5 Recruitment Trends in 2023 to Hire Top Talent

Can you guess the number one challenge facing recruiters today?

Finding qualified experienced hires. 

A majority 61% of recruiters named this as their top problem (Deloitte). It’s a perplexing statistic – it’s like pizza chefs saying their biggest issue is figuring out how to make a good pizza. 

But it’s not that recruiters are underperforming on their core offer. Far from it. Look at how recent statistics stack the odds against finding and hiring top talent:

• In the early 2010s a typical hire lacked just one ‘essential’ soft skill e.g. collaboration, problem-solving, communication, etc.. Today employers say their new hires lack 18 essential soft skills (Deloitte).
• Of the 70 million US workers who could do their work from home, and currently don’t, 60% want long-term hybrid arrangements and would consider switching jobs if they can’t reach an agreement (Gallup).
• While salary remains the top priority for new hires, 50% won’t work for a company with a bad online reputation even if the salary is above their expectations (HR Daily Advisor).

Despite the challenges, there are hundreds of ways for recruiters to get ahead of 2023 trends right now. As a recruitment firm specializing in startups, and based in San Francisco, here’s how PeopleConnect is also preparing itself to hit the ground running.

Here are five ways you too can get a head start on your future competition.

1. Making Remote Work Work

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on workplace culture are here to stay.

The percentage of workers operating exclusively from home rocketed from about 5% to 70% of the entire US workforce in 2020 (Gallup). But since then the numbers haven’t fallen back down. In 2022 around 29% of US employees work exclusively from home.

What’s more, hybrid work arrangements (10-99% remote) have risen from nowhere to a huge 49% of the US workforce.

The trend is showing no sign of slowing down. New hires want to work from home if their job allows it. Top quality hires are likely to turn down a job offer if they can’t get at least a hybrid arrangement. 

So what does this mean for recruiters and hiring managers?

Prepare yourself for this reality. 

If you’re a recruiter, and the job position could be done from home, talk to your client about the possibilities of offering hybrid work arrangements to secure better talent. Consider also how you can make the recruitment process work entirely remotely, without losing out on the quality of your hires.

If you’re a hiring manager, consider how you can use tech solutions to make this a possibility. Build a strong employer brand online. Consider offering meaningful benefits to the package like professional development courses, memberships to coworking spaces, or have set times of the year for co-workers to meet up.

2. Recruiting Tech & Automation

Companies are cutting their hiring costs by 17% – and cutting HR staff hours by 26% – by using tech to automate parts of their hiring process (Modern Hire).

A separate study found that HR managers lose 14 hours a week by manually completing tasks that could be automated (Career Builder).

The rise of tech solutions for business’ problems and needs will help companies do a lot more hiring themselves. When they see the cost savings and time savings, it’s a no-brainer.

But that doesn’t mean recruiters will be automated out of a job.

While AI and tech can lead to a 100% uptime in workflow and a 75% reduction is cost-per-screen, the figures are not the same when looking at how tech improves quality of hire. The same study found that AI led to just a 4% increase in revenue per employee.

As much as tech can make the process faster, it can’t necessarily make it better. Accurately assessing what the client needs, whether a candidate is a good fit for the company culture, whether the candidate’s relevant experience really is relevant experience, and so on, all require an experienced human with hours of interview time under their belt.

By all means, use the tech to speed up your work. But your core value as a recruiter will still be your ability to search for candidates who can raise an employer’s revenue.

3. Employer Branding 

Salary remains the number one preoccupation for 67% of candidates. 

But employers in 2023 won’t get candidates into their offices based on salary alone. Additional benefits are now a number one priority for 63% of candidates, while 59% make their decision based on the office’s location or potential for remote work.

Furthermore, over 75% of job seekers will research an employer’s brand before even applying for the job (LinkedIN). 

This means that employers in 2023 need to focus on their employer branding, or their employer value proposition (EVP). The EVP should put the focus on everything else besides the salary. We’re talking: 

• benefits of working for the company
• the company culture
• how much the company prioritizes employee wellbeing
• any professional development employees can expect
• and so on

In other words, the coming year will rely more than ever on companies pitching the job offer to candidates – rather than waiting for candidates to come to them.

So what does this mean for recruiters and hiring managers?

First of all, recruiters will need to determine all the extra benefits of working with a client’s company in order to position the offer favorably to clients. If there is an EVP – ideally a short video of the company’s hiring manager talking about the workplace – even better.

Hiring managers need to consider not just how their salaries compare to the competition, but everything around it too. A massive 83% of employers said that employer branding increased their ability to hire talent ‘significantly’ (TalentLyft). Don’t lose out on this 2023 recruitment trend.

4. Employer Reputation & Candidate Experience

Similar to employer branding will be a focus in 2023 on employer reputation and candidate experience.

But different to employer branding is that this can’t be dictated by a well-thought out EVP. Reputation and experience come from people who have worked with a company.

An EVP can take days and weeks to materialize. An online review can take minutes to write and upend even the best EVP.

The same is true for poor candidate experiences during the hiring process. A notable case study is Virgin Media, who found that poor candidate experiences ended up costing them as much as $5.4 million a year as people wrote negative reviews that eventually led to people avoiding buying the companies’ products or services completely.

Here are three ways hiring managers can improve their online reputation:

1. Monitor your online reputation (for example Glassdoor, Google Reviews, TrustPilot, Twitter, etc.). There are tech tools available which can alert you when your business is mentioned online, and help to nip a future crisis in the bud.
2. Always respond publicly to negative reviews and complaints. This shows you care about customer or employee satisfaction, and Google will rank businesses who engage with negative reviews higher in their Google Business Profile rankings.
3. Encourage customers and employees to write positive reviews about your products, company culture, and corporate social responsibility online. Choose the platforms that best engage your audience and future hires, and regularly share positive content about your brand.

If recruiters discover negative reviews about a business – in places where candidates could easily find them – it can be extremely worthwhile to alert the client and suggest a response.

5. Talent Strategy

Tactical metrics are one of the best ways for recruiters to demonstrate their value. We’re talking metrics like time to hire, candidate-to-hire ratio, average tenure, offer acceptance rate, % of successfully completed hires, # of search placements completed, and so on.

But in 2023, clients and hiring managers are going to demand more from a search firm.

Which means they’re going to want to work with recruiters who can give them what they most want: new hires who increase their MRR and ARR (annual recurring revenue).

Do you have a talent strategy you can convince a client will hire them revenue-boosting candidates? 

Is it a methodology unique to your recruitment firm, or dazzling statistics? 

Do you have talent strategy case studies you can put before hiring managers which make your firm a no-brainer? 

If so, you’re well on your way to getting a head start against the recruitment competition in 2023!