The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently reported that employment has increased for the month of August, while the unemployment rate remains unchanged at 3.9%. The BLS reports that job gains occurred in professional and business services, health care, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, and mining. While employers struggle to hire top talent, they’re coming up with new and innovative ways to get candidates interested in their companies.
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“Due to the incredibly tight labor market, companies are finding themselves in a predicament in which they are unable to fill available positions,” says Rebecca Henderson, CEO at Randstad Sourceright, a global human capital solutions leader. “To overcome this challenge, employers are looking for new and innovative ways to find and attract good talent.”
A recent survey by The Knowledge Academy, revealed that employers are aware of this challenge and are already on top of new and innovative ways to attract candidates. The survey indicated that 70% of companies are willing to consider escape rooms in hiring processes. Why escape rooms? According to The Knowledge Academy, this method is useful for evaluating skills like time management, problem-solving, and communication.
According to the survey, a majority of U.S. job seekers (72%) said they want companies to use more unorthodox recruiting assessment methods, such as capture the flag, escape rooms, and professional speed-dating sessions.
It’s not likely that capture the flag and escape rooms will completely replace traditional interviews and résumé submission. But these methods can be considered for advanced stages of the hiring process to help influence the selection of the preferred candidate from among the final cadre of potential new hires.
Getting to the interview stage requires companies to also focus on the attraction stage of the recruiting process. According to a recent Randstad Sourceright survey, 65% of respondents believe that with the advancement of HR technologies, new tools will free up recruiters to focus on more knowledge-intensive work.
“To enhance recruiters’ ability to meaningfully engage with prospective hires, more employers are investing in technologies to free their talent acquisition professionals up from more administrative tasks and allow them to focus on the interpersonal work that is critical to the hiring process,” Henderson adds. “New AI and candidate screening tools let recruiters focus on creating personal connections with the candidates they want to quickly engage, extend an offer and bring onboard.”
New technology, such as Jobvite Text (which is powered by Canvas), allows recruiters to effortlessly engage candidates in a customized way through their preferred form of instant communication: mobile text. When recruiters start off on a good note, they’ll end up creating the perfect candidate experience.