Five Challenges for Powerful Recruiting in 2023

As we enter a new year, one thing that hasn’t changed is the level of challenge recruiters face in filling open positions with external candidates. The Great Resignation was in full force in 2022 and the process of attracting and hiring the right candidates was met with many obstacles. Many recruiters’ organizations also use HCM (human capital management) solutions with functionality that does not enable them to fully meet these challenges. Now in 2023, what do organizations need to take into consideration as they post and market jobs, and how should HCM solutions address these challenges?

Challenge 1: Candidates need to see the brand

In today’s hiring climate, brand is key…and organizations that do not do a good job of publicizing their brands are missing out. At its core, this means marketing the organization’s mission, values, culture, and personality.^[1] It also means communicating whether this organization is a good one to work for, taking into consideration employee reviews about their experiences and encompassing such factors as diversity, inclusion, flexibility, and training resources.^[2]

A very large majority of job seekers (75%) consider an employer’s brand before deciding whether to even apply for a job.^[3] Similarly, only 33% of job seekers are willing to apply for a position with an organization that they are unfamiliar with.^[4]

An HCM solution needs to allow an organization to showcase its brand. This starts with beautiful, personalized career site experiences that offer extensible branding and multimedia support.  It also needs to give prospects a chance to get to know your company by promoting hiring events as part of the candidate experience to expand job awareness while providing comprehensive follow up using embedded candidate relationship management (CRM) tools, and long-term event metrics to gauge success.

Challenge 2: It’s hard to get the right candidates

The underlying component in getting the right candidates is finding those who are qualified for the job. This means not just attracting and matching candidates with jobs, but also attracting candidates who are not even actively applying for work, likely because they are already employed.^[5] Approximately 70% of employers have noted having both too few candidates and too many unqualified candidates. Additionally, close to 80% of employers anticipate the talent shortage will continue in 2023.^[6]

Without enough qualified candidates, recruiters are stuck screening irrelevant applications and facilitating multiple rounds of interviews with candidates. All this adds time and ultimately cost to the selection process.^[7]

However, while organizations are having difficulty finding enough qualified hires, 38.5% of candidates believe employers have requirements which are either unrealistic or overly specific.^[8] This disconnect not only results in missed candidates who forego the opportunity but can even impact gender diversity in the workplace. For example, men tend to apply for a job if they feel that they meet 60% of job description criteria, whereas many women tend to feel they should meet 100%. As a result, many potentially qualified female applicants unfortunately exclude themselves before they can even be considered.^[9]

The right HCM solution should do more to match the right candidates with the job, such as having AI-powered recommendations that refer the right candidate to the role and pre-screening questionnaires to understand candidates beyond what’s on their application.

Challenge 3: Preventing ghosting through communication

The term “ghosting” is a new buzzword in the recruiting vernacular. It is often defined as a digital departure, a friend or significant other, suddenly not responding to communications.^[10] In a recruiting context, this is often translated to a candidate who does not show up to a scheduled phone interview or no longer answers the recruiter’s communications—or sometimes even an employer that stops communication with a candidate.^[11]

While ghosting is challenging, it can also be mitigated by consistent and personalized communication between the candidate and organization. This means a clear understanding as to the candidate’s status and next steps in the process. For example, 65% of candidates said they want organizations to have an application dashboard so they can see where they stand, and 44% are open to using automation and technology for routine touchpoints.^[12]

Candidates and recruiters alike need an HCM solution that supports conversations using two-way text and email communication between recruiters and candidates.

Challenge 4: Fragmented and bad candidate experiences can mean bad results

Almost all candidates have experienced a bad recruiting process at some point. There are many potential reasons for these negative experiences, though complicated and fragmented application processes only compound the frustration. Research has shown that more than 75% of respondents prefer a one-click application over a lengthy one,^[13] and one in five applicants won’t complete an application if it takes over 20 minutes.^[14] Inflating the problem are fragmented HCM solutions that require different login credentials for applications, talent communities, interview systems, and events- while requiring applicants to re-enter this information along the way.

