Recruitment Statistics: Trends & Insights in Hiring Talented Candidates

In 2024 low unemployment coupled with increased awareness amongst candidates about the employer brand has made hiring a tough job for recruiters. So either they need to up their game or lose talented candidates.

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Companies across the globe are looking to revamp their hiring efforts to fill both the temporary and full-time positions. 44% of businesses are looking to hire full-time employees and 51% are planning to hire temporary employees. But roughly half of all the hiring managers i.e.; 45% quoted that they are unable to fill the much-needed positions due to the dearth of qualified talent.

To succeed in this candidate oriented job market, it is important for recruiters to come up with a different hiring strategy. One way to do that is by adapting their current hiring strategy based on the latest trends.

In this blog we will discuss some of the current recruitment challenges, find out the latest hiring trends, understand what experts have to say about recruitment in 2024 and finally offer some tips on taking your recruitment to the next level. And we will pepper the way with dollops of data from various researches and surveys conducted across the globe.

Current Recruitment Challenges

Recruiters will look to revamp their hiring efforts in order to fill both temporary and full-time positions. But low unemployment coupled with increased awareness amongst candidates about the employer brand will make recruitment a very candidate driven market. Recruiters will then have to be better prepared to deal with these formidable challenges:

 Talent Shortage

Talent Shortage was one of the biggest hurdles faced by recruiters in 2018. Finding top quality talent will remain the key recruitment goal.

42% of employers are worried they won’t be able to find the talent they need.

Approximately three quarters (72.8%) are struggling to find relevant candidates.

86% of the most qualified candidates for your open positions are already employed and not actively seeking a new job.

40 percent of employees surveyed said they plan on changing jobs. 

Candidate driven recruitment market

Today, candidates have far more power during the job search and are hopping jobs more than ever before. Hence, candidate experience during all the hiring stages will become quite a significant factor that can make or break your recruiting goals.

  • 86% of recruiters and 62% of employers feel the labor market is candidate-driven.
  • 20.8% recruiters are finding it difficult to deal with candidate demands.
  • 73% of candidates are passive job seekers.

Top candidates stay available for 10 days only before getting hired. 

Negative employer branding

In the competitive hiring environment, a negative employer branding can sabotage your hiring efforts and make it all the more difficult for you to hire talented candidates.

55% of job seekers abandon applications after reading negative reviews online, and only 45% employers ever monitor or address those reviews.

When making a decision on where to apply for a job, 84% of job seekers say the reputation of a company as an employer is important.

Over 14% of candidates stated that the most important marketing material influencing their decision to apply was company’s values, more than awards like Best Places to Work Lists (12.7%) or corporate social responsibility (13.8%).

50% of candidates say they wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation – even for a pay increase.

As per Global Recruiting Trends Report by LinkedIn, the top 4 hiring trends that will have a major impact on the hiring process include: diversity, new interviewing tools, data and artificial intelligence. We have provided key statistical insights pertaining to these trends, which, if practiced in the right way, will go a long way in transforming your recruitment process.

1. Practice diversity while recruiting candidates

Diversity in terms of gender and ethnicity will be crucial for organizations. Companies need to provide the same opportunities to everyone including candidates with disabilities and veterans.

Top Reasons companies focus on diversity include:

2. Adopt new interviewing tools and processes

Traditional interviews are not the most effective ways to access candidates. With the help of new interviewing tools and platforms, it would be possible for recruiters to assess a candidate’s overall skills and capabilities in much less time.

Where traditional interviews fail:

Most useful interviewing innovations:

3. Increased use of data to make strategic hiring decisions

With the huge abundance of data available in today’s digital world, it is possible to predict hiring outcomes and not just track them. This data usage is only going to become more critical.

Top uses of data in acquiring new talent:

4. Use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation

Artificial Intelligence, like everything else, is also heavily influencing interviewing and assessment of candidates, not only resulting in better recruitment automation but also making the hiring process more error free. However there are certain areas that can never be replaced by AI, at least not in the foreseeable future.

Skills that AI is least likely to replace:

  • Building relationship with candidates
  • Seeing candidate potential beyond credentials
  • Judging “culture add” or “culture fit”
  • Gauging candidate’s interpersonal skills
  • Convincing candidates to accept offers

Where AI can be most useful:

Top recruiting priorities of organizations

According to a white paper published by CV Library titled “What does this year have in store for recruitment?”, when organizations were asked about their top recruitment priorities, they cited the following:

The question of top sourcing channels elicited the following response:

Tips for recruiters to hire talented candidates using innovative hiring methods

Global sourcing of candidates will become one of the huge trends that will continue to provide a competitive advantage to the recruiters. Ultimately the key to hiring the right talent in the new year would fall on utilizing technology in the best possible manner to hire the best talent.

 1. Explore Talent Relationship Management (TRM) to accelerate quality hires

TRM is going to hit a home run this year as far recruitment firms are concerned. With the help of proactive sourcing and modern Applicant Tracking Systems, recruiters would be able to get a higher candidate conversion rate.

Mercer has found that 79% of organizations are focusing their efforts toward building and promoting their own talent from within, and nearly half (48%) are increasing their recruitment from the external labor pool.

PageUp has been using TRM and sourcing for a long time. They now make over three times as many offers and the offer acceptance rate has been 93% compared to the market average of 89%.

2. Use social recruiting strategies

More and more companies will adopt a social recruiting strategy to find talents, advertise jobs and communicate with potential candidates about company culture. There would be an increase in the investment in social media strategies and social listening tools.

3. Adopt a mobile-enabled application process

With each passing year, mobile devices are increasingly becoming more entrenched in our everyday life.  We expect more and more organizations to adopt a mobile-enabled application process to meet the candidate’s expectations.

According to Glassdoor, 89% of job seekers say their mobile device is an important tool for job searching and 45% use it to search for jobs at least once a day.

According to a research conducted by PageUp, only 29% of Australia’s, 30% of Hong Kong’s largest companies, and 32% of the largest universities in the US have fully mobile-optimized career sites. Numbers were even lower in Southeast Asia (10%). We expect this number to grow in 2018.

PageUp research reveals 16% of submitted applications come via a mobile device.