Timothy Gilbert

New Jobilla study: Successful recruiting has become harder in the past five years

- 40% of organizations can't name their most effective recruitment channels
- 28% of respondents don't know how much money is spent on their recruitment campaigns.
- Less than 20% of companies have been able to recruit more qualified candidates

Talent acquisition startup Jobilla has conducted a recruitment study on the recruitment processes, resources, and channels companies utilize. 205 HR professionals from small companies to big corporations representing a wide mix of industries were interviewed and surveyed for the study.

The study shows that most of the organizations are suffering from a lack of good quality candidates, even if 43% of companies are investing more into recruitment than previously. Despite an increase in resources, 55% of the interviewees said that recruitment has become more difficult in the past five years. Less than 20% of the companies have been able to increase the number of quality candidates.

“To build an efficient and result-driven recruitment process is a challenging package for companies. Traditional recruitment strategies and channels are not working to find qualified candidates in the digitized world. Moreover, recruiting is done on top of all the other daily tasks, making the process development even more cumbersome,” says Henri Nordström, CEO of Jobilla.

Challenges vary between industries. One of the hardest industries for recruitment is the healthcare industry, with a crippling 93% of organizations feeling that recruitment has become more difficult. Another hard-hit industry is IT, with 83% of the organizations finding it hard to recruit suitable candidates.

The effectiveness and costs of different recruitment channels are not monitored despite increased investment

The direct cost of recruitment campaigns in terms of capital invested into visibility and reach varies from less than a hundred euros to over 1,000 euros. The most surprising finding in the study was that a whopping 28% of the respondents didn’t know how much money was spent on their recruitment campaigns.

Digital tools and channels make it possible for much more detailed data gathering than traditional channels, like newspaper ads. Even so, almost 40% of the organizations couldn’t name their most effective recruitment channels. In the worst-case scenario, this leads to more investments into ineffective channels, making recruitments unnecessarily expensive and heavy for the companies.

Developing the process towards a candidate-driven funnel would create better results in the modern recruitment world

Approximately one-third of the interviewees said that they had developed their recruitment processes. However, most of these had developed their process to be organization-driven, meaning that organizations are trusting their brand to be strong enough to get the best candidates into their pipeline instead of smooth application processes and modern recruitment marketing strategies.

In modern recruitment, candidate-driven recruitment has proven to be more effective – companies that are emphasizing the candidate’s experience and developing their company brand to support that, are more successful in getting qualified candidates.

To receive applications, companies should emphasize a smooth application experience, and ensure that it can be done with all mobile devices. Challenges with applications being made on mobile phones are open text fields and requirement of attaching a full CV into the application, for example.

Requiring registration can feel overwhelming to the applicants, who might be applying to several different positions. Registration was commonly used, especially in the public sector.

“Almost a third of the respondents confirmed that they require separate registration in order for the potential candidate to leave their application. From the applicant’s point of view, registration makes the process harder – this is an effective way to steer away those applicants who are not actively seeking a new occupation. This problem has become more evident, as more and more applications are filled with a mobile device,” Nordström says.

“Many industries are suffering from a lack of talent. To succeed, companies need to develop their recruitment policies and processes towards candidate-driven recruiting, which makes the experience nice and effortless for the candidate. This usually demands a complete restructuring of the current process. However, with efficient candidate marketing tactics, following metrics and cost-structures of different channels, and fixing the broken process, many organizations can fix the issues in their recruitment,” Nordström concludes.

About the study

The survey was conducted in Finland during spring 2021. Interviews were conducted by a third-party partner, and the commissioner of the study was revealed only once the interviews were finished. The interviewees were HR personnel of executive managers of companies varying from 10 employees to over 1,000 employee organizations. Organizations represented different industries.