11 Critical Recruitment Challenges: How to Solve Them?

• Feeling overwhelmed while managing your recruitment process?  
• Do you often struggle to find and attract the right candidates? 
• Why is your hiring process not as efficient as it should be? 

No worries because you are not the only recruiter who’s facing these hiring headaches. 

But are you curious about the biggest recruitment challenges in today's modern hiring landscape? 

Of course you are! 

In this article, we will learn about various recruitment challenges that talent acquisition teams and HRs face. 

But wait, this article is not just about discussing hiring problems because you will find them everywhere. 

Together, we will explore best recruitment practices and proven tips for overcoming the challenges recruitment recruiters face. 

Let’s Understand Recruitment Challenges First

As we know, recruiting is not an easy task, and it takes a lot of effort to hire the right candidate for the job and avoid a bad hire. 

During this recruitment life cycle, the hiring team faces lots of hurdles and challenges. As a good recruiter, and to enhance the employer branding, the recruiter had to fill the open position within minimum time. 

It is not a piece of cake whether you are a small or big recruiting agency to form a meaningful talent pool that will help you in the future. 

Recruitment is the most profound process from the inside. You, the recruiter, have to pass every stage along with the candidates. During these phases, they confront various obstacles. 

So, are you about to start a hiring process? Yes! Then, here are some recruitment challenges that you should be aware of and ready to face beforehand. 

11 Biggest Recruitment Challenges Faced By Recruiters in 2024 

Do not forget that problems come along with solutions. So, ideally, we will discuss recruitment problems and their solutions as well. 

1. Talent Shortage

The current recruitment market is competitive and candidate-driven, so the candidates have the upper hand.

However, the main issue is that the ratio of skilled candidates is lower in rapid technology development. 

It is incredibly hard to find top talent and acquire them before your competitors, right? 

In 2024, the lack of qualified candidates is the no 1 hiring challenge recruiters are facing. Also, the problem will only get worse.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute study, companies in Europe and North America will need 16 to 18 million more educated employees that are going to be available. 

However, with a strong hiring process and good perks, recruiters can overcome this bigger recruitment challenge. Let’s look at the recruitment solution to tackle this problem, which recruiters can implement.

Solution

Organisations have no choice but to survive and thrive in the fiercely competitive market to hire the best talent faster and effectively.

But, they can present attractive benefits and perks to draw potential talent.

A survey by CR Magazine found that 92% of people would consider changing jobs if offered a role with a company with an excellent employer brand.  

Also, nearly 3 in 5 organisations (57%) plan to offer more flexibility for when or where work is done as talent scarcity grows, and 26% offer joining bonuses, according to a survey by Manpower Group.

So, companies have no choice but to offer amazing benefits to attract and retain the best candidates. 

2. Attracting the Right Candidates

Finding the right candidate that fits the job can be a difficult and tedious task. Hence, we recorded it in recruitment challenges. 

When you try to locate the right person in a pool of unqualified talents, your options become limited, and you often end up settling for a candidate who is the best person at the time despite not being the best fit for the job.

To avoid such situations, the best way is to form a smaller pipeline of more qualified talent over a more significant number of applications.

Solution

If attracting suitable candidates is one of your biggest recruitment challenges, follow this proven hiring tip.

One of the best recruitment practices is to be in-depth about the position requirement. Because the more you will serve in your ads, the more candidates will relate themself.

You can add a knockout question strategy. If you only want a candidate who holds a degree of MCA, set the question, did you complete a master's in computer application, and yes/no.

3. Targeting Passive Candidates

When targeting passive candidates, the hiring market for executive and senior-level roles becomes fiercely competitive. Identifying and attracting individuals who are not actively seeking job opportunities is intensely challenging.

However, the use of executive search software provides a powerful solution to overcome this recruitment challenge.

According to LinkedIn's survey, passive candidates make up a significant portion of the global workforce, accounting for 70%, while active candidates comprise the remaining 30%. This statistic highlights the daunting task of tapping into this vast talent pool.

Solution

Recruiters implement passive recruitment strategies to hire people for managerial roles, and 49% of passive talent want to hear about new opportunities, according to LinkedIn. 

