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Tag: Change Management

The True Cost of Switching Recruitment Technology Providers

Posted on by rachel
Recruiter faced with the cost of switching their technology.

Thinking about replacing your recruitment technology? While a new tool might seem enticing during a sales call, you shouldn’t rush into any decisions. Before moving forward, consider this crucial element: the cost of switching.

We don’t just mean financial costs—we mean all of the switching costs. To help you make an informed decision and avoid potential setbacks, let’s delve into the various factors that contribute to the total cost of changing your recruitment technology. 

(Spoiler alert: You might end up spending much, much more than you bargained for.)

But First: A Note on the Capabilities of Your Tech Stack

Before we explore the cost of switching recruitment technology, we must emphasize how vital it is to evaluate technology with a focus on capabilities and efficiency. 

Some talent leaders seek to spend more on a new tool with additional features that would increase their team’s productivity. On the flip side, other leaders seek to lower expenses through cheaper technology alternatives.

Unfortunately, the latter often results in leaders evaluating a tool that’s lower priced yet comes with fewer features and efficiency improvements. (The rumors are true: you get what you pay for.)

Buying a lower-priced solution with fewer functionalities puts you in a lose-lose situation. When you account for all of the additional switching costs, you’re still spending a significant amount—yet now your technology has fewer capabilities than before. 

What’s more, by having your already stretched-thin team implement new software that is ultimately less efficient, you impede their efforts to hit their goals and risk employee burnout.

In short: don’t fall for the trap of lower upfront software fees. Reflect on the features, impact on efficiency, and hidden costs of switching to ensure you make a smart business decision.

Now, about those switching costs. What are they?

What Are Switching Costs?

The cost of switching refers to all the expenses and efforts involved in transitioning from one product or service to another. Switching costs are divided into two main types: hard costs and soft costs. 

Hard costs encompass the direct financial expenses incurred during the switch, such as licensing fees, onboarding and implementation costs, and training expenses. 

Soft costs include intangible investments such as time, effort, and the short and long-term impacts on productivity. You won’t find soft costs on a software invoice; they’re expenses that people typically don’t consider, yet they seriously add up. 

8 Factors That Impact the Cost of Switching

1. Pricing

Pricing is the most apparent cost when switching recruiting tools. It involves the cost of procuring the new technology, which typically includes an annual or periodic fee. 

Keep in mind that pricing can be deceiving. Initial discounts on new technology are often short-lived before the price is ramped back up. If the software you switched to has fewer capabilities, then you’re locked into a contract with a higher price tag for an inferior tool.

Beyond the cost of your potential new software, evaluate if it would deliver additional business value and revenue through improved capabilities and features. Would any cost savings be eroded by decreases in efficiency due to the loss of critical features?

Before making any decisions, it’s crucial to examine if the switch would yield a significant return on investment (ROI) and provide long-term benefits.

2. Efficiency Gains and Losses

One of the most significant costs of switching HR tech solutions is the loss of key features that your current technology provides. For instance, your existing tool may offer a user-friendly interface, automation, customization options, analytics, and other crucial recruiting features.

If the replacement technology lacks these capabilities—as is often the case when jumping to a lower-priced tool—it may decrease efficiencies, increase day-to-day operational costs, and cost you more than any perceived savings upfront.

Ultimately, when you factor in the significant savings gained through increased efficiencies, a tool with higher upfront costs and more features may actually be the most cost-effective option.

Compare the feature set of your existing technology to what the new technology has and doesn’t have. Are you willing to leave behind the capabilities of your current technology? How would this impact your recruitment goals, both long-term and short-term?

3. Time, Cost, and Effort of Implementation

While you might feel tempted to switch to a lower-priced solution, it’s crucial to remember the substantial time, effort, and money involved in the implementation process. 

Making the switch means not only grappling with the challenges of adopting new technology but also bidding farewell to all the hard work and resources invested in implementing your current system.

When implementing new technology, you must undergo data migration, integration setup, and training—not to mention paying for implementation fees. This is time-consuming, sometimes requiring a dedicated team to ensure a smooth transition. 

4. Workflow Disruptions

Switching technology providers can lead to operational hiccups that impact productivity and revenue generation during the transition period. Employees may need to adapt to new workflows and processes, resulting in a temporary decrease in output and quality of work. 

If your talent team is already overburdened, familiarizing themselves with a new tool becomes even more daunting. This is a reality for the majority of teams; according to the 2023 Hiring Insights Report, waves of layoffs impacted 65% of companies last year.

A chart using layoffs data from the 2023 Hiring Insights Report.

Amid these headcount and resource reductions, grappling with change management—without losing sight of hiring objectives—isn’t easy. This ultimately elevates the likelihood and impact of workflow disruptions. 

5. Learning Curve

Familiarizing yourself with a new interface and product features is a tedious process that impacts efficiency. Learning how to use a new product effectively requires dedicated time for training, which places additional demands on talent professionals.

You’ll need to divide your attention between learning the new technology and fulfilling your regular responsibilities on the hiring team. This can slow down productivity, lengthen time-to-value, and affect your ability to meet deadlines and deliver optimal results. 

Depending on the type of technology you acquire, external teams along with key end users, such as hiring managers, might also have to undergo training to use the tool. This could require you to create and disseminate comprehensive learning and development resources. Assess whether you have the time and capacity for the education that the transition phase requires.

6. Data Migration

Migrating data from your current recruitment technology to a new provider is complex and challenging. In some cases, data migration may not be permitted, or possible, or could be fraught with issues such as data integrity concerns or the loss of valuable historical data. 

Investigate the feasibility and implications of data migration before making the switch. Consider what data you would need to transfer, the level of effort, and the impact on ongoing operations. If you risk losing historical data, what is the value of this data to your team and the wider organization?

7. Loss of Integrations

Many recruitment technologies offer integrations with other tools and platforms, enhancing their functionality and efficiency. When switching providers, you risk losing these integrations, which can disrupt workflows and increase costs through manual, time-consuming activities. 

Examining the availability and compatibility of integrations with the new technology is essential to determine the impact on your recruiting process. Evaluate whether or not a potential new provider supports your essential integrations.

8. Future Proofing

Consider not only your talent team’s immediate needs but also their future requirements in an ever-changing economic landscape. It’s crucial to choose a technology that supports your team’s growth and adaptability in the long run.

The capabilities of your new tech should offer scalability for the future so that you can keep pace with the changing landscape while maintaining an efficient operation. If the replacement technology can’t scale as you grow, you risk incurring additional costs down the road due to efficiency bottlenecks that require more headcount, or other new tools, to overcome. 

Overall, a provider that prioritizes innovation, regular product updates, and feature expansions ensures the most long-term value in a shifting job market. 

Don’t Get Stuck With Buyer’s Remorse

The cost of transitioning to a new recruitment technology extends beyond the initial financial investment. Carefully assess all possible switching costs before making a decision.

