The Top Recruiting Trends For The Rest Of 2023

Ongoing hiring challenges amid national-level economic data and talent supply and demand

The U.S. economy is caught in a strange place. The most intense banking crisis since 2008 has upended an already-unstable environment. Inflation is high but it is also down from the four-decade peak it hit in June of 2022. Job growth is slowing but demand for workers is strong. Some say we are in a recession, while others say we are not. If you are looking for certainty, you are not going to find it. The only possible certainty is change.

How do you forecast recruitment trends in such a confusing environment? While there is no surefire solution, here are five top trends that will shape recruiting in 2023.

1. Despite Economic Uncertainty, There Will Be No Major Pullback in Hiring

When you see the stock market having its worst first half in 50 years, stubbornly high inflation, and news that the world’s biggest technology companies are cutting headcount, you might assume that a hiring slowdown is on the horizon. However, for most employers, there is still a lot of recruiting that needs to be done.

Needless to say, when candidates are in short supply, any intervention that brings job openings down will be good news for recruiters, who are struggling to find talent.

At the local level, some sectors are facing a recruiting environment that is more akin to the boom times of an economy than the bust times. Hiring freezes are big talking points in big tech, while sectors like airlines and hospitality cannot hire fast enough.

Talent acquisition professionals will be under increasing pressure to explain the dichotomy between national-level economic data and talent supply and demand in their own organizations.

Barring further twists and turns, organizations should expect ongoing hiring challenges similar to what they have today, at least into the third quarter of 2023.

2. Pay Transparency Laws Will Continue to Change the Rules of the Game

Pay transparency laws, which require employers to show wage or salary ranges in job postings, are passing in states across the country. Colorado was the first state out of the gate, but similar laws were quickly proposed in other states, notably California and New York.

Analysis by Appcast showed that two noteworthy things happened after the Colorado law went into effect. First, there was a 1.5% increase in job seeker activity in Colorado compared to neighboring Utah, where pay transparency is not required. This suggests that workers may have been more eager to take up work in a jurisdiction that mandated pay ranges. 

Going forward, it is going to become harder for employers to avoid pay disclosure. As of this year, Indeed is encouraging employers to add wage or salary information to their jobs ads; if employers do not provide this information, Indeed may add its own estimate based on a range of factors including job title, location and qualifications.

There is likely to be a collective action toward greater pay transparency even in states that do not mandate it. Employers, who are willing to incur the additional friction of pay disclosures, will likely see more job seekers.

3. The Pendulum Is Swinging Back to Center on Work Location, but Remote Work Is Here to Stay

Remote flexibility is going to be the most lasting organizational legacy of the pandemic, but we are not seeing the sea change toward wholly off-site work that many predicted.

Over the past 18 months, studies have repeatedly shown that employers prefer on-site or hybrid (remote plus on-site) arrangements where possible. According to research from Gallup, employees now largely agree; 60% of employees say they would prefer a long-term hybrid working model, compared to 34% who prefer an exclusively remote position.

From a recruiting perspective, flexibility is the name of the game. From the same Gallup study, nine out of 10 workers (89%) are “extremely likely” to start job hunting if they cannot work flexibly with their current employers. Recruiters who offer job flexibility and include this information in their job ads would gain a material competitive advantage when seeking to attract talent.

4. Moving Beyond Job Boards to an Automated Multi-channel Approach Will Be Critical

“Do not put all your eggs in one basket” is a good advice when selecting recruiting channels. Casting a wide net is critical to meeting your candidate volume needs.

However, even after casting the widest net, job boards may not have all the candidates you need. Other quality candidates – and certainly passive candidates – can be found through other channels, such as social networks, Google search and targeted email.

We are seeing multi-channel sourcing done in a more strategic way this year, via recruiting tech that seamlessly activates the channel that has access to the most efficient group of candidates. Savvy recruitment marketers, who actively diversify channels, will recognize the benefits of improved time-to-fill rates, even if cost-per-hire (CPH) rates are marginally higher than that of other providers with lower CPH.

5. Hiring Oganizations Will Focus Less on Spend and More on Metrics that Matter Most

If there is a bottom-line message, it is this: optimization in 2023 will be less about getting applications in on budget and more about getting jobs filled faster. A large majority of our clients, who are recruiting professionals, say they are accountable for fill rate as one of their key recruiting metrics. 

No single metric tells the whole story of your recruiting operations, but if your hiring strategy does not align with the velocity and quality of the application or hire, you will always be measuring clicks and applications – and you cannot hire clicks.

The financial reality is this: cost-per-click has the potential to drain your budget fast. Appcast data shows that 96 out of 100 sponsored clicks on jobs are pure waste. The impact? On a $100,000 budget at $1.00 cost-per-click, that is $96,000 wasted each month.

Fill rates, on the other hand, provide a better frame for contextualizing the opportunity costs of failing to make a hire for an open position. Consider the company revenue being lost for each day that a critical vacancy remains unfilled, plus the cost and disruption to operations. Calculating that is simple: divide your annual revenue by your total number of employees and then divide that by 365. What remains is the cost to your organization for each day that job remains unfilled.

For example, if your annual revenue is $400 million and you have 400 employees, then the per-day opportunity cost of a job not being filled is about $2,740. If the job in the example remains unfilled for 30 days, the opportunity cost to the organization then becomes $82,200. As a practical aside, this is an effective metric for positioning any increase or maintenance of your recruiting budget as an investment rather than simply a cost. That is, you cannot afford to not fill these roles as quickly as possible.

In an economy that is struggling with talent shortages, employers must transition toward a new definition of source quality – one that factors in the time it takes to fill a job and the true cost of leaving a position open, as an essential recruiting metric. When more hires are made and made faster, the organization becomes more productive and profitable.

2023: Difficult but Not Impossible 

While 2023 is already proving to be another tough year for recruiting and hiring, there are strategies and tactics you can use to hit hiring goals. Simple acts like disclosing salary ranges, allowing flexible work-from-home policies and exploring new channels to reach candidates will put recruiters ahead of the game and in the position to attract the talent they need this year. 

Alicia Little is Director, Brand & Content Marketing, at Appcast Inc.