How to hire more efficiently in the new year

Recruiting is something many organizations are going to double down on in 2023, with labour shortages and recessionary conditions in the forecast. But what areas of expertise will they be focussing on as they interview candidates?

Skills (86 per cent) and experience (82 per cent) are easily the two most important factors that employers consider. But personality (55 per cent) comes in third, according to a survey of 330 U.S. hiring managers and recruiters which also shows that personality outweighs candidates’ potential (46 per cent), education (22 per cent) and appearance (two per cent).

“Recruiters spend approximately 20 per cent of an interview confirming if a candidate has the right skills to do the job, and the other 80 per cent determining whether they’ll be a good fit for the team,” says Amanda Augustine, career expert for TopResume which did the survey in the fall.

“Hiring the wrong person or accepting the wrong job offer are both costly mistakes.”

Character important consideration

However, employers must ensure they hire by personality the right way, according to the Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness (CMOE).

“All too often, the decision that personality is more important than skills when hiring employees can be used as an excuse to be lazy,” says the report.

“Hiring by personality is not the same as hiring the candidate you get along with best. It’s also not the same as going with your gut.”

When it comes to enticing workers to fill shortages, the same recruiters should remember that after more than two years of COVID, allowing employees to work from home remains a popular perk, and job advertisement copy is reflecting this reality.

The number of job postings mentioning remote work is at least three times higher this year compared with data from 2019, based on a seven-day moving average as of Sept. 30 on Indeed.

This is true across five countries:

• Canada (11.2 per cent, up from 3.0 per cent in 2019)
• Germany (12.4 per cent, up from 3.7 per cent in 2019)
• United Kingdom (10.1 per cent, up from 3.0 per cent in 2019)
• United States (8.6 per cent, up from 2.9 per cent in 2019)
• France (6.1 per cent, up from 1.6 per cent in 2019)

Jobseekers, meanwhile, are still eager to land positions that allow for remote work, says the report from Indeed and Glassdoor. Remote job searches through the same period in all five countries:

• United States (9.8 per cent, up from 1.7 per cent in 2019)
• Canada (4.6 per cent, up from 0.6 per cent in 2019)
• United Kingdom (2.8 per cent, up from 0.3 per cent in 2019)
• Germany (2.8 per cent, up from 0.7 per cent in 2019)
• France (0.6 per cent, up from 0.1 per cent in 2019)

“It turns out many workers don’t miss the office — but many employers do. This has led to numerous well-publicized conflicts between workers and employers, as some company leaders have tried to turn the clock back to pre-pandemic times,” according to a recent workplace trends report done by Microsoft.

“Despite those headlines, remote work is here to stay, and many companies hiring for hard-to-fill roles are leaning into it.”

Lean into tech tools

To get the most bang for your recruiting buck, experts are touting software to streamline and magnify the process

Martin Herbst, CEO of JobAdder says that the more customers dig into the capabilities of contemporary recruiting tools, the more they get out of them.

“This is something that our product and customer service teams have been evangelizing for years,” he says. The company has been analyzing the data of 2,400 of its accounts in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Australia.

“When JobAdder looked at the percentage usage of core features amongst agency users, it found that the average number of features those individual users in each account utilised had a strong correlation with high performance.”

Retirement income

When casting the net, one often overlooked workplace incentive that brings in results, is a robust pension plan.

“Workplace pension plans, especially defined benefit (DB) plans, produce undeniable value in recruiting and retaining talent, reducing stress, and increasing employee productivity in the workplace,” says Derek Dobson, CEO and plan manager at the CAAT Pension Plan.

A majority (84 per cent) of employers offering DB plans say the pensions play an important role in their recruitment efforts, and that 71 per cent of Canadians say they are willing to forgo a higher salary in favour of a better pension plan, according to data released by Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP).

As employers continue to pivot to meet evolving employee needs and expectations, organizations that support their workforce by helping them achieve post-career goals are standing out and making the right impression on current and prospect talent pools.