HireVue lists biggest recruiting trends of 2021

The biggest recruiting trends this year

March 25, 2021 3:46 PM

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the job market has seen unemployment swing from half-century lows to record highs in a matter of weeks, leaving hiring managers scrambling to adapt.

But working from home has provided companies with a silver lining, says Andy Valenzuela, chief human resources officer at HireVue, a recruiting platform. Hiring managers have been able to broaden their recruitment efforts, no longer constrained by a location-specific applicant pool.

HireVue found that over half of respondents expanded their recruiter network — 48% of which expanded postal codes for potential recruits and 47% added more remote roles to existing positions.

“The positive is that [the pandemic] is opening up markets and talent that didn't exist before because companies still weren't sure whether they could fully operate in a remote environment,” Valenzuela says. “They didn’t believe they could deliver a great experience in a remote role for their candidates and now they’ve proven they can. ”

Unfortunately, an expanding candidate pool brings its own set of recruiting challenges. Forty percent of hiring managers named a lack of qualified candidates as the biggest barrier to finding top talent, followed by longer lead times that result in decreased candidate availability and difficulty managing job postings, the report found.

A survey conducted by Monster found that 87% of employers are struggling to hire qualified employees due to a widening skills gap, as potential candidates have remained out of the job market for almost a year. More than 10.1 million people are still unemployed as of February 2021. But with an anticipated uptick in recruiting, the next few months will see the rise of significant changes in companies’ practices.

Here are the three most anticipated hiring trends for 2021, according to HireVue:

Trend #1: Technology’s rapidly expanding role

The integration of more tech in the hiring process is hardly a new industry trend. The speed at which companies have begun incorporating it into their recruiting efforts, however, has been exacerbated by current events.

“Do I think that the adoption of video interviewing or the adoption of remote work would have happened in time? Absolutely,” Valenzuela says. “What [COVID] did is brought it to top of mind and required it almost immediately.”

While turning to virtual interviewing was a way to safely interview candidates during

COVID-19, more than half of respondents noted that doing so unexpectedly resulted in a speedier recruitment process and 41% say it helped them identify the best candidates, according to HireVue.

“Technology doesn't mean the process is impersonal,” Valenzuela says. “Technology can create a similar experience and have personalized elements to it.”

Looking ahead, 41% of respondents plan to use a combination of in-person and virtual interviews, the report found. Twenty-three percent of respondents plan to move solely to video or virtual interviewing and 14% plan to automate much of the hiring process with AI, chatbots and text instead of conducting interviews.

Trend #2: Prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion

A hundred percent of respondents listed the topic of diversity, equity and inclusion as “extremely relevant” or “very relevant” to them. But only 33% said taking action on DEI goals was an immediate priority, followed by 31% who considered it a short-term priority and 28% a long-term priority.

Less than 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Black, according to research from the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion group — an initiative started by PwC. Only 25% of female CEOs are in the S&P 500 and just only 29% of employers have programs focused on the retention of LGBTQ talent.

Companies’ hesitancy to tackle the issue is less about a lack of want and more about a lack of know-how, Valenzuela says.

Of the respondents with plans to take action, 62% plan to expand their recruiting network by seeking out candidates from nontraditional places, 55% plan to partner with organizations that connect underrepresented professionals with internships and jobs, 53% plan to recruit from universities with diverse student bodies, 35% plan to rewrite job postings with inclusive language and 30% plan to use structured interviews to minimize unconscious biases within the hiring process.

Structured interviewing is one of the first solutions HireVue offers clients seeking to bridge their diversity gap, according to Valenzuela. Using the platform’s technology, the interviewer is guided through the process using specific questions they should ask and ensures that every interview is exactly the same, no matter the applicant’s background in hopes of removing unconscious bias from the system.

Trend #3: Pivot toward process efficiencies

With more tools at their disposal, hiring managers are looking to bring automation to administrative tasks in order to spend more time on the candidate.

More than 80% of employers plan to hire in 2021 and 41% say virtual recruiting has been challenging, according to Monster. To simplify this process, job searching site Indeed launched Indeed Hiring Platform, which allows employers to screen candidates and interview them directly through the platform, eliminating administrative tasks like reading resumes and scheduling interviews.

Among hiring managers’ priorities are faster turnaround times for hires, a streamlined communication between companies and applicants and a simplified process. Fifty-four percent of respondents believe that hiring technology empowers them to make these desired changes, empowering them to build a faster, fairer, friendlier candidate experience using an end-to-end hiring experience platform.