And while pricing is important, remember: the capabilities of your tech stack are paramount. Strive for a comprehensive solution that elevates the productivity of your team and the effectiveness of your operations, now and well into the future. 

Speaking of advanced recruiting technology: ever heard of GoodTime Hire?

Hire’s automated interview scheduling helps you coordinate faster, hire more efficiently, and boost team productivity. No simple scheduling tools here.

Discover how GoodTime Hire can help you revolutionize your interview scheduling.

Recruiting Automation & Efficiency: A Winning Combo, Says HR Leaders

Posted on by rachel
HR leader using recruiting automation.

In the world of talent acquisition, it’s sink or swim. The challenges facing hiring teams are more daunting than ever; an unstable economy, sweeping reductions in force, and increased candidate demands threaten teams’ goals. Yet if you ask HR leaders, the formula for success is found in one dynamic duo: recruiting automation and efficiency.

In December 2022, GoodTime surveyed over 500 U.S. decision-makers in talent acquisition for the 2023 Hiring Insights Report to uncover their perceptions of the most pressing challenges facing their teams, and how they plan to attract and retain top talent in the year ahead. 

The report shows that amid their sea of obstacles, talent leaders plan on reaching for success by optimizing their automation and boosting the efficiency of their processes. 

Yet thriving in today’s hiring landscape will be no small feat; most teams don’t have the best track record when it comes to prioritizing efficiency and automation. However, as the data will show, the key to effectively hiring with efficiency and automation is hiding in plain sight.

Teams Eye Recruiting Automation and Efficiency 

When asked what areas of their hiring process they will look to improve in the next 12 months, “improving overall efficiency” (39%) and “optimizing automation in the hiring process” (37%) ranked as talent leaders’ top focus areas. These were talent teams’ biggest focus areas for the second year in a row.

Bar chart showing what talent leaders plan to focus on in the future.

With 65% of surveyed talent leaders reporting layoffs in the past year, this focus is incredibly timely. Streamlining the hiring process and automating tedious tasks helps fill efficiency gaps following hiring team layoffs while providing much-needed relief to resource-strained teams trying to “do more with less.”

Charts showing the impact of layoffs on companies across sectors.

The focus on efficiency and automation becomes even more important when considering the top change that teams expect in 2023: “the hiring landscape will become more competitive due to an increased demand for talent” (45%). 

A competitive landscape requires all hands on deck to attract and engage candidates, move fast on qualified talent, and deliver a high-quality hiring experience. Teams will need to leverage the dynamic duo of efficiency and automation if they want to drive better hiring outcomes.

Where Recruiting Automation and Efficiency Efforts Fell Flat

Talent teams aren’t strangers to implementing recruiting automation and efficiency-centric initiatives. In fact, improving efficiency (39%) was the top focus area for talent leaders in the past 12 months, with optimizing automation (37%) coming in second place. 

Bar chart showing what TA leaders focused on in the past.

So, where did this focus lead talent acquisition teams? (Spoiler alert: probably not where they would’ve liked to be). Based on the outcomes from the past year, it appears that some teams may not have successfully followed through with their efforts to prioritize efficiency and automation. 

For starters, talent teams missed their hiring goals by a significant margin. Companies reportedly hit just 48% of their goals in 2022, a 2% drop from 2021. 

The data on time-to-hire also doesn’t reflect well on teams; 71% of TA leaders said time-to-hire increased in 2022. This is a notable uptick from 2021, where 60% reported an increase in time-to-hire.

Pie chart showing the state of HR leaders' time-to-hire.

Adding even more fuel to the fire, time spent scheduling is on the rise. Recruiting teams spent 42% of their time scheduling interviews in 2022, a 5% increase from last year’s report.

The Disconnect on Efficiency

With hiring goal attainment on the decline and time-to-hire and time spent scheduling on the incline, teams certainly have cause for concern. Yet interestingly, it appears that many teams aren’t worried about the efficiency of their processes. A shocking 99% of respondents rated their hiring processes as either somewhat or very efficient. 

Pie chart showing the state of HR teams' recruiting process efficiency.

Teams may feel that they are doing their best to optimize their operations amid the hectic hiring and economic landscape, but still, the data shows there’s ample room to improve—especially as teams plan to amplify efficiency and automation in 2023.

Leveraging Hiring Tech for Success

Moving forward, effectively optimizing recruiting automation and boosting efficiency will require new, innovative approaches. Luckily, the solution is right under TA teams’ noses. 

Hiring teams believe that the biggest challenge they’ll face in the coming months is “limitations of current hiring technology” (27%). Refining the tech stack would not only solve this challenge but also endow teams with the efficiency and automation needed to succeed this year.

Bar chart showing what hiring challenges TA teams expect in the future.

Optimized hiring tech directly helps teams maximize their productivity and balance hiring speed with process quality But here’s the problem: “upgrading hiring technology” (33%) ranked as one of the lowest priorities for teams in the future. Why? Some sectors, such as healthcare, are more risk-averse than others and may shy away from adopting new tech. Or, simply put, teams might not see it as a pressing issue to attend to among their countless other concerns.

Yet if teams want to use efficiency and automation to their advantage and stand the greatest chance at hitting their hiring goals, they must change their tune. Leveraging new tech is the way forward.

Want More Recruitment Insights?

2022 brought a rocky economy, widespread layoffs, and an uncertain hiring landscape, creating a perfect storm for hiring teams this year. The pressure is on to find and attract qualified candidates, deliver an efficient hiring process, and leverage hiring tools that drive teams toward success. Are you ready to conquer 2023? 

To dive deeper into these insights and much, much more, get the full 2023 Hiring Insights Report today.

10 Key Takeaways From the 2023 Hiring Insights Report

Posted on by rachel
Two hiring leaders reading the 2023 Hiring Insights Report.

For today’s hiring leaders, the talent landscape can feel a lot like the wild, wild west: untamed, unpredictable, and downright lawless. Now in 2023, talent acquisition teams once again face new hiring challenges and economic obstacles. But don’t get lost in the dust just yet: to help teams make sense of all this uncertainty, we’ve released our 2023 Hiring Insights Report.

The report features data on 500+ surveyed hiring leaders and explores how they’re attracting and retaining talent amid today’s obstacles. If your talent team wants to thrive now and for years to come, consider it required reading.

For the TL;DR of the report, here’s a roundup of the 10 key takeaways your team must know to successfully weather 2023’s hiring storm.

1. Hiring Goal Attainment Fell Short

Our previous Hiring Insights Report found that organizations hit an average of 50% of their hiring goals in 2021. Unfortunately, their luck hasn’t turned around. Since then, hiring goal performance has declined by two percentage points, dropping to 48% in 2022.

In the past year, U.S. job openings declined while the number of Americans seeking employment remained steady. Based on this context, one might expect that hiring would’ve become easier with fewer jobs to fill. So, where did this 48% come from? Other factors, like increased candidate demands and a deficit of desired skills, can pose significant challenges to hiring goal attainment.