Recruiters must leverage the fruitful benefits of social media, job boards and candidate databases to source the most suitable candidates.

Also, the organisation need to arrange employee referral programs that offer amazing bonuses and incentives to those who refer potential talent. 

Candidate interaction is the key to hiring a passive employee. Hence, recruiters and HR professionals must find ways to do effectively communicate with candidates. Cold emailing and cold calling are the best ways to start engaging with the talent.

Also, they must update their career page, make it more compelling, and post content on social media that adds value. 

4. Engaging with Qualified Candidates

Engaging qualified candidates is one of the critical recruitment challenges that HR and recruiters face nowadays.

It is essential to reach out to suitable candidates and be noticed by them. A well-qualified candidate is swamped with emails from multiple recruiters.

You have to make your engaging email stand out in the sea, especially when the candidate has several offers under their belt. You have to put in more effort to attract and persuade you to choose your company in this ocean of competitors, especially when it comes to passive candidates.

Solution

Passive candidates are the ones who are not eager for the opportunity, or we can say they are not interested in changing their current jobs.

Therefore, to overcome this challenge, first, create a scenario that seems interesting to them. Let them know what you are offering instead of what they will do for your company. 

Candidate engagement is a continuous process throughout the hiring procedure, and that's why this is one of the best recruitment practices for maintaining distance from recruitment challenges. 

5. Reducing Time-to-hire

Indeed, good recruiters try to fill up job positions as fast as possible because a vacant position costs them money and delays operations. Still, some industries take longer to hire, which frustrates recruiters.

The reason behind a longer duration for recruitment can also be a result of a shortage of qualified candidates, which leads to a real struggle for the hiring teams to conclude and the right candidate gets hired elsewhere. That's why recruiters add it to the recruitment challenges menu.

Solution

To eliminate this challenge from the recruitment challenges, you and the hiring manager need to ask several questions.

Your hiring manager is handling the process, so he/she knows the whole hiring process very well. Look with the tiny eyes where you are going wrong, why you cannot hire faster and why this is on the list of recruitment challenges.

Ask questions such as,

• can I remove any stages of the hiring process that do not affect the overall hiring?
• Is there a lack of communication between you and the candidates?
• Are you using the right technology for recruitment?
• Need to change your applicant tracking system?
• Need to use screening language assessments?  

When you address these questions, solutions will come to the surface, which will reduce your hiring time by speeding up your recruitment process. 

6. Building a Strong Employer Brand

Employer brand is a crucial factor when it comes to accepting an offer letter.

A survey conducted by Corporate Responsibility Magazine has found that 75% of people would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation - even if they were unemployed! 

A strong employer brand is vital as it attracts top talent, engages them, and has a better chance of making a quality hire and avoiding a bad one.

Hiring is a complex process and requires a continuous, collective effort. To enhance the employer brand, recruiters have to ensure that candidates get good recruitment experience whether they are hired or not. 

This continuous back-and-forth process often distracts recruiters from concentrating on crucial tasks, which is one of the recruitment challenges that recruiters face.

Solution

Always reply to the comments and reviews concerning your hiring process or employer product and brand on social media, website, or anywhere else.

Encourage existing employers to share their experience on social media and the website in the form of videos and blogs.

You can use features like a recruitment chatbot to improve candidate engagement, which will help you create a good employer reputation. 

7. Creating an Efficient Recruiting Process

Even though technology is evolving at its peak, still many recruiters are struggling with increasing the efficiency of their recruitment process. 

This major recruiting challenge is that the recruitment process can be tricky, so it is mandatory to have an efficient recruiting process to hire the right candidate.

Hiring teams must communicate proficiently and quickly to evaluate candidates faster, and they should be aware of all the steps during the process.

Their main task is coordinating all this communication, which is not always easy.

Also, administrative tasks take up too much time that they can use in the hiring process instead and provide a good candidate experience.

Solution

One thing you need to invest in for this recruitment challenge is technology. Adopt the best applicant tracking system or CRM that brings accuracy and streamlines your process.

You can leverage the automation features that will ultimately help you eliminate manual recruitment tasks and reduce the time of hiring.

Thus, its prominent features diminish the manual tasks of the team members.

8. Eliminating Bias in Hiring

A company must provide equal opportunities to all candidates to hire the best person for the job.

