The Empirical Guide to Recruiting (2023 Edition)
Recruiting in 2023 is different from years past. Knowing what to do differently – and how to alter expectations – is a key to successfully obtaining the new talent your company needs. Our talent acquisition team has put together some important advice that focuses on the recruiting mistakes to avoid in the coming year.
These are the three trends we expect to define recruiting in 2023:
1. Remote/hybrid work is here to stay.
There are strong feelings from many business leaders when it comes to employees working in the office, working from home, or a cross between the two. The bottom line is that companies are losing candidates because they are not offering this option.
Considerations:
- Can you trust an employee to do remote work? If not, we consider this an expectation and management issue, rather than a productivity issue. Case in point: how many times your employee walks the dog is much less important than the completion of needed work.
- There is a disconnect between how younger and older employees think about remote work. Older managers think this is temporary. Younger employees see remote work as here to stay.
- If you ask today, “can this role be done remotely?” you have already missed the boat. The answer is yes. Most of these transitions starting happening in March of 2020.
- Here’s an important question for leaders: How do you coach and build a remote team? How do you keep the human connection and keep a team engaged? Make sure you have the ability to effectively manage your team, no matter where your workers are located.
- Modify your interviews to include explicit questions for remote work, such as:
– “Share an example of a time when you worked from home and managed your time effectively.”
– “How do you meet your deadlines at home?”
– “How do you avoid distractions at home?”
2. Set your salary expectations – and do it right.
When fast food employees are making $20/hour, you need to adjust your pay accordingly.
Considerations:
- Salary databases are available – think Salary.com, HR Hero, and others. These resources provide industry- and location-specific salaries. However, by the time you see this data, is often already old. The best way to get trusted data is by going out to the market.
- It is now a requirement to have a salary conversation early in the conversation. Many states (including California) require salary ranges to be posted, plus many websites (such as Indeed.com) provide an expected salary. Know what these numbers are.
Offering a salary below these numbers? You are at a disadvantage. - A general rule of thumb: in-seat employees need at least a 10% increase in wages over their current salary.
- Money remains an important reason why a worker remains in a current role and doesn’t look to move. Yes, there are other reasons, but money is still a top driver.
- When bringing in new employees at a higher level, be sure to do a compensation analysis of current employees. The risk if you don’t: current employees will leave.
3. Understand timing and expectations for filling roles.
Quick actions and flexibility are more important than ever. You don’t have the luxury to sit and wait and take your time through the recruiting process – when a good candidate crosses your path, you need to take action.
Considerations:
- It is a very competitive marketplace, so be timely with candidate communications. Get back to them within 24 hours; offer interview dates the same week you contact them. Many good candidates are lost because companies take too long in the hiring process.
- Getting to an initial conversation with a candidate is taking longer than ever (up to twice the amount of time we have seen in the past, for some roles) – hiring managers must understand that the time to fill a position has increased.
- It is essential to cross-train employees to fill multiple roles. This ensures your organization is resilient.
- The cost of a vacant position can be huge; never lose sight of this fact. Don’t let “perfect” be the enemy of “good enough”. Consider the cost to your company of each role you don’t fill.
Our team still sees many qualified candidates available to fill needed roles and has learned how to ensure companies have the best chance to successfully hire them. By understanding these nuances, recruiters will be much more successful in their efforts to bring outstanding talent into a team.
In this market, we know many companies have questions about how to recruit or want to find a company to assist in talent acquisition efforts. The talented Empirical team offers a full range of recruiting services in flexible and affordable packages – our recruiting model is different from most others.
We’d love to explain our process and the great value we offer in the area of talent acquisition.
Reach our team at hello@thinkempirical.com, or give us a call (610) 994-1139.
