The job market is changing at an unprecedented rate as we move through times of extreme uncertainty and technological advancement, both created in part by the pandemic that has affected almost every business sector. The pace of change makes challenges for hiring managers, who must change their mindset surrounding recruitment marketing and the hiring process, less they fail to secure the top talent and skills for their organisation. Here we look at the job advertising trends in 2022, helping you respond to the new norm.

In this article, we take you through the changes in recruitment and job advertising and reveal five recruitment strategies that will deliver results in 2022.

Recruitment Trends

First, we highlight the latest recruitment trends and market changes.

It Is A Candidate-Driven Market

The world of recruitment is in a position that almost never happens. For the first time in living memory, there are more available jobs than there are job seekers. With jobs outweighing job seekers, hiring managers find themselves in a position where they are competing for a smaller set of qualified candidates with the same skills and abilities that the employer is desperate to acquire.

In a candidate-driven market with so many companies desperately seeking skills, potential candidates are in the driving seat. Hiring companies need to develop a competitive edge to attract talent. Furthermore, when a recruitment strategy delivers the best talent, they are in a far stronger position for negotiating salary and benefits.

Employers Are Demanding More Extended Notice Periods

Long notice periods of up to three months have long been the standard for high-level executives. However, with many businesses fighting for people with the same skills, highly-qualified candidates, such as those with a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in their career subject, should expect to see the same.

It is undoubtedly a complex recruitment landscape, and recruitment marketing may need to encompass longer notice periods, to heighten business operations’ stability. We have also seen these recruitment trends affect existing employees. Organisations are beginning to put more effort into staff retention and ensuring existing employees perceive the company as a great place to work and remain.

Recruitment Tools And Articles

If you are looking to hire new talent, check out these valuable resources and articles:

• Job description library
• Job advert templates
• How to interview candidates
• Key questions to ask candidates during interviews
• Questions not to ask in interviews
• Should I advertise My Job On More Than One Site?

Five Recruitment Strategies To Drive Talent Acquisition

Next, we highlight five recruitment marketing strategies and solutions that will help you respond to the latest recruitment trends.

1. Experiment With Your Hiring Process

The old recruitment process used successfully in the pre-pandemic market simply do not work today. You will need to get creative with your hiring process and job advertising.

One of the most pronounced hiring trends for 2022 is a move to remote recruitment. Human Resources need to adapt their hiring practices to a state where the remote hiring process takes precedence over in-person recruitment and interviews, at least during the initial screening and first interviews.

Remote Recruitment Processes

A remote recruitment process is easy to introduce with virtual interviews and meetings conducted over conferencing software such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Remote recruitment processes will broaden the potential talent pool massively, breaking down the geographical barriers that used to hinder talent strategies.

Companies competing for the best talent that also offer remote working opportunities should expect to see their talent attraction rise. Further advantages gained from having an international talent pool includes bringing in different viewpoints and staffing the business 24/7.

If you are recruiting at volume and scaling up your business, it goes without saying that a remote hiring process will save you a tremendous amount of time and resources.

2. Build Your Employer Branding

In a candidate-driven market, the top talent is able to be pickier about the jobs they apply for. It is no longer the case that individuals in a job search will apply for every job they can in the hope of securing a job.

With so many employers attempting to attract applicants from a small talent pool, companies must focus on perfecting their employer branding. Employer branding and branded advertising must promote a desirable company culture. Potential candidates are taking their time and investigating the company’s reputation and employer brand.

How To Develop An Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

To drive talent acquisition, you should say goodbye to traditional marketing and ensure your job ads relay your company’s personal brand and its mission, values, vision, and culture.

Many companies have already recognised the importance of employer branding, and this creates another issue in a candidate-driven market. It is no longer sufficient for employer branding and recruitment marketing to simply say we are a great place to work. To fill in-demand jobs, you will need to take a deep dive into what your culture is and what makes it unique.

To ensure your culture-driven hiring practices work and hit the right note with target candidates, HR professionals should start by defining the mindset of the individual they want to hire.

Do you want a candidate that is career-driven, ruthless, and focused on moving up the career ladder quickly?

Or,

Do you want a candidate that is creative, empathetic, and craves a workplace that is nurturing and supportive?

Your culture, voice, and recruitment process should reflect the work ethic you desire from an employee and the industry in which you operate. At every stage, try to uncover ways to resonate emotionally with potential candidates. You will have a better likelihood of securing individuals with the same skills that other companies are competing for.

Read Why Should SMEs Build An Employer Brand?

Promoting Your Employer Branding

Once HR managers have discovered their employer brand and driving factors, you need to promote that strong employer brand by creating a careers page for your website. You might concentrate your efforts on showing that you have a diverse workforce, career development opportunities, or approachable executive teams.

Read What Should Be On A Company Careers Page.

