We’ve all heard it – there’s more job openings than people, employee expectations are rising, and organizations are struggling. These challenges are forcing us to think about how we hire people differently. In response, the Talent Acquisition (TA) technology market has exploded over the past several years. With all of this attention on the practice of TA, have we really made any progress? Are we hiring smarter or faster or better? Are we filling jobs any faster, or keeping people around any longer?
If we look at retail as an example, retailers this year had big ambitions for seasonal hiring yet a majority of them reported falling short on staffing needs during the holiday season. We’ve made a shift to the hourly worker being the hardest one to find, engage and hire. While there are over 82 million Americans working in hourly paid jobs, the pool for talent somehow begins to shrink quickly. In December 2019, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported .9 unemployed persons for every job opening – but consider what that already small number shrinks to when you start filtering for the right skills or experience you need, competition across industries and the movement from hourly to gig or salaried work. Now, consider that you’re also competing for the attention of that job seeker with your biggest competitor. Once you do finally get their attention, research tells us that almost half aren’t even showing up for the interview. And, because turnover in many hourly-intensive industries is 60% or higher this chase never stops.
So, how do we finally start making progress in hiring? Here’s two important places to start - communication and respect are critical.
Communication matters every step of the way.
Candidate are telling us one thing loud and clear – they crave communication. Talent acquisition pros recruiting hourly workers are struggling with an average 50% interview no-show rate, yet hiring managers are ghosting applicants at an even higher rate with over 60% of job seekers never hearing back at all after applying for a job. A survey of over 1,000 hourly job seekers, conducted by Aptitude Research, revealed over half (52%) of candidates simply want to be notified after they are screened out of the process. Seems like a simple ask, right? In addition to wanting more communication, a growing range of generations in the hourly workforce (one in three hourly workers is now over the age of 50) have differing expectations for how communication is delivered – workers want options. Consider multiple channels for communicating with candidates, then map them to each stage in the candidate journey to determine which might be most effective for different processes.
“To rise above your competition, be straightforward with candidates along every step of the process.” -Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research
Give candidates what they deserve, respect.
While brand perception might help with that initial attraction, it’s not a substitute for a good candidate experience - impact dwindles quickly when candidates are left uninformed or treated poorly. How much your does brand matter to the candidate when your competitor immediately schedules an interview, offers them a dollar more an hour or flexible hours? In industries that rely on hourly workers, candidates are often customers. Aptitude Research found that nearly 50% of hourly candidates are also consumers of that brand or business. So, you also have to consider what that poor experience means to the brand loyalty of an applicant that was your customer first. Additionally, we need to start looking at hourly workers as a valued part of the organization and larger workforce as a whole – and, treating them as such.
For additional insight into strategies for improving the hourly hiring experience, read the final installment of ‘The Forgotten Workforce’ to follow Madeline Laurano’s research-based observations into the communication methods across the key processes in Talent Acquisition and what we can do to effect change.