These bad candidate experiences also have a “ripple effect”. Candidates who are discontent with their experiences take to review sites and social media and share their experiences, the content of which can influence the decisions of other potential candidates. In fact, 56% of candidates say they would discourage others from applying due to a bad recruiting experience.^[15]

Remember the importance of an organization’s brand? Negative experiences impact that brand.

Even of those offered a job in high-demand sectors such as technology, banking, and energy, 49% noted they were more likely to turn down the offer if there was a negative recruiting experience.^[16]

An HCM solution should work to build a candidate profile organically as the candidate builds rapport with the employer, without the extra step of account creation. The HCM solution’s digital assistant should also be leveraged to improve the candidate experience and create cleaner, more user-friendly processes for job applications and interview scheduling.

Challenge 5: Inefficient hiring processes miss out

Sometimes, hiring for an open position can take a long time—months even. With multiple interviews and stakeholders to align, the process from initial candidate to offer letter can be tedious.

Even though some of the factors causing the delay are out of a recruiter’s control, these drawn-out processes can result in organizations missing out on good talent. A large majority of candidates (67%) noted that recruiting processes lasting more than a month are one of the most frustrating behaviors.^[17] The best candidates often receive multiple offer letters, so inefficiencies in the hiring process can make an organization lose its potential top picks when a competing offer arrives faster.^[18]

While many factors can slow down a hiring process, the HCM solution should not be one of them. Having features for automated interview scheduling, shared interview calendars, and a dedicated interview coordination work area can help to set meetings faster and simplify the overall process.

What is Oracle Recruiting Booster, and how does it fit in?

Oracle Recruiting Booster was created to expand the capabilities of Oracle Recruiting and help organizations accelerate hiring while building better relationships with candidates. It’s intended to be used with Oracle Recruiting and operates as an embedded part of Oracle Recruiting and Oracle Cloud HCM. Features include:

• Hiring event promotion and support
  • Enables teams to manage and promote hiring events, embedded in the candidate experience
  • Using Oracle Recruiting’s existing CRM, events can be marketed to specific audiences to drive registration and engagement
  • Creation of event pre-screening questionnaires for pre-qualification and candidate targeting
  • Tracking of event registrations, attendance, and metrics to measure event attendees who were matched to jobs
• Two-way messaging
  • Drives communication through two-way candidate conversations with candidates over text and email
  • Text messages are sent and received in Oracle Recruiting, alleviating the need for recruiters to utilize their own personal devices and contact information
  • Messages are automatically tracked in a candidate’s Oracle Recruiting profile, giving users visibility into the conversations taking place and relationships being built with active and passive talent
• Candidate-centric digital assistants
  • Expands the capabilities of Oracle Digital Assistant to deliver a new recruiting assistant experience
  • Candidates can receive personalized job recommendations, ask questions about job openings, complete prescreening and conversationally apply for roles, all through the Digital assistant’s personal and conversational interface
  • Oracle Digital Assistant can also be extended beyond the career site and accessed through messaging channels frequently used by candidates, such as SMS, Facebook Messenger, or WeChat
• Streamlined interview scheduling
  • Enhances and automates the interview booking process to set meetings faster and reduce back-and-forth communication
  • Recruiters gain the ability to search for key interview information and have it all centralized to one location to streamline interview management
  • Automatically identify ideal times for interviews and share them with candidates for their selection

Oracle Recruiting Booster provides customers with an even more robust and comprehensive talent acquisition solution. It operates as a seamless part of Oracle Recruiting, Oracle’s native and innovative hiring solution focused on driving internal mobility, improving recruiter efficiency, and unifying recruiting with the rest of the business. Delivering memorable experiences which are candidate-centric, Oracle Cloud HCM offers an easy application process with personalized experiences and internal mobility support, and without the extra step of account creation, helping organizations to find talent faster.

