Top 12 Recruiting Challenges Faced by HR Professionals in 2023

Human Resources or an organisation’s people are its most important asset. It is the talent capital that forms the basis of an organisation’s play in a domain. It is an investment that Companies make for a better Company, but as is the normal course, there are problems in the recruitment and selection process. It starts with the laying out of the correct Job Description (JD) in co-relation to the demands of the role. More often than not, this step itself is the beginning of recruitment difficulties as the quality of profiles rarely matches the optimal expectation and this is the first stage of facing problems in the understanding the requirement and receiving the right number of quality resumes.

A few difficulties in recruitment and selection process:

The sifting of a multitude of profiles for a few Roles are also one of the first set challenges in the recruitment and selection process. After getting past this challenge of lining up the better of the profiles shortlisted to a panel of the organisation’s best Recruiters or Line Managers as the case maybe, the process moves on to the actual recruitment process involving getting the shortlisted candidates to actually face the panel. The recruitment team faces challenges in terms of getting the candidates’ time slots in line with the interviewing panel and even after getting those, more often than that is not able to ensure the actual conclusion of the interview because of numerous instances of candidates actually not being available to take the interview on time when the panel is ready and panel not having the time when the candidate is ready. It’s a challenge of the hiring process that the Recruitment team eventually gets over with.

Below mentioned are a few common challenges faced by the HR teams as per recent surveys:

1. The Need to Make Quick Hire

One of the major struggles that the recruiters these days encounter is the requirement of resources to be hired in a very short span of time. With very little time candidates are made to go through multiple rounds screening and interviews, but the need of good calibre and talent is very important at the same time. Also with multiple projects coming up with huge requirements of resources as the companies are growing enormously in size, it is very challenging for the recruiters to meet the expectations with hiring the required numbers and talent as well.

2. Importance of Validating/ verifying Credentials

One of the most common issues we see in the recruitment process is that the candidates not being able to submit the credentials or academic validations in relation to the roles they became eligible to apply for the jobs at hand. It takes a lot on the part of the recruitment team to actually put across clearly the need for the validations to ensure the authenticity of the candidature. Even considering the credentials have been authenticated with the candidates being offered the Job, the next step of the negotiation of salary is an important aspect that recruiters face.

3. Benchmarking Salaries / Remuneration

It is usually a tricky situation as to whether a benchmarking of the present compensation of the candidate or irrespective of the past remuneration, an entirely new talent led offer is rolled out. Also this may differ from candidate to candidate -Fresher or one with past experience in the same field. The negotiation process that goes on is vital as past that, the offer is rolled out. The acceptance of that offer by the candidate is a persuasion that HR undertakes and to get the candidate to acknowledge and accept the offer is a biggest achievement.

4. Job Shopping

The recruiters face one of the big hurdles of ensuring that the candidate actually does not go shopping basis of an offer made. In such a situation, what would be the ideal reply of a candidate if the recruiter says that he cannot make an offer because he is job shopping? Definitely, the expected response would not be anything to do with money, as every candidate should be aware of the fact that there are tons of companies which offer huge pay packets but never get the employee reach anywhere close to his career goals. A good recruiter can always identify during the course of an interview, that a candidate is comparing salaries with the opportunities offered. In such a situation the recruiter should be smart enough to quickly understand that entire process is a waste of time.

5. Joining Date and on Boarding Issues

To get a joining date is another of the challenging process and scarcely talent led domains such as Biotech, Research, specialised IT jobs involving IOT and AI, even more difficult. Once it done, the next step is get the candidate to actually join on the date set after a mutual agreement. Until then, constant follow up with the candidate is very important so as to ensure that he onboard the company on the said date and time. Later, starts the process of inducting the candidate into the organisation, introducing the personnel to the organisation and getting him/her to embrace the culture and ethos of a Company as it’s the people which make an organisation.

But, are the managers sure that they have provided the right description of the job to the new employee? If not sure, the managers need to engage themselves with the new employee on his/ her understanding of the new roles and responsibilities with frequent discussions and spending ample time in meeting often so as to set the expectations on communications, discussions, meetings, working hours , tasks, performance and results.

6. Effective Online Hiring process

Are the recruiters aware of where their candidates come from – Especially the ones who are the most efficient and the most talented?

Can the recruiters identify that best way of extracting that most desired candidate?

Are they aware of the means which do not produce those good candidates? If not, Why?

Well, to answer these questions, it’s good to have a very clear understanding of the requirement of resources and look for the right ways and means of getting the right candidate pool to your online hiring process.
There are multiple online hiring tools which provide us with a lot of flexibility. We are given many options to customise and present the details of the company. Thus, these tools give us the ability to communicate with the candidates directly, giving the opportunity to approach them to get a clearer view of their potential and skills. Also, companies use this method of hiring to post a job quickly and bring down the cost of recruitment.