Charts showing hiring teams' goal attainment.

2. Top Previous Challenges: Resume Padding and Hiring Policy Shifts 

The biggest challenge faced by hiring teams in the past 12 months? A disconnect between real skills and what’s on applicants’ resumes. The prevalence of candidates padding their resumes only further emphasizes the importance of rigorously screening applicants.

Ranking in second place, 25% of surveyed talent leaders said they faced difficulties with ever-evolving company hiring policies. A range of factors triggered these policy updates, including remote work, return-to-office mandates, and a shortage of qualified talent. 

Bar chart showing what hiring challenges TA teams experienced in the past.

3. Layoffs Thrashed the Hiring Landscape

Overall, layoffs impacted 65% of companies last year. The tech sector’s waves of layoffs dominated the news; 57% of surveyed tech companies reported going through layoffs in the past 12 months.

However, tech wasn’t the only sector that conducted widespread workforce reductions. In fact, the financial services and retail sectors led the pack with the most dismissals at a staggering 71% and 70%, respectively.

Charts showing the impact of layoffs on companies across sectors.

4. Turnover Rocked Hiring Leaders

Nearly half of hiring leaders (44%) were impacted by increased recruitment team turnover, making this the biggest change that hiring teams experienced last year. Fewer talent acquisition professionals means fewer people that can move the hiring process along—and slower operations.

While the majority of talent leaders agreed that turnover dealt a heavy blow to their teams, they were split on whether the landscape has become more or less competitive, underscoring the turbulent nature of last year’s hiring landscape.

Bar chart showing how the hiring landscape has changed.

5. Top Expected Challenges: Limiting Hiring Tech and Hiring Policy Shifts

In the year ahead, hiring teams expect to confront two major hurdles. For one, teams predict that their hiring technology, which needs to adapt to their ever-changing needs, will fall short of expectations (27%). The right hiring technology can unlock a level of productivity and efficiency that teams didn’t even know was possible—yet most teams don’t have the tech needed to attain success.

Teams also anticipate facing difficulties in adjusting to alterations in their company’s hiring policies (26%). Sound familiar? This was also one of the top challenges that teams faced in the past few months. Talent acquisition and retention become all the more challenging when your efforts are hindered by the need to constantly adjust policies to stay aligned with the landscape’s evolutions.

Bar chart showing what challenges talent teams expect in the future.

6. Competitive or Uncompetitive Landscape? You Decide

Once again, talent acquisition leaders can’t reach a consensus on the state of the landscape. While 45% say the hiring landscape will become more competitive due to an increased demand for talent, 41% say it will become less competitive due to an increase in available remote talent.

Drilling down the data by sector, respondents were still at odds—except for the financial services sector. The majority of financial services hiring leaders (53%) believe that competition will intensify in the landscape. Burnout and high turnover in frontline retail banking roles could be contributing to these results.

Bar chart showing how hiring teams expect hiring to change.

7. Efficiency and Automation Reign Supreme

Amid an unstable economy and numerous hiring obstacles, teams plan on weathering the storm through the power of efficiency and automation. For the second year in a row, efficiency (39%) and automation (37%) came out on top as talent teams’ biggest focus areas for the future.

Streamlining the hiring process and automating manual tasks is a win-win for everyone involved in the process. Talent teams get to reap better hiring outcomes, such as increased offer acceptance rates and improved time-to-hire. Meanwhile, candidates get to enjoy an impeccable hiring experience that demonstrates genuine care and interest in what they can bring to the table.

Bar chart showing what TA leaders plan on improving in the future.

8. Quality of Hire Comes Out on Top

As hiring teams traverse 2023’s rough waters, they’ll be doing so while closely monitoring quality of hire. The majority of talent leaders ranked it as their number one most important metric (25%). This result is fitting; one of the core objectives of recruiting is to not only hire quickly but to hire the best talent possible.

However, teams will have to contend with the difficulties of measuring quality of hire. Measuring this metric is notoriously challenging, as it carries its own subjectivity and qualitative nuances.

Bar chart showing the most important hiring metrics.

9. Winning Candidates With Flexibility

What do top candidates want? If you ask our respondents, more than half (54%) will say that candidates seek flexibility above all else. Prospective new hires want to feel reassured that their desired roles will grant them enough flexibility to lead fulfilling and healthy lives amid their professional responsibilities.

Companies might consider allowing employees to work from anywhere within (or outside) the office, take lunch breaks whenever they’d like, or skip lunch altogether to head home early. Yet still, there’s no one-size-fits-all for flexible work policies; companies must assess their own circumstances to determine the best approach.

Bar chart showing what TA teams communicate to win candidates.

10. Better Scheduling, Better Connections

One in two companies (50%) identified improving scheduling efficiency as their primary strategy for giving candidates a faster and simpler hiring experience. A streamlined, bottleneck-free process not only helps hiring teams smash their goals, but also cultivates a positive candidate experience that can blossom into stronger, more memorable candidate relationships.

Rounding out the top three are candidate-driven scheduling (46%) and a fast interview process (45%). These capabilities closely align with the preferences of today’s consumers. Half of consumers would rather live chat than pick up the phone; evidently, people want immediate help in their time of need without having to reach out to someone.

Bar chart showing what hiring teams do to win candidates with a streamlined process.

Hey, Hiring Leaders: Want More Insights?

2022 brought an uncertain economy, sweeping reductions in force, and increased candidate demands, creating a perfect storm for hiring teams this year. The pressure is on to find and attract qualified candidates, deliver an efficient hiring process, and leverage hiring tools that drive teams toward success. Are you ready to conquer 2023? 


To dive deeper into these insights and much, much more, get the full report today.

7 Talent Acquisition Trends You Must Know to Succeed in 2023

Posted on by rachel
A team discussing talent acquisition trends, preparing for 2023.

Break out those fireworks, talent teams, because 2023 is almost here. But if you want to start the year with a bang, you can’t go into it blind. To thrive in the new year, you must prepare for what the next twelve months have in store—and that means getting familiar with the upcoming 2023 talent acquisition trends.

We’re not psychics, but based on where 2022 left off, we predict that these will be the seven more important trends in talent acquisition next year.

1. Labor Shortage Sparks Challenges

The supply of working-age people will continue to decrease throughout 2023. In fact, over the next decade, the number of working-age people in the U.S. will decline by 3.2%. On top of this, the pandemic still wields a visible impact; there are over 3 million fewer working Americans today than there were pre-pandemic.

When you combine the aging population with the pandemic’s effects, you have a significant labor shortage. Sorry to say, but attracting and hiring candidates won’t get any easier.

