Our new lifestyle has accelerated the changes in the way companies have recruited in the last two years. The pandemic, the social landscape, and technological advances have turned the world upside down, especially in the workforce. 

If you are a HR manager, you have probably been dealing with a totally new social outlook while you try to find and/or keep talent in your company.

2022 will bring its own challenges, as we are still in the middle of the pandemic, but the way we will deal with it seems to be quite different.  These are some of the major challenges in the world of talent acquisition for 2022:

Build a Strong Employer Brand

Regardless of the work status of your applicants, you will be successful attracting great possible future employees only if your company has a great reputation. An overwhelming majority, around 75% of job seekers, will consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job. About the same amount of people would not take a job in a company that has a bad reputation. 

What can you do to make sure you do not have this problem? Define and implement an effective employer branding strategy by telling a compelling story about who you are, what your company’s culture is about and find ways to try to get candidates excited to be part of your team. 

A career site and a career blog can help you with this task. Adding multimedia content of your employees and your workplace, sharing employee testimonials, and writing about the interesting projects and new technologies your teams are working with, if that is the case.

Find only great fits for your company 

We know you have less qualified candidates for the same amount of jobs that you are used to having to fill. Hopefully, this gets better at some point during the year, but for now, we better prepare to work with what we have now. You will be competing for whatever good and qualified talent is available out there. How can you stand out from the rest? Try having your own employees do the trick. 

People looking for jobs are more likely to be willing to choose your company over any other similar one if they can relate with your employees’ referrals. Your recruiters are trained to do a great job, but a solid employee referral can get you over the hump. 

Find the ideal candidates to pursue

At some point during the recruiting process throughout the year, you will be running out of candidates for one or several positions, so you will be left with what's called passive candidates. Most of them are willing to listen to what you have to offer. 

These tend to be very qualified talents, so make sure you look thoroughly to find them and bring your A-game whenever you find a way to get ahold of them. Do not be afraid to approach them. Like we said before, they might not be actively looking for a new job, but they will probably still be willing to give you a chance. That’s all you need.

Use your talent pool effectively

Review your organizational strategies, assess the company's current talent to identify any skills and/or gaps, create modules or groups of activities that will help employees learn the skills they need and monitor progress and make regular adjustments. 

You need to have solid social media profiles. This will allow you to promote your employer brand, your organization as a great place to work and plan and execute recruiting events for potential candidates like we talked about before, and both passive and active candidates will have something that will draw their interest right away.

If not now, maybe they will come back to you for another opportunity, so make sure you add these candidates to your talent pool. Create a talent network for them, as they can learn more about you as a company and stay up to date with any openings they could be interested in in the future. 

Make sure the application/selection process is a pleasant experience

Treat your prospects in a way they feel good about themselves even if they’re not picked to fill up your companies’ needs. Candidates like to know where they stand, so make sure you communicate often and assertively with them in regards to their application and status in the selection process. 

Your reputation as a company is in the line. The way you treat them will dictate what they say to possible customers or other possible candidates. First, review your candidate experience, to try to identify what you can do to make the experience better. Then, apply the changes you feel are necessary to achieve that goal. This will not be a one-time process. Adapt and change as many times as you feel is necessary.

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