The Hourly Hiring Crisis Is a Process, Not a People, Problem   - ERE

In the current context, the lack of candidates at the top of the funnel seems like the most pressing problem. Yet if we look beneath the surface, we see that across industries, companies in the high-volume-hiring space are struggling with high attrition, poor-quality hires, and high drop-off rates throughout the recruitment funnel.  

These problems are constant, and fixing them could put an end to the shortage of workers, as fewer people quitting means fewer seats to fill.

Traditionally, attraction and selection have been treated as two distinct challenges. Companies have always benefited from high volumes of candidates, so they rarely had to worry about not having enough talent to choose from. 

Now, as talent pools shrink, employers realize that this approach to recruitment is deeply flawed. At the same time, they’re becoming anxious about people having more leverage over their job preferences. Translation: You can’t attract candidates unless you make your brand, workplace, and offering attractive.

Selection processes, whether powered by a single recruiting platform or multiple tools, tend to be linear in how they screen out candidates. A candidate needs to meet the threshold set for each stage to progress to the next. However, in a rapidly-changing labor market, this approach sets you up for failure. 

To future-proof your hiring, you need to take a holistic approach to recruiting and move from a rigid, linear process to a flexible, agile one.

• Matching. First, matching should help you identify the right applicants, as well as get them excited about the role.
• Automation. In a tight labor market, you want a process that’s quick and enables you to offer job security as fast as possible.
• Candidate experience. You should build an engaging application experience that reflects your employer brand and helps job-seekers learn about the business and the role before applying.
• Business intelligence. When hiring at scale, controlling your process and having full visibility into your data is essential.