Over the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a serious impact on the talent market. And as the crisis continues to develop, it’s also brought unprecedented changes to hiring and recruitment as we know it.
According to CNN, nearly 4.5 million workers resigned from their jobs back in February 2022. Meanwhile, the majority of workers who quit in 2021 cited low pay (63%), no opportunities for advancement (63%), and feeling disrespected at work (57%) as their main reasons for quitting. Modern workers are changing the way they think about work—and hiring managers need to conquer these hiring challenges to recruit workers in the post-pandemic talent market.
The good news? The post-COVID era also brings countless new opportunities to the field of recruitment. And if your HR team can overcome these challenges, you’ll be able to streamline your strategy with winning hiring practices. So, how can you successfully hire qualified workers in the post-pandemic era, and what will the future of recruitment look like?
How Has Recruitment Changed After COVID-19?
If you’ve been relying on your tried-and-true recruitment strategy for the past few years, you’re probably not seeing the same results that you used to. Why? The recruitment landscape has evolved, and you need to adapt your strategy to compete in a post-pandemic talent market.
From changing worker attitudes to new hiring priorities, you’ll need to tweak your current strategy to hire your dream team in the post-COVID era. Here’s what to expect from the future of recruitment in the coming years.
Hiring Priorities Are Shifting
Since the Great Resignation, we’ve seen a major shift toward remote work—but that’s not the only major change in the recruitment landscape. As more organizations create streamlined processes for hiring and onboarding new candidates, virtual recruitment has emerged as the new “normal.”
At the same time, the hiring priorities of many companies are changing. Instead of hiring job candidates with hard skills, hiring managers are prioritizing candidates with soft skills who can adapt to changing market trends and technological developments. More hiring managers are also taking “compound talent” into account during the hiring process (see: job candidates with skills and industry expertise in another field). This way, managers can build flexible teams that can thrive in the face of talent shortages.
Employer Branding Matters
Whether you realize it or not, your employer brand has always had a dramatic influence on your recruitment efforts. But in today’s post-pandemic era, building a positive employer brand is more important than ever.
Why is employer branding so important? It’s simple: Your candidates developed new priorities during the pandemic. Now, with modern candidates shifting their mindsets toward work, you need a standout employer branding strategy to differentiate your company from the competition.
Contrary to popular belief, employer branding doesn’t end with your careers website and social media channels. It encompasses both external and internal branding. External branding builds your reputation among potential job candidates, highlighting your employer value proposition (EVP) and showing candidates why you’re worth working for. Meanwhile, internal branding establishes your company’s value among existing employees, helping you transform new hires into loyal, long-term workers.
Modern Candidates Value Flexibility
During the COVID-19 pandemic, workers quit their jobs in record numbers. In Northeast Ohio alone, over 400,000 workers quit their job in the last year. Your employees still want to work, but they’re taking a different approach toward their careers. They expect flexibility, investment in their professional development, and competitive benefits. And for the first time, they’re asking whether sacrificing their personal life for their career is really worth it.
The new worker sentiment is reshaping the recruitment landscape, and you need to rethink your hiring strategy to keep up. From the demand for flexible work hours to better work-life balance, these demands have been around for years—but they’ve been considerably exacerbated by the pandemic.
How to Overcome Post-Pandemic Hiring Challenges
Over the past two years, the pandemic has accelerated the already-complex hiring process. Between flexible working hours, skills shortages, and digital recruitment, the talent market poses ample challenges when it comes to recruiting—and retaining—qualified job candidates.
You know how recruitment is changing, but how can you update your hiring strategy to adapt? To streamline your hiring process, your organization needs a holistic strategy. Here’s how to navigate the new world of work with a fresh recruitment strategy.
1. Define Your Ideal Candidate
The first step to streamlining recruitment? Identify what your ideal candidate looks like. Whether you’re hiring caregivers or manufacturing workers, take some time to pinpoint the skillset of your ideal job candidate. Be as thorough as possible, and distinguish between any must-have skills and “bonus points” soft skills and hard skills.