Two Strategies for Success: 

  • Diversify your candidate pool. Struggling to find candidates? Tap into different talent pools. For instance, advertise on diversity-driven job boards or take advantage of the fresh Gen Z candidates entering the workforce.
  • Set realistic expectations. Hot take, but the “perfect” candidate doesn’t exist. If you’re dead set on finding a unicorn candidate, you’re likely overlooking plenty of other viable options (and you can’t afford to do that in a labor shortage).

2. Retention Grows in Importance

About 40% of HR professionals said talent acquisition was a major priority for 2021. In 2022, that percentage dropped to 17%. Now, HR teams are focused on strategies that fuel talent retention: employee engagement, compensation, and L&D.

It’s no surprise that retention is becoming a priority. When the job market is tight and finding talent is difficult, employee churn deals an even greater blow to companies. (Not to mention that replacing workers is expensive.) 

Two Strategies for Success:

  • Emphasize internal mobility. Employees who move around within their own companies are more likely to stay for the long haul. Giving employees meaningful opportunities to grow and develop through internal moves leaves them with fewer reasons to leave.
  • Revamp your benefits and perks. Perhaps your employee benefits and perks could use a makeover. To ensure that what you’re offering still aligns with what your employees value the most, ask for their feedback.

3. Rise of the Employer Brand

Your employer brand encompasses how others perceive your company. It’ll be essential in 2023, yet for varying reasons depending on your industry and place in the hiring sphere.

Perhaps waves of layoffs have hit your company this year (we’re looking at you, tech industry). Candidates value job security, and catching wind that your company laid off a sizeable chunk of its staff makes them weary. How does your organization plan on assuaging these fears and improving your public image in 2023?

Or maybe misperceptions of your industry have made it difficult to attract workers, specifically young candidates. This is especially true for the manufacturing industry; less than 50% of young workers see manufacturing as a viable career.

Two Strategies for Success:

  • Freshen up your employee value proposition. Remember: candidate values change all the time. Does your EVP still resonate with what modern candidates care about? If not, it’s time to revamp it.
  • Actually commit to DEIB. Candidates want to know where you stand on DEIB before they accept a job offer. Audit your career page and hiring process for opportunities to showcase your DEIB initiatives and values. 

4. Impending Recession Inflicts More Damage

The looming recession is the elephant in the room for 2023 strategy meetings. Companies have begun to trim their budgets and their workforces in response to economic uncertainty.

But while some companies are bracing for what’s to come, most tech companies are already wondering, “When will this end?” Thus far in 2022, over 140,000 tech workers have been laid off. Each month, more and more high-profile workforce cuts make the headlines (sorry, not all talent acquisition trends can be fun).

Two Strategies for Success: 

  • Refine your tech stack. Want to emerge from the downturn stronger than ever? Then implement recruitment technology. Investing in the right tech places you in the best position possible once you revert back to your normal hiring cadence.
  • Maximize what you have. When faced with a smaller budget and fewer resources, you must do more with less. Instead of spending time and money hiring external candidates, consider your current employees. And instead of throwing everything at the wall to see if it sticks, use your hiring data to make informed, precise decisions. 

5. Skills Gap Continues to Widen

As technology continues its high-speed evolution, the global skills shortage worsens. Old skills die out just as fast as new skills emerge, and not every company can keep up. In fact, most companies worldwide—87%—say that they have a skills gap or will have one within the next few years. 

Companies say that their skills gaps are the widest in the areas of data analytics, IT management, and executive management. Looking to the future, these same companies agree that the need for advanced data analysis and mathematical skills will grow dire.

Two Strategies for Success:

  • Upskill your current workforce. In the age of digital transformation, upskilling your employees is a must-do. Your company can’t keep up with the latest trends if your employees don’t have the latest skills.
  • Rethink how you evaluate candidates. Don’t weed out promising talent just because of “red flags” that don’t even reflect a candidate’s abilities, like having gaps in a resume. When assessing candidates, focus on the knowledge, skills, and capabilities displayed in their application. 

6. Automation Takes the Spotlight

Automation is a growing topic in the world of talent acquisition. It takes care of the time-consuming parts of your recruitment process so that you have more time to spend on high-value initiatives.

Looking to the talent acquisition trends ahead, automation adoption is sure to increase as more teams discover its benefits. And with a recession, labor shortage, and a workforce skills gap on the horizon, leveraging automation in hiring could mark the difference between talent teams that thrive and flounder.

Two Strategies for Success:

  • Don’t wait to shop for tech. The sooner that you automate your workflow, the sooner you’ll reap automation’s rewards. Automating the interview scheduling process reduces your time-to-hire, delivers a better candidate experience, and moves you closer to hitting your goals.
  • Leverage the right automation. You’ve been warned: not all automation is created equal. Subpar scheduling automation can’t handle the challenges of everyday scheduling. You want automation that can intelligently select interviewers, schedule for speed or for “best fit,” and identify interview options spanning one or multiple days.

7. Evolution of Pay Transparency

Pay transparency made a splash in 2022. New York City joined the ranks of Colorado and Connecticut in requiring companies to include salary ranges in job postings, and California is soon to follow in 2023. 

By the beginning of 2023, one-fifth of U.S. workers will be covered under pay transparency laws. As workforces and candidates demand discussions on salary, HR and talent acquisition must respond. Are you prepared?

Two Strategies for Success:

  • Determine your transparency level. Not every organization is ready to go all-in on full transparency. As a starting point for identifying where you want to be on the spectrum, survey employees to understand what they’d like to know about salaries.
  • Get real during the interview process. Don’t wait until the last moment to disclose the true salary offer. Yes, candidates want to do meaningful work, but they also want to be paid well while doing it. They want to discuss compensation in early conversations to know if the role is worthwhile.

Stay Ahead of Talent Acquisition Trends With Powerful Recruitment Tech

Now that you’re caught up on the biggest talent acquisition trends coming in the new year, we have one final suggestion to make 2023 your team’s best year yet. Start the year off on the right foot with best-in-class recruiting tech.

GoodTime Hire helps reduce your time-to-hire, crush your goals, and deliver a seamless candidate experience. Hire automates the entire interview scheduling process to create the optimal schedule for candidates and interviewers and get to the offer stage faster than ever.

See how interview scheduling software can transform your recruiting process today.

The Remote Interview Era: How Scheduling Must Evolve

Posted on by rachel
Hiring team conducting a remote interview.

Anyone else still have whiplash from these past few years? The remote work era—and the changes that came with it—sent shockwaves throughout the hiring landscape. Four in five companies now offer remote or hybrid work, and 82% of employers now opt for a remote interview when speaking with candidates. 

Recruitment teams have had to alter their practices to adapt to this new normal, including their interview scheduling methods. How exactly has interview scheduling changed? One word: flexibility. 

As the rigid all-day onsite interview format fades away, flexible scheduling capabilities in your tech are no longer a nice-to-have—they’re a requirement. You can’t successfully coordinate a complex remote interview without incorporating flexibility into your scheduling.

