to apply and accept your job offers.

How to overcome the issue

• Keep the candidates informed, and tell them when they should expect to hear from you.
• Using integrated technology solutions helps to locate, attract, engage, and nurture the candidates.
• Set reminders, and use email templates to follow up. Don’t leave them in the dark throughout the hiring process.
• Coordinate well with candidates. Give them all the necessary information If you’re scheduling an in-person interview. Explain to them about the role, what they should expect from the interview and what the next steps are. Inform the reception about their arrival and don’t let them wait in the lobby.
• The more seamless and streamlined the recruiting process will be, the candidate will have a positive experience

Ability to answer candidate’s technical questions

Every HR manager might not be aware of the technicalities of each job role. However, not delivering appropriately and not satisfying the candidate’s queries causes a credibility issue when recruiting. Candidates feel unclear and unsure of their role and the company.

How to overcome the issue

• Get an expert on board to answer the candidate’s all types of questions.
• Have one or two specialists available during interviews, who have in-depth knowledge of the role. It will also give the candidate an idea of the credibility of the organization and who they will be reporting to or working with in the future. This will reinforce their faith in your credibility as an employer.

Employee retention

Employee retention is an organization’s ability to keep its employees and reduce employee turnover. A company likely wants to retain all of the employees, whether they’ve been with you for ten years or just joined.

Increasing employee retention has a direct impact on business success, as having more qualified and right employees makes it easier to reach business goals.

How to overcome the issue

• Employee retention begins by simply hiring the right people. The best way to hire the right people is to have a hiring process that ensures you’re hiring the right people.
• Lengthy screening, interviewing, and hiring processes may frustrate the employees and send them elsewhere.
• Strive to create supportive work environments.
• Provide proper training and development.
• Always communicate with your employees
• Offer benefits and perks. 
• Create career development plans.
• Support employees in educational endeavors.
• Encourage skill development.
• Show employees how their work affects customers and provide them with feedback
• Offer fair compensation.
• Encourage a proper work-life balance and provide hybrid working flexibility.

Diversity and inclusion in recruitment

Diversity in your recruitment processes in each of your departments is vital for employee retention. Many companies fail to hire qualified candidates because of their unconscious biases.  It is a legal obligation to provide equal opportunities to all people regardless of their caste, gender, or color.

Hiring objectively is rewarding for your business as it allows you to hire the best person for the job without stereotypes interfering. This will result in an inclusive workplace. Research has shown numerous benefits of a diverse and inclusive workplace:

• Higher revenue growth
• Greater willingness to innovation
• Increased ability to recruit a diverse talent pool
• Inclusion in the workplace is the key to higher employee retention

How to overcome the issue

• Write inclusive job descriptions. 
• Widen your search and job advertisements to include diverse groups and pools of candidates. Place job advertisements on large recruitment websites such as LinkedIn, or in a broadsheet newspaper
• Ensure that the messages and instructions stated throughout the application form-filling process are friendly and inclusive. They should not be not overly formal, and punitive. Design the application process in a simple way that does not confuse or frustrate applicants.
• Make short-listing process fair. 
• Assessing the candidate’s CVs without seeing any personal information is also effective at avoiding any bias against diverse applicants. 
• Make sure the panel does not see names, schools, locations

Related: Recruitment Mistakes To Avoid in 2023