Top trends in talent acquisition

Job postings on Indeed are falling but remain elevated as compared with pre-pandemic levels, with several measures indicating that demand for workers is still high, according to a report from Indeed’s Hiring Lab.

For instance, about 5% of job postings mentioned a signing bonus in June 2023, down from a high of 5.6% in September 2022 but much higher than the pre-pandemic average of 1.8%.

“Recruiters continue to make strong efforts to attract candidates, particularly through the use of signing bonuses, which have nearly tripled between early 2020 and today,” Cory Stahle and Nick Bunker, economists with Indeed’s Hiring Lab, wrote in the report.

Signing bonuses have increased the most for healthcare and in-person roles since 2019 — growing by five times for medical technicians and nearly tripling for physicians, surgeons and nurses. Competition among employers likely continues to contribute to high demand and higher-than-average signing bonuses.

Other in-demand roles — in sectors such as trucking and logistics — have offered major signing bonuses to attract workers due to labor shortages.

“While the share of postings mentioning signing bonuses has fallen somewhat lately from recent highs, it remains elevated and is an important signal of the true price employers are willing to pay to attract workers, even as wage growth overall shifts into a lower gear,” Stahle and Bunker wrote.

Overall, job postings are down 16% year over year but remain 29% higher than pre-pandemic levels, according to the report. Layoffs remain low in general, despite cuts in particular sectors such as technology and media, and joblessness is also low. The quit rate is also beginning to fall, which suggests that wage growth will continue to trend downward as well.

The report supports similar Indeed findings from early 2023, with job postings down, layoffs stable and worker turnover down.

ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot, is either going to lead to world peace or take over the world, depending on who you ask.

Aside from the more sensational headlines and predictions, the technology, which is a form of a learning language model (LLM), is showing its applications beyond playing Wordle and giving Pope Francis a very different kind of winter look.

That includes in recruitment, where LLMs are already being used to help with processes that are boring, mundane, repetitive, or a blend of all three, giving recruiters that time to focus on tasks that can’t be automated.

“The models are evolving quickly and certainly have a long way to go, but a tool like ChatGPT that can more quickly and rapidly respond to candidates can be particularly helpful,” said Amanda Richardson, CEO at CoderPad. 

Taking boring tasks off recruiters’ plates

A study from the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI, the company makes ChatGPT, found that about 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of their tasks affected by LLMs, with 19% of workers seeing at least 50% of their work impacted. They also found that about 15% of all worker tasks in the U.S. could be done “significantly faster” at the same level of quality with access to an LLM.

Automation of all kinds has long been pitched as a way to take tedious work off someone’s plate, which is what LLMs are doing in recruiting right now. It’s “jump-starting some of the more mundane tasks they have,” Richardson said, like crafting an email.

While it doesn’t replace the writing process, it can augment it, and be used as a tool to break through writer’s block. For a recent presentation, for example, Richardson used it to create an outline of a slide deck. The results were “mediocre,” she said, but it gave her a start, and helped ease some of the anxiety someone might “sometimes have looking at a blank page.”

Tomas Alberio, project manager and director of operations at Stafi, said that the company is using ChatGPT to craft job descriptions, and that it has helped their recruitment team create engaging but informative descriptions for jobs that often have very specific skill requirements.

“People tend to write really long job descriptions and candidates reading it may not be paying attention at the end, so we need to make those descriptions as informative as possible but also engaging,” he said.

Screening candidates with ChatGPT

Just like ChatGPT can help kick-start the writing process for clear, concise and informative emails, job descriptions, and slide decks, it can also be used to screen candidates.

Stafi often works with law firms to find paralegals who are fluent in more than one language. Yet when the company posts a job description that states the language requirement, they’ll often get “hundreds of applications,” he said, many from candidates who don’t meet those requirements. “ChatGPT can start analyzing those resumes and cover letters and start getting just the highlights of the things we want to know about those candidates.”