But first, let’s examine how we even reached this current moment in time. 

The New Normal for Interview Scheduling: How Did We Get Here?

The way that recruiters hire people, the frequency of meetings, and the degree of candidate availability are now wildly different. These changes have introduced levels of complexity to the interview process that no team—without the proper tools—can manage effectively. Here’s what’s changed in the hiring landscape:

The Death of the Onsite Interview

Remember when employers would routinely fly candidates out to their companies for a packed day of onsite meetings and office tours? With the surge in remote work and remote recruiting, the onsite interview is now a thing of the past (hello, remote interview). 

In-person interviewing allowed panels of employees to swap in and out for multi-stage, all-day interviews with candidates. Now, remote hiring has laid in-person interviewing to rest. 

A New Meeting Culture

If you find yourself sitting in meetings more often than ever before, you’re not alone. Remote work created a culture of constant meetings; professionals spend up to a third of their workweek in meetings. 

Blocking off a full day to have large groups meet with candidates is now almost impossible. Interview scheduling becomes even harder when you have employees based across the globe, a reality that is increasingly common in the distance economy. 

Difficulties With Engaging Candidates

Candidates aren’t easy to come by; there are two jobs for every available worker. Many are passive candidates who are already employed, which makes it difficult to fit a complex series of interviews into their workday. 

Not all passive candidates can afford to take a day off of work to interview in an all-day session—and they certainly can’t show up in person. 

Interview Scheduling Must Now Be Flexible

Now, are we all caught up to speed? Due to the changes prompted by the remote work era, scheduling all-day onsite interviews is increasingly less common. 

The new norm of scheduling is evolving to look like this: scheduling a series of remote interviews spread out over several days.

Scheduling complex multi-day interviews comes with several challenges that didn’t exist with the all-day onsite interview. It multiplies the number of meetings to coordinate, broadens the interview timeline to keep tabs on, makes it difficult to reschedule or adjust specific meeting times, and more. 

This interview format isn’t easy to schedule—unless your scheduling tool has the right capabilities. Coordinating these remote interviews calls for a heightened level of flexibility. Here are several reasons why flexible scheduling is a requirement for today’s recruiting teams and candidates:

From Your Recruiting Team’s Perspective

With calendars more jam-packed than ever (on both the interviewer and candidate side), interviews must be spread out over several days. Without this flexibility, it’s incredibly difficult to find available times when key interviewers can get together with a candidate.

Working across teams and time zones makes calendar coordination all the more complex, once again prompting recruiting coordinators to schedule over the span of a few days to locate availability. Long story short: it’s tough to get an interview on the books without flexibility in scheduling.

From Your Candidate’s Perspective

Remember how we said that many candidates are already employed? With their limited availability, these candidates need to book their interviews over their lunch hour, in between meetings, or during any other free moment in their workday.

If you want them to go through a series of panel interviews, you’ll need to break it up over several days to make their participation possible. 

Above all, today’s candidates need to be accommodated if you want to attract and win the best of the bunch (it is a candidate’s market, after all). That requires talent acquisition tech that can adeptly schedule beyond the confines of the one-day interview structure.

Effortlessly Schedule Your Next Remote Interview

As the norms of scheduling interviews evolve, your recruiting tech stack must evolve with them. Recruiting teams now face a new remote recruiting reality, with new interview scheduling challenges requiring new tech. 

You need a tool with scheduling flexibility that can coordinate complex panels of interviews fast enough to keep candidates engaged. And as the cherry on top, you must provide a holistically compelling hiring experience. 

No existing tools can provide this—until now. GoodTime Hire delivers the flexibility that’s missing from your HR tech stack. Recruiting teams can schedule interviews over one or multiple days; they have complete control over meeting event times, dates, breaks, attendees, and priority.

Learn more about how Hire can revolutionize the way that you schedule interviews.

Internal Mobility: Your Secret Weapon During a Hiring Slowdown

Posted on by rachel
Recruiter interviewing an internal candidate.

“Do more with less.” You’re sure to hear this phrase whenever uncertain economic conditions arise. Amid the current economic and hiring downturn, there’s a growing pressure in the talent community to maximize resources. However, the one opportunity that far too many talent teams brush aside is optimizing internal mobility.

The majority of employers (38%) say that they don’t market job opportunities to their own employees. It’s time to change that. Internal recruiting leverages existing talent to mold your hiring team into an agile unit, able to withstand anything that the landscape throws at them. It’s the epitome of “doing more with less.”

Better yet, with the lower cost of internal candidates, hiring from within allows you to fill crucial talent gaps when economic conditions make external recruiting less feasible. 

Here are six ways to enhance your internal mobility strategy and stay afloat during a slowdown in hiring.

1. Get Leadership on Board

Uplifting internal mobility is an undertaking that talent acquisition can’t do alone. Getting firm buy-in from leadership is crucial to an internal mobility strategy’s success. This buy-in allows for a culture of mobility to truly flourish throughout an organization.

When presenting this strategy to leadership, remember that leadership speaks in dollar signs and metrics. Ensure that you’re armed with solid statistics on why hiring internal candidates is a smart move for the company’s bottom line—especially considering current economic and hiring conditions.

Once you secure their endorsement, it’s time for leadership to lay the groundwork for your new mobility culture. They should inform employees that they are welcome to search for new career opportunities internally, and encourage managers to vocalize this same sentiment to their direct reports. 

2. Emphasize Learning and Development

Don’t expect for employees to apply to internal positions right out the gate. You need to do a bit of extra work to prepare employees for potential internal moves, and that means uplifting learning and development (L&D).

Making L&D accessible to employees allows them to gain the training and skills that are needed for specific internal roles that they desire. L&D can take a wide variety of forms, but mentorships and job shadowing are both great ways to prepare employees for any role changes.

3. Support Your Organization’s Managers

Seventy percent of talent acquisition professionals say that the biggest obstacle to internal recruiting is a manager who doesn’t want to let go of talent. We get it; it’s logical to not want to lose your best employees. 

However, an employee switching roles shouldn’t be viewed as a loss for a manager, but a win for a company. It’s crucial to educate managers on the value of internal mobility, such as improved cross-department collaboration and higher retention. 

Not all managers are resistant to internal mobility; some managers simply don’t know how to contribute to such an initiative. That’s why managers need sufficient support and training so that they know how to uplift their direct reports and prepare them for career changes.

4. Help Define Career Paths for Employees

So, you have employees who are interested in making internal moves, but they’re not sure which options are available to them—or how to move internally to begin with. That’s where the importance of defining career paths comes in.

Fostering transparency surrounding career paths makes internal mobility all the more accessible. To kick-start the process of defining career paths, empower managers to work alongside their direct reports and carve out custom paths and goals.

5. Shed Light on Lateral Mobility

A common misconception of internal mobility is that it always means climbing up the career ladder. However, that’s just not the case. Internal mobility encompasses both vertical and lateral moves. It’s important to clarify career opportunities for both.

