This was first posted as an answer on Quora.
The exact problems that a company faces while recruiting talent depends on the process they have in place, the size of the team, and the age of the company. Regardless, there are certain problems that cut across industries. These include:
Scarcity of talent -Unless you are hiring from a global workforce and have the clout to move people where you need them, you will find a gap in demand and supply of the talent you are looking for across multiple role. The best of the talent is always retained by the organization who has them – and you would hardly ever get a shot at hiring them. Even if they are looking out for change, they tend to have multiple offers at hand and you will have to face stiff competition when courting them.
Lack of role definition: It is important that hiring managers and company leaders agree on the roles and responsibilities of the position being hired for. Putting a structure to what job descriptions across the organization should look like helps a lot. If you do not have parameters on which to measure the candidate, it will be very difficult for the recruiter to get you the right talent for the position.
Lack of feedback from hiring managers: Many a times hiring managers believe that the recruiter they are working with do not understand the technicalities and nuances that the new recruit has to work on. This stops them short of sharing a detailed feedback on what was wrong with the candidate they had rejected. The lack of feedback makes it very difficult for the recruiter to narrow down the search, and everyone ends up wasting a lot of time before the right recruit is identified.
Candidate engagement during the recruitment process: The top talent is occupied doing something they love. They are not going to take time out for the recruitment process if they believe it does not value their time enough. When looking out, they are likely to have multiple opportunities calling to them. In such a scenario, they will not wait for the recruiter to re-engage them before they decide on another offer. It is important to keep the conversation going even if the process has hit a bottleneck – if the candidate does not hear from you for a couple days, she assumes you are not keen on working with her.
Brand image of the company: Remember that hiring talented resources is a two-way process. While the recruiter is busy evaluating the candidate, the candidate is also evaluating the company and the recruiters she is interacting with. If she perceives the brand as not meeting her standards or finds the brand image jarring with her on values – she will not be interested in working for the said brand. For top talent, the brand image matters as much as the roles and responsibilities they get to fulfill. Everyone will be paying the top dollar, they would rather work with someone they themselves value as a company.
Employee value preposition – There was a time salary was the only aspect of the employee value preposition that mattered to candidates. This has changed over the years. The top talent today looks for work-life balance and wants to be able to spend quality time with his family as much as he wants to be an achiever at the workplace. Equally, the rise of gig economy means that most of the top talent also have a side-gig. If they are entrepreneurial in nature, this is a non-negotiable for them. Therefore, employee value preposition beyond the salary becomes an important aspect to hiring top talent. Many companies struggle to provide this and are unable to live with tour-of-duty approach that the top talent today prefers.