The technology “helps us just focus on the ones we really want and saves us tons of time,” he added.

The company has also been using ChatGPT to train new hires, tasking the technology with creating assessments and quizzes on exactly what their clients need them to do — though they don’t just let the technology run amok, he said. The questions are reviewed and vetted by experts in those areas.

“It’s easier for our training team to check those answers and see which of our candidates are having issues,” he said. That way, their team can help those candidates, so that they’re prepared for their new role. He estimates that these tasks now take 20% to 30% less time.

Richardson added that smart recruiters will use ChatGPT as a tool, but not replace the recruitment process with it. Just like how consumers can tell if they’re interacting with a customer service chatbot instead of a real person, the difference is apparent to job candidates, too.

“I think it will become clear which companies are actually investing in recruiting, and which recruiters really care about you,” she said. “It’s pretty clear when you interact with tools when it’s a little bit of a robot. Having that personalized touch will go for a long way for those companies willing to invest in that.”

Organizations nationwide have been racing to attract and retain top talent in a highly competitive labor market. Many employers have replaced legacy talent acquisition and retention strategies with approaches that reflect the evolved needs and heightened expectations of employees.

To navigate this new labor market and positively impact the talent pipeline, employers can prioritize diversity, match employee values with organization values and value employees as whole people.  

1. Strengthen teams through diverse hiring practices

Most human resources leaders are acutely aware of how employee priorities and expectations have shifted when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion. Diversity has become a major nonnegotiable for job candidates, with recent research showing that nearly 2 out of every 3 candidates deliberately pursue careers at companies that have diverse workforces. Furthermore, creating inclusivity is not only the right thing to do, it also contributes to greater diversity of thought across an organization, which can in turn strengthen an organization’s performance, recruitment potential and retention. 

Organizations have shifted hiring strategies to more clearly incorporate and communicate DEI practices in a way that attracts prospective employees. At DeVry University, our student population represents a wide range of demographics, and we strive to ensure that our faculty and staff reflect this. To that end, we require our talent acquisition professionals to be certified in diverse recruitment practices and they use specific methodologies during the recruitment process to help augment their search with diverse candidates. 

2. Create strong alignment in values to beget retention  

According to a recent survey from Qualtrics, 56% of employees said they would not consider a job at a company that has values they disagree with. Employers that make values well-known upfront can attract talent that enhances the organization’s mission. This can be accomplished by equipping interviewers with a set of questions that directly pertain to specific values to assess if a candidate is a good fit for the role, and how they will contribute to your organization’s purpose and culture.

When you align company values with employee values, employees are empowered to work toward the same goal. As a result, culture becomes a strong differentiator, and retention is bolstered by personal connections, collective focus and a seamless pathway to achieving objectives.

3. Value employees as whole people

In a recent engagement survey, more than 94% of DeVry colleagues said they feel that they are treated as a person, not just an employee. That is an outcome of a focused strategy to recognize the complexity that everyone brings to work in today’s environment. Creating opportunities for work/life integration and offering holistic well-being benefits are central to both attracting talent and building loyalty. Increasingly, employees seek to feel supported and valued for the complexity they manage at and away from work. While HR philosophies of the past demanded separation of these areas, current approaches must embrace both while dismissing the falsehood that separation truly exists.

As we continue to navigate the evolving expectations of employees, organizations should update their recruitment and retention strategies to align with some of the more permanent shifts that have occurred. And while these strategies may unfold differently depending on your organization’s goals and mission, prioritizing diversity, aligning employee and organizational values and valuing employees as whole people are now foundational to enhancing your pipeline of prospective talent and current employee base.

While TikTok was the topic recently in Congress regarding data privacy concerns, the social media platform keeps booming. It has more than 1 billion monthly active users, with reportedly solid reach to users in the U.S. from ages 18 and up.

