With regards to recruitment, 2021 was a year that made me feel completely blindsided. After experiencing so many difficult challenges in 2020 as a result of COVID (hiring freezes, the shift to virtual hiring, and so on), I think no one could have ever predicted a War for Talent as heavy as the one we’re in right now. We all braced ourselves for an Economic Crisis, but instead, unemployment has never been lower, and making candidates fall in love with your company out of all options has never been more challenging.
And I can tell you one thing. 2022 will be much more challenging. We’re going to face the most challenging year of Recruitment we’ve ever faced because we had to balance so many different interests and requirements at the same time. Let me walk you through them one by one.
Diversity, Equality & Inclusion (DE&I)
Two years ago, most companies felt like they ‘had to do something’ with DE&I. Today, you feel (as it should be!) ashamed when not having a battle plan for DE&I in place. And apart from that, candidates will also no longer accept you not having a battle plan.
More than 3 out of 4 candidates (76%) report that a clear strategy for DE&I is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers. This is even higher for Black, Hispanic, and LGBTQ candidates (4 out of 5).
DE&I is no longer ‘one of the checkboxes’. A lack of vision on how to provide equal opportunities in hiring and ensure a diverse and inclusive workplace will make a large part of your talent pool walk away – and that also applies to your current employees.
Retention: The Great Resignation is happening right now
The first consequence of having a candidate-focused market is a rise of people leaving your company. Your best employees probably get sourced by recruiters on a daily basis, and there’s a fair chance that they will actually leave you to join a company that better reflects their personal goals or beliefs. Or to phrase it more easily, a company which culture fits them better.
Culture is what makes your employees stay in a market like we’re in now. And that makes culture hiring a big priority for the recruitment team.
Candidate Experience
Another consequence of having a candidate-focused market is the increased importance of ensuring that your candidates will have an unforgettable experience.
Did you know that 60% of all candidates will abandon the recruitment process if it’s too complex or stressful?
Candidates hate three things with regards to a job application process:
- A disengaging/boring job application form that requires a lot of input;
- Having to go through a lot of steps in order to get hired;
- Experiencing a lot of stress.
The need for a fast, innovative, and fun process is more important than ever.
Efficiency
We not only want a fast process for candidates, but also for ourselves. The economy keeps growing, and so does our number of job openings. This requires a process that’s not only efficient in terms of time to hire, but also the time investments of hiring managers. In other words: We should find a way to keep the number of interviews low and collect as much info from our candidates as possible early on in the process.
After all, time is money.
Virtual Hiring
And last but not least, there’s the rise of Virtual Hiring – maybe even the best outcome in terms of recruitment from COVID. Being forced to all work remotely, we were also forced to embrace remote (or virtual) hiring. After conducting a survey among our customers, we found out that the majority of our customers struggled most with the feeling of not knowing someone well enough when not being able to be in the same room. And that feeling is something that can only be solved through assessments.
On top of that, we not only embraced remote hiring, but also remote working – which requires a very particular skill set. Self-reliance, collaboration, and being focused are some examples of skills that will heavily impact your ability to work remotely. And that’s another reason why assessments have proven their value.
Balancing everything at once: How Equalture can help
Obviously, I can not not make use of the opportunity to briefly elaborate on how Equalture can help you balance all those challenges. 🙂
In a nutshell: We offer a platform that enables companies to assess both their existing team members, as well as their candidates, on cognitive skills and personality, by making use of gamification. With our neuroscience games, we aim to objectify candidate evaluations, by bringing science-backed candidate insights (and even benchmarked against your team) to the start of the hiring process. In an ideal world, companies would completely let go of the resume, and trust on the game results instead.
While primarily focusing on objective hiring, we also cover all other aspects mentioned above. Here’s how:
- DE&I (how to ensure equal hiring opportunities): By letting all candidates complete a set of neuroscience games at the start of the funnel, Equalture ensures an equal opportunity for everyone to showcase their skills and personality in a data-driven, science-backed way.
- Retention (how to ensure a culture that makes people want to stay): Equalture allows you to analyse the culture within your existing team. You can use this to either hire people who strengthen your culture or people who can contribute to the desired change within your culture.
- Efficiency (how to ensure a fast and time-efficient process): Use Equalture’s games as a pre-screening method at the start of the funnel, to focus your time on the right people, decrease the number of candidates to interview, and the number of steps in the process (after all, you’ll already have a lot of insights at the starts).
- Candidate Experience (how to make it fun and engaging): Candidates rate Equalture’s gamified experience 4.76/5. Most candidates even left a comment after rating us, indicating that they have never experienced so much fun and engagement during a job application process.
- Virtual hiring (how to get to know someone): Equalture’s gamified assessments provide you with science-backed insights into a person’s cognitive skills, behaviour, and personality.
In case you’d like to chat about how we can help you during this challenging year ahead of us, you of course know where to find us.
For now, wishing you a happy holiday and an amazing 2022!
Cheers, Charlotte