Lateral mobility is commonly referred to as “role-to-role mobility,” where an employee moves to a new internal position with little (if any) changes to their compensation or career level. 

There’s just as much value in lateral mobility as there is in vertical mobility. Encouraging lateral moves enhances collaboration across departments and keeps employees continuously engaged in your organization’s opportunities.

6. Elevate Internal Mobility With Tech

No matter if you’re hiring internally or externally, candidates should experience an efficient and meaningful hiring process. The best way to live up to a candidate’s expectations and deliver a noteworthy hiring experience is by enlisting the help of your tech stack. Ever heard of GoodTime Hire?

Hire harnesses Candidate Relationship Intelligence to automate coordination, build relationships during interviews, and provide actionable insights to continuously improve your connections with candidates.

Schedule a demo to learn more about how Hire can transform your talent acquisition process.

Then, Now, and Beyond: What Matters Most in Talent Acquisition

Posted on by rachel
Jenn Oswald, GoodTime's Head of People Strategy, experienced in talent acquisition.

In a fast-paced field like talent acquisition, the name of the game is simple: evolve or die. Talent teams can either keep pace with the ever-changing rules for hiring, or get left in the dust. 

The worldwide events from the past few years (COVID-19, anyone?) have revolutionized the ways that companies snag top talent. But here’s the question of the hour: amid all of the commotion in the talent acquisition industry, what really matters right now? And what will matter for talent teams in the future? 

We sat down with our Head of People Strategy, Jenn Oswald, to hear her thoughts on how we found ourselves at this current moment in the industry, where talent teams should focus their attention, and where the future of talent acquisition is heading.

Then: How Talent Teams Reached This Moment

Before we dive into the current state of the talent acquisition industry, let’s take a stroll down memory lane, shall we? 

The Pre-COVID Hiring Era

Jenn recounts how before the pandemic, the well-known, large companies typically had a major leg up on the talent competition, garnering a plethora of applicants. The vast majority of these organizations conducted company-driven hiring processes. 

“Their focus on talent was, ‘We’re going to put you through these processes, and we’re going to decide if you deserve to be here,’” Jenn said. “Candidates were at the whim of these processes; processes tended to take much longer.”

Research shows that getting hired in the U.S. took twice as long in 2014 as it did in 2010. The length of hiring processes—and their complexities—continued to increase from there.

However, as time went on, companies started to change their tune. Employers recognized their difficulties with filling certain roles and resolved to clean up their drawn-out, company-centric processes.

COVID’s Impact on Talent Acquisition

Bam. COVID hit, and hiring screeched to a halt. Fast-forward a bit, and companies slowly revved up their hiring processes again—except things were far from business as usual. Remote work surged in popularity, and soon hiring surged as well.

But beyond the rapid changes happening on the employer side, the mindsets of candidates began to evolve as well. 

“There was definitely a mental shift of people examining what’s really important to them,” Jenn said. “Companies had to drastically start looking at things that they never thought of before, like their hiring philosophy. And, ‘Do we follow our values? How do we talk about our values?’”

Company-driven hiring processes were out, and candidate-driven hiring processes were in. And with a shortage of candidates and an abundance of open roles, companies raced to hire the best talent in the fastest time. 

Now: What Matters in Talent Acquisition

Here we are in the present day—and things are a bit shaky. Companies have started to break into a cold sweat, worrying that they’ve overhired and overpaid what the market can bear (queue the layoffs and hiring freezes). 

Now that we’ve entered this new phase, where should talent teams concentrate their efforts so that they can rise to the top and snag the best talent? 

What matters most right now?

Balance Quality and Speed

With hiring slowdowns and freezes popping up left and right, now is the perfect time to get serious about optimization. Delivering a high-quality hiring process as fast as possible is key to standing out among the talent competition. 

But, before teams optimize their operations for speed and quality, Jenn recommends for them to do some inspecting.

“What matters most is first understanding what your current state is,” she said. “Analyze your data, look at your current process, map out where things work and where things maybe don’t work.” 

Then, once teams understand their process, they can double down on eliminating any bottlenecks that wreck the interviewing experience. 

Convey Mission & Vision

“People want to work for a company that is mission and vision-based,” Jenn remarked. “Make sure that your company walks the talk.”

The number’s don’t lie: a survey found that 79% of adults would consider a company’s mission and purpose before applying. 

In many cases, culture—another important element for job hunters—goes hand in hand with mission and vision. Candidates seek out companies with a culture of practicing what they preach in their mission/vision statements.

Emphasize Flexibility

For candidates, flexibility is top of mind—and that’s not changing anytime soon. Yes, this can mean offering remote work arrangements, but that’s not the only way to emphasize organizational flexibility.

Many candidates simply want their future employer to promote work-life integration. They want the freedom to coordinate their schedules in and out of the office to best fit their lives.

Jenn hopes that we’ll see more companies adopt flexible results-driven environments. These types of workplaces possess a strong focus on each employee’s outcomes, rather than just the number of hours that they clock in.

Demonstrate DE&I

“Candidates are asking companies to be more transparent about their DE&I numbers and achievements,” Jenn said. 

She adds that this can be a particularly difficult task for startups, since it takes a while to gather meaningful DE&I-based statistics.

Nevertheless, there’s a multitude of ways for companies to prove that their commitment to DE&I isn’t just lip service. Ensuring that their interviewer panels are diverse and inclusive is a great start.

Beyond: What Will Matter in the Future of the Industry

Now, it’s time to peer into our crystal ball and see what’s on the horizon for the talent acquisition industry. It can be difficult to predict what will matter in the future, but lucky for us, Jenn has some thoughts.

Establish the Core Purpose

From a macro level, Jenn says that establishing the purpose behind the hiring process—from both the candidate’s perspective and the hiring team’s perspective—will likely be of utmost importance.

“If you don’t have the core purpose of why you’re hiring, and if the candidate doesn’t have the core purpose of why they’re talking to you, then without those two things, it’s really not an interview,” Jenn said. 

Then, Weave Key Elements Into the Hiring Process

Once the hiring team’s purpose and the candidate’s purpose unite, teams can shift their energy towards building up the important micro pieces of their operations.

These pieces include several elements that hold significance in the current talent landscape: DE&I, the candidate relationship, interviewer training, and employer branding, to name a few.

But yet again, if hiring teams neglect to align with their candidate’s purpose, then no supplemental elements can truly give their interviews substance.

Optimize Your Hiring for Whatever the Future Holds

Leveraging the right talent acquisition technology is essential when preparing for whatever the industry has in store.

And the key to building a robust tech stack? Adding GoodTime Hire into the mix.

Hire automates coordination, improves your relationships with candidates, and provides actionable insights to continuously optimize the entire hiring process. 

Learn more about how Hire can supercharge your talent acquisition team to win top talent.