That audience has been embraced by recruiters, who are using TikTok to find job candidates. For the right roles, a solid TikTok campaign can get workers “in the apply funnel,” said Alexandra Anema, director of social media at Bayard Advertising. All kinds of companies are using TikTok for recruiting, she added, from giants like Target “all the way down to mom and pop places that are getting a ton of visibility.”

But the key to leveraging a TikTok audience is the right campaign for the right kind of job. Recruiters most often need to work within the confines of TikTok’s paid promotion platform, which can be more limiting than on other platforms.

Here’s what you need to know.

Working with the algorithm to drive organic engagement

Like most social media networks, TikTok users can garner attention organically, or through paid promotions. Organic can be effective, but “it’s a real commitment and you have to post regularly because that is how the algorithm works. You have to keep feeding it,” Anema said. Smaller businesses that find success on TikTok are still often putting work into creating videos, and a lot of them. “Not every company has the time to do that.”

One workaround — or strategy to work with TikTok’s algorithm — is to partner with influencers, said William Stonehouse, co-founder and president of Crawford Thomas Recruiting. Companies can leverage that built-in audience by working with influencers who will “promote content about what It’s like to work with a certain company,” he said.

Companies can also work with employees who have TikTok followings already. Emily Durham, for example, is a TikTok creator with more than 200,000 followers who also happens to be a senior recruiter for Intuit. She posts all kinds of videos, from dating advice to info on job interviews. She’s not exactly pushing content about working for Intuit, but her presence still lifts the company’s profile.

“Having a social presence has been a game changer for me from a professional perspective,” Durham told CNBC in January. “Probably half of the candidates that I reach out to have responded with, ‘Oh my god, I follow you on TikTok,’ especially with early career talent or when I’m recruiting for other HR roles at Intuit.”

Making the most of paid promotions

For paid promotions, TikTok only allows users to choose one interest, which can be limiting, Anema said. “If you’re looking to hire a veterinarian, you might be able to choose ‘animals’ but not ‘veterinary.’”

That doesn’t mean paid promotions can’t work. They can be especially effective in hiring for entry-level roles, to grab attention and lead someone into the recruiting process.

For example, Bayard Advertising is currently working with a fast food chain by creating short narrative videos about what it’s like to work there. It’s “putting the message out and really talking about things that they do as an organization that sets them apart from their competitors,” she said. They’re also doing videos showcasing how the company’s educational programs have impacted employees.

Like with any social media platform, what works for each company is going to depend on who they are trying to hire, and in what role. While their fast food campaign has been highly effective, the same approach may not work for executive search, for example, she said.

TikTok can be “supplemental to a very strong social strategy, but don’t put all of your eggs into one basket,” she added. “Examine where you want to put your dollars and where your audience is spending their time.”

Companies should also be aware that potential job candidates are going to be looking at a brand’s social media platforms when doing their own research — including TikTok, especially with Gen Z candidates — so it can benefit an enterprise to have TikTok videos about work culture, said Stonehouse. When recruiting for an office job, a candidate might look for videos about a day in the life of that office. These videos “can be a good way for companies to project their culture and values.”

Despite turmoil at Twitter, social media isn’t going away anytime soon. Platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook can be powerful ways for HR professionals to recruit new talent and find candidates they wouldn’t have reached otherwise.

Using social media for recruitment is “a constant strategy around marketing the organization and what we stand for, not just the business value but the social and cultural impact that we have,” said Steven Kramer, CEO at Workjam, a digital front-line workforce platform.

While social media doesn’t replace traditional recruitment methods, recruiting on such apps and websites can enhance hiring methods — with some caveats, including treating social media as a way to funnel candidates into the hiring process, not a way to completely replace it.

Use social media to tell a story

Workjam’s approach to recruiting on social media goes far beyond just posting links to open jobs. The company primarily uses LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to “tell our story,” said Kramer. It’s not just about paying to advertise open jobs on social media (which the company does), but using social media to market what it’s like to work at Workjam.

