Talent Acquisition the No. 1 HR Challenge Right Now: How Experts Are Handling It

If talent acquisition for your company seems like it’s harder than it’s ever been, you’re not alone!

According to The State of HR Report 2024 by BambooHR, talent acquisition’s the most frequently mentioned challenge by HR pros (cited by 44% of your peers at small and medium-sized American businesses). It’s also HR’s most difficult issue to manage (22% of the 1,200 respondents said so).

Things sure have changed. Last year, the survey said employee retention was the No. 1 HR challenge.

Can You Relate?

Almost half (48%) of the survey respondents said their talent acquisition woes are from a lack of qualified talent. Other notable reasons given for talent acquisition challenges are inefficient hiring that causes them to miss out on the best talent (26%), and recruiters who are unsure which of their recruiting sources are effective and which are not (22%).

Here are a few of the other comments your fellow HR pros made when asked why talent acquisition was a problem:

• Candidates always ask for too high a salary
• Skill matching problems
• Finding quality talent with specific skill sets
• Not enough applicants applying for open positions
• Too many applicants (a complaint from the finance and insurance industries)
• Trouble attracting qualified job candidates
• Employees want more flexibility
• The work from home aspect
• Employee benefits play a major part, and
• People like to quit.

Talent Acquisition Solutions

While not all of these may be appropriate for you, a panel of HR pros shared their very different approaches to talent acquisition during BambooHR’s 2024 Virtual Summit.

Clay Binford, chief of people and development, Nomad Global Communication Solutions: The company tapped into a different labor pool to advance the business. Although it was in high-growth mode, its location in Montana made for a very small labor market area. Binford said an educated decision was made to relocate to a city two-and-a-half hours away where there was “an ample labor source” due to major mining and lumber employers moving out of the area. There was even a vacant, move-in-ready facility there. If the company hits its hiring goals this year, it’ll be the largest private employer in the local area, he said.

Unable to offer a remote/hybrid work option, “we’ve had to get creative, as far as compensation packages, or just understanding what … those prospective candidates are looking for, and then trying to adjust and make … changes,” Binford said.

Basudha Bhattarai-Johansson, VP of HR and sustainability, Probi: To minimize the screening out of viable candidates due to bias, ensuring a fair hiring process, the company deployed psychometric assessments in its pre-employment testing.

Andi Green, senior vice president and director of people operations, IRG Realty Advisors: She credited assessing alignment of company/candidate values as the secret to the company’s talent acquisition and employee retention success. Talking about the company’s mission and values starts with the first conversation with a job candidate.

“Neither one of us wants to be here six months down the road and [thinking], ‘Oh my gosh, what did [I] do? This is not a good fit,'” Green commented.

Additional Ideas to Consider

It’s important to keep in mind that all baby boomers will be at or above the Social Security retirement age of 67 by 2031. If estimates are accurate that boomers make up 19% of the workforce, imagine losing one employee for every five that you have on payroll over the next seven years.

Boomer retirement, which started accelerating during the pandemic, has created talent, knowledge and leadership gaps, as well as labor shortages across various industries. In fact, in an episode of the HRMorning podcast “Voices of HR” Joanne Taylor, the vice president of operations for HR consulting company Clear Employer Services said the manufacturing industry is facing a looming staffing crisis due to a disproportionate retiree-to-new-hire ratio.

A shrinking talent pool is going to continue to make the competition for skilled workers intense. But there are some strategies you can try to help strengthen your workforce:

• Fair chance hiring expands your talent pool to include formerly incarcerated job seekers trying to re-enter the workforce
• Expanding childcare access and rethinking other benefit offerings further widens your hiring pool by making you more attractive to Gen Z and millennial talent, and
• Offering on-the-job apprenticeships to upskill workers in entry-level/high-churn jobs enables them to grow into vacant and soon-to-be vacant roles.