Also, it is a legal obligation and is an excellent way to engage a person without the interference of stereotypes.

However, many companies struggle to bring diverse candidates on board, and unconscious biases are one of the main reasons behind this. It leads to an inclusive workplace and diminishes your company's image.

Solution

To overcome this recruitment challenge, recruiters need to make some modifications in terms of technique.

The best thing for a recruiter to do is to adopt a structured interview. The same standard questions for every candidate and assess their response.

You can also use different blind hiring software.

9. Securing a Positive Candidate Experience

During the hiring process, providing a good candidate experience is beneficial as it increases the chances of the candidate accepting the offer. 

However, bad experiences make them less likely to accept the job offer. Positive candidate experience not only enhances employer brand but is also an integral factor when candidates weigh in on job offers.

For recruiters, it becomes the task of finding a needle from a haystack due to several reasons, such as, 

• Managing a high volume of applicants
• Complex recruitment processes
• Technology limitations
• Balancing transparency and discretion
• Diverse candidate expectations

Solution

Add a humane touch to your communication with candidates. 

You can use the latest recruiting technology, such as Recruiting CRM Software. This way, you can set reminders and choose the email template according to the conversation. Use ATS to improve candidate experience.

10. Implementing Data-driven Recruitment

The recruiting process can be improved using recruitment data and metrics, which helps make more informed decisions.

However, the drawback is that maintaining these data can be tiresome and require a lot of time. Not just that, to make meaningful pattern is a very complex task if your recruitment data is not streamlined. 

Keeping track of data through spreadsheets is one way as it simplifies the data, but it requires tons of manual work and can be prey to human error. Also, it is time-consuming. 

So, it is not a very reliable method. It is hard to organise data accurately and efficiently and keep it updated.

Solution

However, there is no need to worry because the recruitment analytics feature in ATS will solve all the hiring challenges and enhance the workflow. 

Recruiters, here are some of the crucial benefits of using recruitment analytics tools in iSmartRecruit's AI recruitment software. Let's check these solutions. 

• You will see drastic changes in team improvement in your hiring quality
• Informed and data-driven decision making 
• Make your recruitment process more efficient than ever 
• Your hiring cost will be reduced 
• You will be able to plan your recruitment more strategically 

You can collect data from Google Analytics and from recruitment marketing tools. There is a metric of recruitment; follow that, but not every metric.

11. Conducting Collaborative Recruitment

Recruiters, we know that you are often struggling to effectively involve your hiring managers and recruitment team members in the recruitment process.

Gallup discovered in a survey that 51% of hiring managers are disengaged, and 14% are actively disengaged. 

Sometimes, hiring managers are not completely satisfied with HR’s methods of conducting hiring workflow.

A survey by Viser found that 71% of recruitment managers think HRs need to enhance the quality-of-hire and recruitment strategies.

Hence, recruiters are finding ways to include every member in the hiring process and efficiently run a collaborative hiring workflow, so they must follow effective strategies.

Let’s find out the recruitment solution to the collaborative recruitment challenge. 

Solution

Recruiters can opt for recruitment tech to hire collaboratively with ease. Online software such as Applicant Tracking System is the best recruitment solution out there for recruiters and hiring managers to effectively conduct team-based hiring. It is all-in-one recruitment software where every member of the team has access to the recent activities and status of the candidates. 

The system will enable hiring managers to make data-driven and joint decisions after getting feedback from other members.

Also, this recruitment technology will lessen the number of bad hires and make hiring a pleasant experience for the recruitment team. 

How to Solve These Common Recruitment Challenges in 2024?  

Recruiters and HRs face numerous recruitment challenges, even when the economy is good and the employment market is high. So, diversifying the recruitment process helps them by using social media for job postings, attending job fairs, etc.

These hiring challenges in 2024 can be resolved by investing in recruitment tools and technology like the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and Recruitment CRM Software and training a hiring team to make the process easy. 

Want to know How? 

Want to solve all of your recruitment challenges efficiently? If so, then look no further. Then, book a free demo. 

See how our AI-powered recruitment software can help you streamline your overall hiring process from sourcing potential applicants to hiring the most suitable talent faster and more effectively.