Engaging Social Media

A positive and engaging social media presence is also crucial for attracting in-demand talent. Potential applicants often turn to social media to discover more about your workplace. Desirable indicators include social media posts and comments from not just your employer brand but from your employees as well.

Read How To Advertise A Job On Social Media.

Leveraging Your Existing Employees

You will need to find new ways to encourage your existing talent pool to be active on social media, and creating employee advocates often means having an effective retention strategy.

Concentrate your efforts on building conversations and engagement on social networking platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can gauge how your employee value propositions are being perceived by viewing employee reviews on websites such as Glassdoor.

Collaborative Hiring Process

Collaborative hiring will need to work hand in hand with your regular job advertising. Introducing an employee referral program will help you tap into a broader professional network. It is vital to recognise that your existing team will likely have many contacts in the same profession.

Even if those individuals are not working in the same industry, bringing in talent in a similar job role, but in another business sector, helps to create a diverse workforce with broader viewpoints.

When your hiring process considers individuals from another sector, seek out transferable skills such as problem-solving, financial literacy, creativity, and communication.

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion

Employees are becoming increasingly aware of social issues affecting them or their community. Your job advertising should align with these social issues with a transparent diversity, equity, and inclusion commitment and policy. DE & I are not only crucial for attracting talent but also drive business success and profitability.

Our top two tips for improving diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace include:

1. Set up a diverse hiring team to have unique perspectives that will drive your interview, vetting, and candidate selection processes.
2. Create inclusive job descriptions that use gender-neutral language and wording that will not alienate candidates.

3. Leverage Recruitment Marketing Platforms

In addition to embracing a remote recruitment process and culture-focused recruitment marketing, HR managers need to take advantage of data-driven recruitment. Traditional marketing relies heavily on consumer marketing strategies, and while these have been effective over the past decade, this type of recruitment marketing fails in today’s market.

Data-Driven Recruiting

Recruitment marketing platforms help recruiters gain insights into the effectiveness of their digital marketing approaches. Recruitment marketing needs to respond to what the data tells us. While it may feel like a significant change, hiring teams must favour data analysis in their talent solutions.

Recruitment trends become apparent, and you can learn significant insights from making mistakes. Strategies quickly become intelligent, and that will give you a competitive edge.

Flat Fee Recruitment

Begin your data-driven recruitment with a flat fee recruitment solution that gives you access to an ATS for talent management. You will reach thousands of potential applicants by appearing on hundreds of job boards while simultaneously creating a better candidate experience.

Read Centralising Recruitment With ATS.

AI will also further integrate itself in job advertising and talent acquisition. Automated candidate sourcing and matching are already becoming useful recruiting tools.

When choosing a recruitment solutions expert for posting your job advertisements, ensure they will list your job ads on the most popular job boards. Currently, these include LinkedIn, Indeed, Monster, TotalJobs, Jobsite, and Google For Jobs. These major job boards should be targeted along with appropriate niche industry sites.

Individually, it is expensive and time-consuming to post on these job boards manually. So, always use a job board reseller to post your job adverts.

4. Focus On Reaching Passive Candidates

Reaching passive candidates expands your potential talent pool massively. Recruiting trends are beginning to show that the best long-term hires come from attracting passive applicants. These individuals are not desperately trying to leave their current employer or facing imminent unemployment.

To appeal to passive candidates and encourage them to make a significant change in their employment, you will need to develop an enticing reason to jump ship.

Identify Employment Motives

Maybe the candidate will be motivated by taking on a new challenge. They might want to embrace an opportunity to learn something new or, as the recruiting trends for 2022 show, find it more attractive to work for a company that has values closely aligned with theirs.

5. Embrace An On-Demand Workforce

Twenty years ago, Dan Pink authored the book Free Agent Nation, where he theorised that the workforce would become increasingly dominated by on-demand independent workers.

It may have taken a global pandemic to move a significant number of businesses into this mindset. Still, it is here to stay and increasingly an appealing proposition for modern companies.

When you hone your job ads into attracting on-demand talent, you benefit from:

1. Access to 160 million Gig Workers across the EU and US – a figure equating to twenty to thirty percent of the workforce, all operating as contractors, online platform workers, on-call, and temporary workers.
2. Access to specialised and highly-experienced workers – who can complete individual projects on a freelance basis.

Recruiting Trends Conclusions

Where in previous decades the available talent rose rapidly, we are seeing a retracting pool of talent and employers competing strongly for individuals with the same skills.

Recruiting managers will need to focus their efforts on employer branding. Important talent acquiring tactics will also need to improve the candidate experience, adopt virtual recruitment strategies, leverage recruitment marketing platforms, experiment and embrace the data, and target passive candidates.

Trends In Recruitment FAQs

Here we answer your questions about the trends in job advertising and recruitment.