How HR Leaders Expect the Talent Acquisition Landscape To Evolve

Posted on by rachel
HR leaders discussing the future of the talent acquisition landscape.

Resignations and remote work policies and layoffs, oh my! The ever-changing talent acquisition landscape is enough to make anyone’s head spin. In order to stay afloat, talent teams must get comfortable with change. 

So, what does the future of the talent acquisition landscape look like? We went on the hunt for answers.

Our 2022 Hiring Insights Report surveyed 560 HR, talent, and recruiting decision makers across the U.S. We uncovered their perceptions on the most pressing challenges facing their teams, and how to succeed in the future of the hiring landscape.

The findings? Leaders expect for retaining talent, meaningfully connecting with candidates, and improving hiring efficiency to define the future of talent acquisition. Let’s dig into the data.

Candidate Relationships Grow in Importance

We asked respondents how they would describe the changes they’ve observed in the hiring landscape over the past 12 months. The majority (47%) said that the landscape has become more competitive due to an increased demand for talent. Trailing closely behind, 46% said that creating genuine relationships with candidates has become crucial.

Looking to the future, talent leaders agreed that connecting with candidates will remain of utmost importance. The ability to create meaningful candidate relationships topped the list of how HR leaders expect the landscape to change in the next 12 months.

The takeaways? If recruiting teams want to compete with the talent landscape, they must invest time and energy into forming a bond with candidates. For instance, instead of spending all of your energy on learning what candidates can offer your company, spend a little bit more time learning what candidates look for in a role.

Challenges With Talent Retention on the Horizon

When asked which hiring challenges they’ve faced in the past 12 months, talent leaders ranked “retaining top talent” as their biggest obstacle. In 2021, a whopping 47 million Americans quit their jobs as part of the Great Resignation. Needless to say, our report’s finding comes as no surprise.

Our respondents expect talent retention to remain their biggest challenge in the next 12 months as well. Here’s where things get interesting. Talent leaders agree that connecting with candidates will remain a key component of a successful hiring process. Yet creating candidate relationships isn’t just important for talent acquisition. It’s also crucial for talent retention.

So, if you want to master talent retention, know this: retaining talent starts from the first moment that a candidate speaks to a recruiter. Cultivating genuine connections with potential new hires sets the stage for a meaningful experience at your company—and higher retention down the line.

Improving Hiring Efficiency Remains Paramount

The majority of talent leaders (46%) said that in the past 12 months, their main concern when refining their hiring process was boosting their overall efficiency. Hiring efficiency proved to be absolutely essential amid 2021’s tight labor market, as teams scrambled to backfill roles.

Likewise, the majority of respondents agreed that improving efficiency is still their biggest focus area when diving into the future of the talent landscape. This isn’t the least bit shocking; enhancing hiring efficiency will never go out of style. 

To remain agile within the constantly changing landscape, teams must put the proper systems in place so that they can boost efficiency, do more with less, and remain prepared for anything that the talent world throws their way.

How To Succeed in the Talent Acquisition Landscape

So, you want to know how to prepare for the future of talent acquisition? Well, here’s the answer, tied up in a neat little bow, straight from the minds of the U.S.’s talent leaders.

Focus your attention on improving hiring efficiency, boosting talent retention, and improving candidate relationships, and you have yourself a masterful talent acquisition strategy.

If you lay the groundwork for an efficient hiring process, you create more space to connect with candidates. Strong candidate relationships give rise to lasting new hires. These lasting new hires result in better talent retention. Boom.

Keep Up With the Latest HR Trends

In a tumultuous environment like talent acquisition, it pays to have a pulse on the latest happenings in the landscape. If you’re looking to gain a better understanding of the challenges facing hiring teams and best practices for refining your strategies, you came to the right place.

Download our 2022 Hiring Insights Report today to learn more about the state of hiring, and what must be done to win over candidates.

Here’s How To Turn the Great Resignation Into the Great Retention

Posted on by rachel
A group of happy employees amid the Great Retention.

By now, we’re all familiar with the Great Resignation (shoutout to the internet’s endless think pieces). Don’t worry—we’re not here to talk your ear off about how employees are leaving companies in droves. Instead, we’re here to discuss how HR teams can transform this pivotal moment, and make lemons into lemonade. To ensure that their employees want to stick around, organizations must turn the Great Resignation into the Great Retention.

But this doesn’t mean that HR teams should throw retention strategies at the wall and see what sticks. In order to retain their people and make the Great Retention the next big phenomenon, companies need to study exactly why the vast majority of employees leave for greener pastures, and then strategize accordingly.

Here are several ways to boost retention in your organization, backed by the data behind why employees resign in the first place.

Make Employee Well-being Paramount

Key Stat: 40% of employees cited burnout as their top reason for leaving their jobs in 2021.

How to Respond: Employees experience burnout when a high workload and a high amount of stress combine with a low level of organizational support. HR teams must prioritize the well-being of employees to successfully combat burnout. This starts by making sure employees have access to the proper organizational support and resources. 

Remind employees of the resources that are available to them—such as Employee Assistance Programs—and think about which resources are missing or need improvements. For instance, perhaps you have a generous PTO policy, yet employees are having to jump through hoops to get their time off approved. Some organizations—wink wink, like GoodTime—also allow employees to take a day off each quarter for company-wide mental health days.

Emphasizing connection across your organization is another way to boost well-being and squash burnout. Consider planning virtual or in-person, get togethers for employees to bond.

Improve Opportunities for Advancement

Key Stat: 33% of people said no opportunities for advancement was a major reason why they quit their job in 2021.

How to Respond: Your HR team’s ability to support the career advancement of employees heavily influences whether they stay or leave. Ensure that your organization provides team members with a clear roadmap for career progression so that employees aren’t left wondering what they’re working towards.

Whether it’s a designated mentor or their team leader, employees will benefit from having someone that they can meet with on a regular basis to discuss their career goals and ensure that they’re set up for success.

Reimbursing employees for learning opportunities that they would like to take on, whether it’s a certification course or educational books, is another great way to support their goals.

Pay Employees What They Deserve

Key Stat: 37% of people said low pay was a major reason why they quit their job in 2021.

How to Respond: Yes, employees want to work at a place with flexibility and a good work/life balance, but they still have to pay their bills. Yet fulfilling requests for higher pay isn’t always an option for companies. Still, there’s steps you can take to ensure that your employees earn what they deserve.

A major way to move the Great Retention full steam ahead is to give employees retention bonuses. That way, employees have a worthwhile reason to stay at your company. Alternatively, set up a bonus plan where employees are compensated whenever your company reaches certain attainable milestones. With that option, employees will get to celebrate your company’s success and be rewarded for their contributions.

Above all, make sure that your company champions pay equity. Every single employee should receive equal and just compensation for their experience and tenure. 