For the best results, you’ll want to strike a balance when crafting your candidate persona. If you go too specific, you’ll struggle to find qualified candidates for open positions. On the other hand, if you keep your candidate persona too broad and vague, you’ll spend more time sorting through unqualified job candidates.
2. Optimize Job Listings
What’s your secret weapon in the war of talent? Two words: job listings. For many prospective job candidates, job listings serve as an employer’s first impression, so it’s essential to write standout descriptions that stand out in a sea of competitors.
To spark your candidates’ interest, write concise job descriptions that leave out any complex industry jargon or ambiguity. Sure, a job title like “rockstar caregiver” might sound catchy, but it’s not as descriptive as “senior caregiver” is. Your job listings should be straight to the point and transparent, so candidates can easily find key details—like daily tasks and benefits—without reading through every word of your listing.
Most importantly, make sure your company values and mission are clear. Your goal is to attract job candidates that fit your company culture, and job listings can be an amazing tool to screen less-than-perfect candidates.
3. Personalize the Candidate Experience
When you want to differentiate your recruitment strategy from the competition, personalization is the answer. Start by determining what kind of workers you’re looking for (think: managers, truck drivers, construction workers…). From there, customize your job listings, landing forms, emails, and other marketing materials to speak directly to that audience segment.
Of course, it’s not enough to just customize your candidate experience and hope for the best. To step up your recruitment game, you’ll also want to personalize your communication strategy. While it’s fine (and even encouraged) to use recruitment automation tools to communicate with your job candidates, you’ll want to infuse human contact into every touchpoint of the hiring journey.
Wherever possible, address each candidate by their first name, keep your messaging warm and inviting, and skip any robotic language. Personalized communications can boost the chances of candidates moving forward with your company—and they can make all the difference when your top picks are choosing between you and the competition.
4. Accelerate Your Hiring Speed
When it comes to recruiting and hiring, speed is the name of the game. You need to act quickly to move your top picks through the hiring process, but you don’t want to make haste decisions that lead to poor hires. How can you strike the perfect balance?
Hiring the perfect job candidate takes time, but time isn’t on your side anymore. As the demand for talented workers increases, your time to hire is more important than ever. To reduce your hiring speed, you need automation tools at your disposal to screen candidates quickly, schedule interviews, and reduce the number of hiring steps needed.
At the end of the day, choosing the right recruitment tools can transform your hiring process. Instead of leaving your dream candidates wondering when they’ll hear back from you, you can seamlessly guide them through every step of the process with consistent communication and timely feedback.
5. Revamp Your Social Strategy
Social media marketing isn’t just reserved for traditional marketers. It’s also an incredibly powerful resource for recruiters, and an effective social media strategy can help you get noticed by both active and passive job seekers (see: job seekers that aren’t actively searching for a new opportunity, but could be swayed by an irresistible offer).
Once you’ve defined your candidate personas, figure out where they’re spending time online to find the right channels for your social media strategy. With candidates spending more time online, countless companies are embracing social media to show off their company culture with employee highlights, team events, and relevant company news. As long as you’re regularly posting engaging content and responding to your candidates’ inquiries, social media can be an amazing hiring tool.
Not sure where to start? Try posting pictures from recent team events, testimonials from loyal employees, and videos that showcase your culture. To capture the attention of your ideal job candidates, you’ll want to keep your social media marketing strategy fresh with different types of content—from infographics to pictures and videos.
Keep Up With Post-COVID Recruitment Trends
To recruit and retain top talent in today’s post-COVID talent market, you need a comprehensive recruitment strategy. Finding quality candidates can feel overwhelming, but following simple steps—like fine-tuning your job listings and defining your candidate persona—can help you beat the competition.
If you have any questions about navigating post-pandemic recruitment, we’d be happy to help. Download our internal self-audit and set up a discovery call with our team to take an innovative approach to recruitment.