Since any candidate /applicant with access to internet can see a job posted online, employers using online hiring tools may be flooded with huge responses; we may expect many of them to be from unmatched or unqualified applicants as well. Recruiters have to take time to screen each and every application to check for relevance. Hence, to avoid unmatched / irrelevant applications, the recruiters have to be very clear and specific in what they post about the prerequisites such as the roles, duties, experience and qualifications

.If the best fit applicants for the job posted live in a different city/country how do we identify them?

The easiest way to screen them is by conducting telephonic interview /discussions, which turns out to be cost effective than an in- person meeting. Candidates who have qualified in the telephonic discussions may have to travel for a face- to – face meeting with the panels, which could bring in a dilemma of whether the candidates are really serious about relocating and joining as soon as possible. If they are not interested, the valuable time of the panels goes for a waste and possibly the money as well. And, on the other side, it is very difficult for the candidate as well to evaluate if the company is the right place for him/her as the process involved in more online and seems to be too impersonal.

7.Staffing Challenges Faced by Companies

Staffing in today’s day and age is a unique task and very few companies get it right. Ours is a large economy and there is currently a demand and supply disequilibrium in most domains- be it the IT industry, Engineering /Manufacturing, Research, Media and Entertainment, Healthcare etc. It is important to clearly set a good Human Resource Management more often than not misunderstood as an important function. In today’s economy, attracting a potential candidate towards an organisation is the biggest challenge in recruiting. The market is more candidate driven and there is a huge demand for talent but we face the issue of shortage of good candidates. Hence, company branding plays a very important role in attracting the right talent to apply for the open positions. To create an employer brand, effective usage of social media, employee spotlight videos, behind the scene shots will help get the applicant to know better of the company.
It’s also seen that Managers don’t allot specific amount of time to follow an effective way of screening and short listing of candidates for the opportunities that come up .This most often leads to hiring of candidates who may be under qualified, which will in turn lead to terminating candidates within a very short span of time. In order to avoid such a situation, companies partner with recruitment consultants and agencies which can provide professional recruiters to pre-screen candidates and ensure that the companies get the best of talent.

8. Fetching the Right Talent at the Right Time

We see that Big recruitment consultants also come up with challenges in getting the right talent. If the recruiters make mistake in fetching the right candidate, then everything will go haywire. Few consultants find it difficult to provide resources with the required time frame and a few find it tough to document the process in the right way.

9. Striking the Right Balance between the Client and the Candidate

Recruitment consultants find it very hard to get candidates who are committed. Both the client as well as the candidate are equally important to the consultant, he/ she needs to master the art of maintaining a good rapport / relationship with both so as to take them smoothly through the process of recruitment until the candidate is on boarded.

10. Affordability of Office Space rental

Another major struggle the recruitment consultant goes through is the affordability of the office space rental. If the consultant doesn’t have a good number of clients, it gets difficult to manage expenses of office space. Building a good database of candidates happens eventually, after a certai n time , which is again a challenge for new recruitment consultants. This may lead to a slowdown in the recruitment process.

11. Lack of Commitment of Candidates with Consultants

Commitment from candidates is another important challenge a new recruitment consultant may face. The candidates are not confident that the consultant will be capable enough to provide them with the right opportunity with the right salary. This results in lack of communication between the candidates and the consultant. Candidates give reasons to avoid phone calls from the consultants, also by saying that they are stuck with something else so that they can get the interviews cancelled. This not only gives a poor image of the consultant, but also creates a bad picture of the candidate showing his or her levels of commitment towards the job requirement.

HRM Challenges

HRM is one of the areas which companies struggle with, apart from revenue generation, cash flow and competition in small to medium business setups. HR challenges are mostly faced by small organisations which do not have a HR department to rely on. There may be only a single HR person handling multiple HR related functions or the director / CEO may himself handle the responsibility. In this way smaller companies learn to face the challenges that HR goes through which prepares them to tackle many issues as they grow with workforce.

12. Adapting to changes and growth of the company

As the company begins to expand with more number of employees and work, productivity may go down as it may get difficult for the employees to cope up with the changes. Here it’s a challenge for the HR along with the senior management, to let the employees know of benefits of such changes. It can be done by conducting regular staff meetings so that the teams will be well informed much before the changes happen and that they will be ready to welcome changes with a positive outlook.

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Importance of training and development

Learning and development plays an important role for the lower- level employees , which again is another challenge for the HR team. This can be definitely managed in a very cost -effective manner by engaging recruitment managers and senior managers to mentor and develop skills of their subordinates.

Compensation and Benefits

A well- structured Compensation is again an important factor that the HR must focus on, as there’s a huge competition between not only in organisations of the same size, but also the big companies. This has to be tackled by the HR, by introducing reward programs, performance incentives, bonuses, etc., so that the employees are benefited in a better way.
This is the synopsis of the many challenges of staffing and recruitment, and it’s the companies which deal with it smartly is the ones which are most successful in building high performance teams.

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