Workjam also makes it easy for employees to share these posts internally, and on their own social media networks with the ability to “personalize it based on what they want to say,” he said. The company has a referral program, which incentivizes employees to share posts and recruit someone from their own network.

The company continuously reevaluates which platforms it uses for recruitment and focuses on where potential employees are most likely to be. It doesn’t use Twitter that much, and it doesn’t use Snapchat, because that’s not “really our demographic we’re going after,” Kramer said.

Posting jobs on social media can also be used to create buzz around a company. In June 2022, Casper posted a job listing for professional sleepers. The idea stemmed from from TikTok, and the firm received thousands of applications. Those who got the job created social media campaigns for the mattress company. CPO Robert Lepere told HR Dive he aimed imbue his company’s work culture with thoughtfulness through this process.

Beware potential pitfalls

While social media is often treated like an informal communication platform, it shouldn’t be when used for recruitment, said Ayesha Whyte, employment attorney and chief people officer at Dixon Whyte.

“When you are speaking to someone through social media about a job, always tell them to apply formally,” she said. That ensures that every job candidate goes through the same hiring process. “Anything you say, even if it’s through social media, can come up later in an employment lawsuit,” she added.

She also advised that any photos or videos representing a company’s workforce be of actual employees, not stand-ins or models. “It would be horrible if a person of color or a person with disabilities saw a panoply of people in your ads about the workplace and then the workplace is homogenous,” she said. It may not lead to a lawsuit, but a company could lose that worker if they feel they were tricked.

On the flip side, employers should also take any social media presence of potential employees with a grain of salt. “That’s not giving the entire picture of who someone is,” she said. “That’s a filtered persona and you’re looking for an actual person who’s going to look at your job.”

While looking at someone’s social media presence isn’t a bad idea, it shouldn’t take the place of interviews, reference checks and background checks if that’s part of the regular recruitment process, she said. And relying too heavily on social media might mean missing candidates who aren’t social media savvy, she added; “You might be missing out on some wonderful candidates.”

Human resources professionals should also make sure they’re compliant with any pay transparency laws when posting job listings on social media. “If you are broadcasting on social media, that is going to be global. You have no idea where this candidate is looking from,” Whyte said. “If you’re advertising an actual job on LinkedIn or Instagram or anything, it should absolutely [include a] salary or salary range for that position.”

When a local government fellowship program asked more than 100 applicants about their interest in the job, they overwhelmingly cited the opportunity for “meaningful work.”

Applicants ranked mission above pay, location, professional development and more, according to the Jan. 12 results. And more than half said the coronavirus pandemic only increased their interest in public service employment.

In light of the results, the research firm analyzing the findings urged employers to emphasize mission over tasks. “With meaningful work and personal satisfaction so highly rated, a job advertisement that leans more heavily on the results that can be achieved may be more likely to net interested recruits than one that focuses more on formal roles and responsibilities,” it said in a report.

Other research suggests private and for-profit employers may want to take a note from this government playbook: Employees are seeking higher purpose from their work and choosing to work for employers that have purpose baked into their ethos, an Alight executive said in September, analyzing survey results.

Executives say they know this is true — especially younger workers — but a 2022 report from consulting firm Deloitte revealed that many fail to properly integrate it throughout a business.

Those efforts can start at a high level with executives infusing purpose into a business plan and a company’s core values. But purpose also should permeate the aspects of work with which employees interact every day. Managers can be trained to connect daily work to purpose, making clear how individual contributors have meaningful responsibilities and how they’re part of a company’s mission, whether that’s serving a client or advancing an ESG initiative.

Hilton’s CHRO, for example, said at a December event the company strives to connect its massive workforce and inspire them to do great things for their guests and in service of their communities.

Employers with a more obvious social mission may have a somewhat easier path. Those in green technologies, for example, previously told HR Dive they focus directly on candidates with a passion for sustainability. What those businesses lack in name recognition, they make up for in meaningful work, one VP shared.

