Hiring Managers: Recruiters Aren't Working Hiring managers say they're having a difficult time finding qualified candidates and believe that passive recruiting efforts are becoming increasingly ineffective, according to a new survey by Glassdoor.
By Laura Entis
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
We've come a long way from the bleak days of 2008. After the financial crisis, and corresponding layoffs, demotions and salary freezes, the economy continues to shakily make its way towards a full recovery.
And while this is undoubtedly great news for employees, an increasingly competitive job market is making it difficult for hiring managers to fill open positions, according to a recent, inaugural survey by social jobs and careers community Glassdoor, which polled more than 500 hiring decision makers on some of the top recruiting challenges in today's job market.
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Their first and foremost concern? A lack of talent. While millions of Americans are still looking for work, nearly half (48 percent) of hiring managers report that they aren't seeing enough qualified candidates, and a quarter (26 percent) predict hiring will getting harder in the next 12 months as the U.S. economy continues to pick up steam.
At the same time, more than half (52 percent) of respondents say that passive recruiting, a go-to strategy for onboarding top-tier talent by approaching desirable candidates through recruiters, has been less effective at filling this talent gap. The top reason for this, the managers speculate, is that approached candidates "have grown wary of emails from networking sites and respond at a much lower rate."
All of this indicates that the job market is on the road to a fierce recovery, giving employees – particularly those in competitive positions – more options, and thus the ability to bargain and make greater demands from their employers. (A recent study from PayScale found that 90 percent of companies will hand out raises this year, up from 10 percent in 2010.)
With confidence comes movement. Thirty-six percent of all hiring managers and 56 percent of hiring managers in medium-sized companies surveyed believe that voluntary employee exits will increase in 2015. In other words, it's becoming a seller's market.
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In light of all these challenges, many hiring decision makers feel hamstrung by the outdated tools they have at their disposal. When asked to name the top recruiting challenge today, 24 percent cited "not actively using social media to recruit talented candidates," 20 percent singled-out the "inability to track factors that influence candidates to apply" while 17 percent pointed to the "inability of [their] company's recruiting/hiring systems to allow candidates to apply from a mobile device."
With 9 out of 10 candidates using their mobile phones sometime during the job search process, many companies are not adopting their recruitment strategies for our peripatetic age; forty-four percent of hiring decision makers report they receive zero job applications via mobile devices, while nearly a third say their company's approach to advertising jobs is among the most outdated elements of their company's recruitment process and needs a major upgrade.
In a seller's market, that's not going to cut it.
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