The 6 biggest challenges recruiters are facing right now

COVID-19 has no doubt bulldozed its way through many kinds of industries out there, one being talent-hiring and acquisition.

What once was a much easier job for recruiters to find the right job for each of their clients has done a complete 180 on them where they face challenges that more than likely didn’t happen at the start of the year.

This worldwide pandemic still has no end in sight as a cure for it isn’t available yet on the market. Even if it was there are still plenty of problems in its path in order for us to return to normal (or in this case, a new normal).

The difficulties recruiters face will no doubt continue for quite some time as they struggle to find some semblance of normalcy for not only their candidates but their positions as well.

Here are six of the biggest obstacles they are currently having to deal with.

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The biggest obstacle and the most obvious one is how thousands of companies worldwide have had to change their hiring needs because they either shut down for good or drastically downsized. This means that the hiring needs for them have been incredibly different this year as they no longer need a recruiter or recruitment service to help them out.

The five biggest industries that face these issues are Travel and Tourism, Hotels/Bars/Restaurants, Entertainment/Conference, and Trade Shows and Manufacturers.

Recruiting from home

This is the first time in many recruiters lives where they’ve had to work from home or as you’ll repeatedly see us write WFH. There are many issues with this as they tend to work side by side with one another to ensure a smooth & steady workflow with communication being their top priority.

This could also bleed into the Talent Acquisition Managers having issues as some who are known to micro-manage and would feel less confident in doing so with everyone WFH and not directly in front of them.

People who don’t want to go back to work

There’s a lot of hard workers out there who were laid off due to COVID-19 that are comfortable with their current situation. Why? The unemployment some have collected during all of this outweighs what they were making at their real job (roughly 40% according to a recent study). So it’s a win-win situation for them but a bigger loss for recruiters who could have many more resumes to go through and extra dollars to earn as a result.

Video interviews > in-person interviews for now

Recruiters have had to do a massive switch in how they handle each candidate when it comes to first meeting them. The norm was in-person interviews but that has flown out the door in favor of video ones. This can pose a challenge for them as their comfortability in hiring the right person can dramatically change when only talking to them via webcam.

You can also factor in how vastly different these are as sometimes people aren’t able to speak as freely as they want to in a virtual setting compared to a closed-off one at an office. So… it’s a struggle.

Hired, onboard… but what’s next?

Congrats! You’re hired. Awesome job. Now we have to do the onboarding, but how is this going to happen? There are several people out there who are still terrified to go outside their neighborhood, let alone their street. Recruiters are having a difficult time figuring this step out in terms of getting the candidate everything they need so they can start day one on the most positive of notes from (primarily) a virtual location.

Let’s hang… just kidding. Social problems for recruiters

Think of the people who work in recruiting to be those that were more than likely voted Most Talkative or School Spirit in high school. They thrive on being extroverted as the job they have called for it (no wallflowers here.)

Going from that sort of environment to being alone in a room is jarring for many of them as it’s a complete shift from their usual day to day process. There are solutions though to help keep their social life churning like butter.