These findings, however, don’t give employers license to neglect other offerings, the report analyzing the local government fellowship survey results cautioned.

The next generation of talent will demand meaningful work, and those employers that can offer purpose alongside competitive pay, benefits, flexibility and more will be well positioned in the competition for that talent.

Recruiting veterans is one accomplishment — but actually supporting them is another, Omari Faulkner told attendees at the Society for Human Resource Management’s Talent conference.

The president and CEO of Blue Fire Fed, a strategic communications and development company, told the Orlando, Florida, audience that he’s seen many companies make moves to be “military-friendly.” 

Sure, leaders “do a little Google search and they find a few other companies who are doing it well, and try to do the same thing,” he said. But each employer will have their own secret sauce, he continued.

“I wish I could stand up here and give you the secret sauce, but every organization is different,” Faulkner said candidly, citing the fact that companies of SHRM attendees were all different sizes, have different missions and bring different perspectives on talent acquisition.

“You really have to get in there, invest, dig deep into your data and understand who you are,” Faulkner said. 

More than hiring, retaining vets should be HR’s concern

If employers say they want veterans in the workplace, but don’t have the infrastructure to support them, they’re offering empty promises, Faulkner said. Properly welcoming and supporting veterans in the workplace is critical for longevity, he emphasized. Faulkner and other labor experts, including Korn Ferry, say that almost half of veterans leave their jobs within the first year and about 80% leave within the second year. Military experts point to a relatability gap between ex-military workers and civilians. 

In turn, Faulkner explained, “Sometimes, you can have a workforce that doesn’t really want to be recognized. They don't want to self-identify; they don't want people to treat them any differently than anyone else.” He confessed that he felt similarly right after graduating from Georgetown University, where he had played in the NCAA. 

“I didn’t want people to know I played basketball. I didn’t want them to think I was a dumb jock or something that was a stereotype,” Faulkner said. 

Regarding the stereotypes that plague people who have served and what kind of civilian co-worker they become, the SHRM speaker asked for compassion. When training talent acquisition teams and recruiters, he said, “do your best to get rid of those biases and what you may have heard about military members — that they’re going to come onto the job and act like they’re still sergeants, that all of them have PTSD.”

He recalled meeting a veteran who had served six tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. “He told me that he did suffer from PTSD, but it was because he lost his sister in a car accident when he was four years old,” he explained, also adding that it’s not uncommon for any individual, even a civilian, to have some form of PTSD show up in their life.

What resources does HR have to hire and retain veteran employees?

The talent conference moderator and Faulkner both recommended Hiring Our Heroes, a program run by the U.S. Chamber of Congress. The veteran hiring initiative seeks to place military personnel, veterans and their spouses in new roles through career events and civilian fellowship programs.

Faulkner also told SHRM-goers about the U.S. government’s Transition Assistance Program — established by the U.S. Department of Labor — which offers military-based career development digital courses. It’s worth noting DOL also offers a veteran talent resource guide and career transition resources, such as a Wounded Warrior and Caregiver Employment course.

Building a veteran talent pipeline “starts before that hire,” the SHRM speaker emphasized. It’s about defining both the culture of the company and ascertaining “how you’re going to slide that military culture in there.”

Employers working to address retention may be overlooking a key driver of turnover: employees’ desire to be part of a more inclusive culture. Nearly 40% of 1,000 employees surveyed nationally said they would switch jobs to be part of a more inclusive culture; 45% of Black workers and 54% of managers said they would do so, according to QuestionPro and EQ Community survey results.

Nine out of 10 workers reported having a positive experience working with and learning from colleagues of different backgrounds and perspectives, the survey revealed. But 43% felt their employer should be doing more to foster inclusivity, including having more diverse leadership and discussing the importance of diversity more frequently.