Boost Work Flexibility

Key Stat: 21% of Americans who plan to resign want more flexible/remote work options.

How to Respond: For every company that doesn’t promote flexibility in work arrangements, there’s a handful that will—and those are the companies that your employees will flock to. The proof is in the headlines: we’ve already seen swarms of employees quitting over RTO policies.

Even if the nature of your organization/industry requires all or certain employees to spend time in the office, considering at least a hybrid work policy is sure to make a big impact on employee retention. 

If you don’t know where to start, learn from the companies that are excelling in this new world of work. We’ve compiled a list of four organizations with stellar flexible work policies.

Most Importantly: Listen to Your Employees 

The importance of gathering feedback from your employees cannot be overstated. Ask for their thoughts on how you can improve their experience at your organization. Listen to them with an open mind and be prepared to acknowledge any faults.

Transparent communication is crucial to a healthy company. Thoughtfully analyzing your periodic eNPS (Employer Net Promoter Score), a measure of employee satisfaction and loyalty, is a great way to understand how employees feel and take action on their feedback. 

And if you haven’t held exit interviews before, now is the time to do so. Facilitating candid discussions with employees who want to resign helps you identify patterns that cause team members to leave.

Give Your HR Team a Leg up With Goodtime Hire

Turning the Great Resignation into the Great Retention all boils down to acting in the best interest of your employees. But let’s not forget about your future employees. Talent retention and acquisition are two sides of the same coin; when you successfully cater to candidates, you create new hires that are eager to stay with your company for the long haul.

And the key to exceeding the expectations of candidates? Leveraging GoodTime Hire.

Hire automates coordination, builds relationships during interviews, and provides actionable insights to continuously improve your connections with applicants.

Interested in learning all about how Hire can supercharge your talent acquisition process? Come right this way.

Hiring Slowdowns: 7 Ways Recruiters Can Make the Most of Their Time

Posted on by rachel
Recruiter making the most of his time during a hiring slowdown.

All good things must come to an end. After a year of rapid-fire hiring, sky-high startup valuations, and soaring stocks, companies are now coming back down to earth. As the market corrects itself, more and more organizations have responded by enacting hiring slowdowns.

While recruiters are used to adapting to shifting circumstances, hiring slowdowns can feel like uncharted territory. You might be limited from your usual day-to-day activities, but a hiring slowdown doesn’t mean that you need to slow down. Recruiting will rebound, and when it does, you’ll want to be in the most advantageous position possible to snag the best talent. 

Here are seven ways to turn hiring slowdowns into golden opportunities to optimize your recruitment process and boost efficiency.

1. Keep Your Talent Pipeline Warm

If hiring is screeching to a halt, the last thing you should do is cut off communication with candidates. Now’s the time to nurture your pipeline and deepen your recruiter-candidate relationships. That way, you’ll hit the ground running when hiring bounces back. 

Make it a habit to engage with candidates on a periodic basis. Keep them up to date on any roles that they’re interested in, and practice full transparency on the status of your team’s recruiting. 

You can also spend time holding meaningful conversations with candidates that you didn’t have the bandwidth to facilitate before. Delve deep into their career goals, interests, and skills so that you can match them with the perfect opportunity.

2. Improve Your Sourcing Strategies

Take a good, long look at your talent sourcing strategies. You likely have a preferred channel for finding candidates. For most recruiters, this is LinkedIn. However, it’s vital to also tap into alternative, lesser-used channels. 

Top candidates receive a flood of messages from recruiters on the most popular channels, making it difficult to stand out from the crowd. 95% of recruiters use LinkedIn to hunt for talent; that’s a lot of competition. Leveraging alternative channels gives you an edge and captures the attention of candidates that you might not have been able to reach before.

Look into industry-specific Facebook and Reddit groups, Slack communities, face-to-face events, and double down on your referral program to diversify your channels—and your candidates.

3. Upskill Your Interviewers

Chew on this stat: 44% of job seekers agree that the interview experience is the most influential part of the hiring process. To set yourself up for success once your hiring slowdown concludes, invest time into improving your interview experience. And the best way to do this? Creating a top-notch interviewer training program.

Start by establishing a process where new interviewers shadow the seasoned interviewers. During the shadowing stage, new interviewers should gain an understanding of which role and skill-specific questions they should ask—and which questions they should avoid (some are actually illegal to ask candidates).

4. …And Upskill Yourself

Always remember to fill your own cup. In the usual day-to-day life of a recruiter, it’s hard to block off time for learning. Thankfully, hiring slowdowns offer extra time to spend on professional development. Seize it!

Now’s the time to dig up those online courses, certifications, or webinars that you’ve bookmarked. Consider building up the following relevant skills and attributes: 

  • Resilience
  • Navigating remote/flexible work (if applicable)
  • Relationship building
  • Systems thinking
  • Personal branding
  • Data analysis
  • Time management

There’s countless platforms out there that offer classes and certifications, but some of the popular ones for recruiters include LinkedIn Learning, The Recruitment Education Institute, Alison, and Recruiting Toolbox.

5. Action on Candidate Feedback

It’s crucial to collect feedback from candidates to understand what they really think about your hiring process and recruitment methods. However, it can be difficult to find time to take action on the feedback.

Hiring slowdowns offer the opportunity to thoughtfully review this feedback. Assess your interview process for ways to make adjustments based on the input that you received.

If you’ve never even collected feedback, now’s the time to do so. Despite the 68% of candidates that would like to provide feedback after an interview, 75% report rarely or never being asked for their opinions. Make a project out of setting up a candidate feedback collection system, and plan out the perfect questions to ask candidates once hiring returns to business as usual.

6. Strengthen DEIB

It’s incredibly worthwhile to invest in your commitment to DEIB. A hiring process that reflects DEIB principles not only attracts top talent, but also benefits your bottom line. However, according to our 2022 Hiring Insights Report, only 33% of companies plan on prioritizing DEIB in the year ahead. 

One of the most difficult aspects of creating a high-quality DEIB hiring policy is finding enough time to thoughtfully strategize. Luckily, a pause in hiring serves as a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for a more equitable hiring process. You can also assess your interview panels to see if there’s opportunities to increase the diversity among your interviewers.

7. Implement the Right Technology

Soon enough, you’ll return to hiring at your normal volume, and your company will once again focus on growth. Now is the time to implement the right recruitment software to remain competitive in the future.

While you might think that hiring more recruiters is the solution to increasing efficiency, that isn’t the case. As wages increase and the Great Resignation moves full steam ahead, human reliant-processes will become far too expensive and downright unscalable. 

Tech is the way forward—specifically, GoodTime Hire. Hire automates coordination to reduce time-to-hire, builds genuine connections between recruiters and candidates, and gathers actionable insights to continuously optimize the entire process.

And the results: companies hire up to 70% faster and impress more candidates than ever before.

Ready to learn more about how Hire can transform your talent acquisition process? Come right this way.