A Year of Challenges Ends with Optimism
Talent acquisition leaders–great work on navigating a tough 2023 labor market with unwavering dedication. You’ve had to navigate high unemployment rates in Canada and U.S., manage reduced hourly recruitment budgets (or lack thereof), and hourly employment discontent. TalentBoard Annual High Volume and Hourly Recruitment survey shared that 54% of TA teams report new hires quit in the first few weeks and 34% report decreased applicant volumes. Key metrics like time-to-hire and average tenure was under microscopic analysis in board rooms.
Despite these conditions, TA leaders kept hustling to optimize the candidate experience and provided unwavering dedication to hiring managers. We end 2023 with a bit of optimism as hourly worker demand remains as high as ever and organizations are starting to find effective strategies to proactively combat the economic environment and reach hiring goals. More to come in a separate post. For now, let’s look ahead to 2024 with 3 priorities TA leaders must consider to optimize your organization’s hourly and high volume recruitment.
3 Priorities for Hourly & High Volume Recruitment in 2024
1. AI, Analytics, and Augmenting Gaps
This one needs no explanation. There is a plethora of AI tools to help TA leaders streamline recruitment and 2024 is the year to critically assess and optimize existing processes. Automating manual tasks like job advertising, interview scheduling, screening, job alerts and much more can help reduce costs-to-hire and make your recruiters more efficient long-term. TA leaders should focus on augmenting teams and acquiring technology with real-time analytics that will help form a business case to receive a higher hourly recruitment budget in 2024.
According to HR.research’s State of High-Volume and Hourly Hiring 2023, only 23% of TA leaders strongly agree their organization is effective at high-volume recruitment. They will be doing more to automate manual tasks or look into outsourcing all or parts of the recruitment process to create a scalable and efficient recruitment process. These include working with staffing agencies, a recruitment process outsourcing organization (RPO) like Mindfield, and temp agencies. Technologies to be improved or implemented include: applicant tracking systems, mobile texting, candidate relationship management systems, and candidate sourcing systems.
2. Uplevel Employment Branding and Employee Experience
This shouldn’t be a surprise as employment branding and employee experience was already important pre-pandemic. But in 2024 with competitive hourly worker demand and record-low applicant volume–it’s imperative that TA leaders prioritize immediate areas to improve and stand out from competitors. Especially in industries like retail and restaurants where your candidates are also your customers, it’s important to design a solution that gives them a great experience and encourages them to continue to be your customers. A bad candidate experience will directly impact your bottom line. For example, revenue loss can be massive even if only 10% of 10,000 applicants receive a bad candidate experience and stop purchasing from your store.
3. Shift to Skill Based Hiring from Experience Based Hiring
We’re seeing a major shift from experience-based hiring to skill-based hiring. The optimal best practice is to prioritize candidates with the right skills, potential, and can-do behavior versus candidates who have the “perfect experience” and have done the job before. This trend didn’t start by choice though. Employers have had to pivot strategy because there are more geographies that don’t have enough applicants with the right experience. In a tight labor market, consider reassessing your organization’s screening tools and redefine candidate quality. Similar to priority #1 above, consider areas in the screening process that need updated tools, redefined success metrics, or perhaps it is more scalable and efficient to outsource parts of the screening process.
Hope for 2024
We hope you finish reading this with more optimism and hope for the industry than when you started. It was a challenging year for talent acquisition leaders and we collectively steered our teams as best we could. Now we begin 2024 with optimism as demand for hourly workers is as high as ever despite rising unemployment rates. Competitors will be reassessing internal processes and technologies to leverage AI and automation. There will be investments in employer branding to increase applicant volume. Cost-effective high-volume staffing will continue to separate the best businesses from others. Start thinking about the three priorities above and we’ll be prepared to steer our teams throughout 2024.
Stay updated with the latest trends and insights in hourly recruitment and connect with me on LinkedIn.
About Cameron Laker and Mindfield:
Mindfield is a pioneering force in Hourly Employee Recruitment, providing tailored solutions for businesses to easily attract and hire high-quality hourly workers. With deep industry expertise and cutting-edge technology, we make the hiring process simpler, more efficient, and more effective for HR and Hiring Managers.
Connect with Co-Founder Cameron Laker on Linkedin for quick tips and how-to’s or sign up to The Hourly Minute for more in-depth discussion.