Although each organization has its own culture and is in a different stage of its DEI journey, executives should focus DEI efforts on a few common areas, such as: preparing a strong onboarding experience with frequent check-ins; trying different initiatives tied to the organization’s goals; really understanding why employees leave, for example by including a question about inclusivity in their exit interviews; and leading by example, the report recommended.

During times of economic uncertainty, DEI efforts are often the first to be cut, according to recent research by multiple HR consulting firms. They predict DEI positions will be at risk in 2023 as the U.S. totters on the edge of a recession.

But there’s an important caveat, cautioning employers against acting too quickly: “More than ever,” workers expect to learn about a potential employer’s DEI efforts, about 40% of recruiters told Monster, according to its January 2023 future of work report. Similarly, Workhuman’s 2023 Human Workplace Index advised that prioritizing inclusion and belonging can set employers apart in the recruitment process.

Just under half (49%) of employees were more likely to report feeling undervalued; about 48% of women felt undervalued, the Workhuman index found. The QuestionPro results back up these findings: Half of Black and African-American worker respondents expressed dissatisfaction with how inclusive their organization is; 45% of women and 42% of Latino workers said the same. The fact that so many employees are ready to act on their dissatisfaction “should give pause,” QuestionPro noted in its report.

Dissatisfaction is strongly tied to employee engagement, the report suggested. That is, an inclusive workplace doesn’t just come about because of organization-wide initiatives or culture projects driven by HR, it explained. Rather, employee engagement can be traced to managers, providing them with a great opportunity to impact how inclusive their teams are and, in turn, how inclusive the organization is as a whole, the report said.

Lack of connection and mentorship, as well as ongoing experiences of bias in the workplace, can lead to disengagement, a chief DEI officer pointed out in a November op-ed to HR Dive. To prevent this from happening, organizations should help managers support their teams and recognize that managers face unique challenges in the workplace, she recommended. They can learn where more support is needed by taking a hard look at attrition, retention and leadership pipelines, she added.

As businesses shift their focus to mitigating risks to revenue growth and profitability, it’s important for them to do so with an equitable lens — to ensure they don’t compromise their efforts to attract, retain and grow a more diverse employee base, a global DEI head previously told HR Dive. Data shows that workers are more likely to join and remain at companies where DEI goals, including mental health, are openly discussed, prioritized and embedded into company operations, she said.

Employers involved in the recruiting process are focused on onboarding, candidate experience and DEI in 2023, according to new research from Talent Board, a research organization focused on candidate experience. 

Time will tell if those efforts help decrease resentment among candidates and new hires. The Jan. 11 Talent Board 2022 North American Candidate Experience Benchmark Research Report found that job seekers had negative experiences globally for the second consecutive year. In North America, the only region where candidate resentment didn’t climb in 2022, candidates still reported a historically high resentment rate of 12%, the report said. 

"Although candidate resentment lessened during and immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic, it's higher than ever globally," Talent Board President Kevin W. Grossman said in a news release. "Employers need to keep in mind that resentment has major repercussions to their brands and the bottom lines such as whether or not candidates will apply to their jobs again, whether they'll refer colleagues and friends, whether they’ll be brand advocates and whether they’ll buy a company’s products and services.”

Ron Machamer, Talent Board director of global programs, said it is “very telling” that onboarding is the top priority for talent acquisition teams in 2023. 

"Too many employers lost new hires in 2022 before they even started or shortly after day one; that’s how competitive the talent market has gotten, and that’s how important it is to get onboarding right,” Machamer said. 

The report, which analyzed anonymous feedback from more than 150 companies and nearly 200,000 candidates, found that 34% of candidates had to wait at least one to two months after submitting an application to find out about next steps in the hiring process. That was 48% higher than in 2021. 

To try to improve the recruiting process, talent acquisition teams are turning to AI tech, the report found: 79% intend to purchase tech that removes bias from the application and screening processes; 72% want to buy tech that predicts employee job-changing behavior; and 57% plan to buy tech that predicts job performance.