Other HCM solutions claim to provide similar value. Workday Recruiting, for example, boasts that it helps you “find, share, engage, and select the best internal and external candidates for your organization.”^[19] However, it falls short of Oracle Recruiting in several key areas. For example, Workday released its new Workday Messaging product at Workday Rising 2022, but it only allows for candidate messaging via SMS, as opposed to email and SMS.^[20] Also, Workday’s digital assistant, Workday Assistant, is not a true candidate-facing tool. It is used as more an internal tool, such as recruiters being able to use it to create a job requisition.^[21] This means that candidates applying over a Workday system cannot take advantage of a digital assistant capable of job application submission and interview scheduling using such channels as WeChat or Facebook Messenger. Lastly, while Workday Talent Acquisition claims to offer “automated campaigns” and Workday-connected supporters for social media,^[22] Oracle Recruiting goes further in its ability to manage and promote hiring events.

Ready to meet the challenges of today’s ever-changing hiring climate?

No matter how you hire, recruiting is more important than ever. Oracle Recruiting Booster increases the power of Oracle Recruiting to help organizations expand job awareness, engage candidates at scale and schedule interviews faster. Discover Oracle Cloud HCM for more information.

[1] “What is an Employer Brand, and How Can We Develop an Employment Branding Strategy?”, SHRM HR Q&As, Accessed 20 December 2022, https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/hr-qa/pages/cms_023007.aspx

[2] Bhushan et al., “The Future of Recruiting”, PwC Business Transformation Insights, Accessed 20 December 2022, https://www.pwc.com/us/en/services/consulting/business-transformation/library/hr-recruiting.html

[3] “The Ultimate List of Employer Brand Statistics”, LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Accessed 20 December 2022, https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/business/talent-solutions/global/en_us/c/pdfs/ultimate-list-of-employer-brand-stats.pdf

[4] Bhushan et al., PwC Business Transformation Insights

[5] Ali, D’ipanjenah, “Top 10 Recruitment Challenges in 2022 and How to Overcome Them”, Mercer Mettl Recruitment Blog, 31 March 2022, https://blog.mettl.com/recruitment-challenges/

[6] Sunil, Priya, ”10 Recruitment Trends to Keep an Eye on in 2023”, Human Resources Online, 3 October 2022, https://www.humanresourcesonline.net/10-recruitment-trends-to-keep-an-eye-on-in-2023

[7] Ali, Mercer Mettl Recruitment Blog

[8] Sunil, Human Resources Online

[9] “3 Key Recruiting Strategies to Improve Gender Diversity at the Workplace”, Page Executive, Accessed 9 January 2023, https://www.pageexecutive.com/advice/topics/diversity-inclusion/3-key-recruiting-strategies-improve-gender-diversity-workplace

[10] Popescu, Adam, “Why People Ghost and How to Get Over It”, The New York Times, 22 January 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/smarter-living/why-people-ghost-and-how-to-get-over-it.html

[11] Sunil, Human Resources Online

[12] Bhushan et al., PwC Business Transformation Insights

[13] “5 Reasons Job Seekers Abandon the Hiring Process”, CareerBuilder, Accessed 23 January 2023, https://resources.careerbuilder.com/recruiting-solutions/5-reasons-job-seekers-abandon-the-hiring-process

[14] Holmes, Richard, “Bad Candidate Experience and How to Stop It”, LinkedIn Pulse, 7 July 2020, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bad-candidate-experience-how-stop-richard-holmes

[15] Bhushan et al., PwC Business Transformation Insights.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ali, Mercer Mettl Recruitment Blog

[19] “Workday Recruiting”, Workday, Accessed 20 December 2022, https://www.workday.com/content/dam/web/en-us/documents/datasheets/datasheet-workday-recruiting.pdf

[20] “Workday Messaging”, Workday, Accessed 23 January 2023, https://www.workday.com/content/dam/web/en-us/documents/datasheets/workday-messaging-datasheet-enus.pdf

[21] “What is Workday Assistant?”, University of San Francisco Works Training, Accessed 21 December 2022, https://myusf.usfca.edu/sites/default/files/documents/HR/USFWorks%20Training/What%20is%20Workday%20Assistant.pdf

[22] “Workday Recruiting”