Since the beginning of the pandemic, the job market has seen unemployment swing from half-century lows to record highs in a matter of weeks, leaving hiring managers scrambling to adapt.
But working from home has provided companies with a silver lining, says Andy Valenzuela, chief human resources officer at HireVue, a recruiting platform. Hiring managers have been able to broaden their recruitment efforts, no longer constrained by a location-specific applicant pool.
HireVue found that over half of respondents expanded their recruiter network — 48% of which expanded postal codes for potential recruits and 47% added more remote roles to existing positions.
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“The positive is that [the pandemic] is opening up markets and talent that didn't exist before because companies still weren't sure whether they could fully operate in a remote environment,” Valenzuela says. “They didn’t believe they could deliver a great experience in a remote role for their candidates and now they’ve proven they can. ”
Unfortunately, an expanding candidate pool brings its own set of recruiting challenges. Forty percent of hiring managers named a lack of qualified candidates as the biggest barrier to finding top talent, followed by longer lead times that result in decreased candidate availability and difficulty managing job postings, the report found.
A survey conducted by Monster found that 87% of employers are struggling to hire qualified employees due to a widening skills gap, as potential candidates have remained out of the job market for almost a year. More than 10.1 million people are still unemployed as of February 2021. But with an anticipated uptick in recruiting, the next few months will see the rise of significant changes in companies’ practices.
Here are the three most anticipated hiring trends for 2021, according to HireVue: