What Recruiting Priorities Should Business Leaders Focus On In 2023?

The latest Employ Quarterly Insights Report was recently released, featuring aggregated data from Employ’s 18,000+ customers, insights from more than 1,200 HR decision makers and recruiters, and leading best practices for increasing scalability and adaptability in the difficult talent landscape.

So if you’re looking for the top takeaways for company leaders like yourself, look no further. We’ve compiled top priorities for business leaders to focus on in their companies and improve their recruiting efforts for 2023.

#1: Scalability Is a Strategic Advantage

No matter their size or recruiting complexity, companies are still navigating rocky terrain when it comes to hiring. Those that are actively hiring for new positions have challenges finding enough quality candidates. That’s why it remains the top priority for HR leaders in 2023. In fact, nearly two-thirds (61%) of HR decision makers indicate their first priority in recruiting this year is improving the overall quality of candidate.

However, based on Employ data, the number of new job listings across organizations decreased last year between the second and third quarters by 10.4%, representing a pullback from historic highs seen in early Q2 2022. With new open jobs trending downward, companies will likely experience a continued increase in the total number of applications in 2023.

So while the labor market remains tight, it is also possible that companies are pulling back on hiring during this time. In response, business leaders should adopt more agile recruiting strategies that enable them to scale up or down, depending on their own business needs.

Scalability has become a key strategy for successful recruiting. It allows teams to evaluate their hiring process at all steps of the talent lifecycle to find areas of improvement and keeps teams ready to adjust to changes in the market.

Agile recruiting helps companies to:

Analyze and optimize recruiting processes
Evaluate and improve on key recruiting metrics like quality of hire and time-to-hire
Shorten the hiring process to fill roles quicker with qualified talent
Easily adjust to the changing job market to meet candidates where they are

#2: Technology & Process Prioritization Is Essential

Following multiple years of job market uncertainty, employers are still looking for ways to speed time to hire and focus on automating parts of the hiring process. This is often done by identifying technology and processes that can take repetitive, mundane tasks away from recruiters and hiring managers, and automate those activities for faster hiring.

Companies that plan to increase recruiting spend will most often do so by increasing their budgets for new recruitment technology processes (59%), job advertising (57%), new recruiting team role hires (45%), and by expanding their existing recruitment technology stack (43%).

Additional technology investments will likely go toward:

Applicant tracking systems (59%)
DEI initiatives (51%)
Candidate relationship management (50%)
Sourcing, including RPO (47%)
Career sites (41%)
Offers and onboarding (41%)

> PRO TIP: Leverage purpose-built recruitment technology

Adopt recruitment software that is tailor-made for the complexity, size, and hiring needs of your business. By investing in purpose-built technology, companies can ensure they are more competitive to connect with the right talent and streamline their processes.

#3: Recruiting Outcomes Are Paramount

Understanding where HR decision makers face the biggest challenges right now, and actively seeking to address those difficulties, can make a difference for companies looking to improve the quality of candidates and improve the speed of hiring.

Here are two strategies that can help organizations improve their overall quality of hire, increase efficiencies through automation and workload reduction, and support compliance across companies of all sizes:

Deliver positive experiences
Take care to invest in the needs of hiring managers, recruiters, and candidates, and deliver positive experiences for these audiences. Work to shorten feedback loops, improve communication and collaboration, and engage each stakeholder more deeply within the hiring process. If applicable, focus on engaging with gig workers and nurturing relationships with individuals who are in revenue-generating roles. Ensure the hiring process delivers positive experiences that enhance the company’s employer brand.
Identify where to optimize processes
Leverage data-driven insights and analytics that inform where bottlenecks exist in the recruiting process and uncover opportunities to speed up time-to-hire and boost the quality of candidates. By keeping a clear pulse on applicant flow and the talent pipeline, companies can uncover insights into where the recruiting process can be improved.