Talent Shortage Is The Biggest Challenge in 2020

Without seeing warnings and concerns about a talent shortage, it is difficult to read any insight or news about the staffing and recruiting industry. It is in the minds of each agency and the effects are undoubtedly felt by recruiters, salespeople and the candidates themselves.

Candidates are the key component of any successful recruitment process, at the risk of stating the obvious. Roles would be left unfilled without qualified applicants and consumers left dissatisfied. However, if consumers are disappointed due to a lack of applicants, hiring companies will feel the direct effects on their target sales however overall business objectives.

While the lack of talent and skills that is felt throughout the industry is a sign of lower unemployment levels undoubtedly a good thing, it spells trouble for businesses that rely on that talent as their main commodity.

As part of our annual Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) survey, we asked more than 3,000 recruitment industry professionals across 10 countries to reflect on the opportunities and challenges they ‘re facing in 2020. Unsurprisingly, there were ample worries about the scarcity of skills.

Candidates must be given top priority

It’s no wonder that recruitment pros agree on the value of building a solid pool of candidates in the hyper-competitive market today. 43% believe that the acquisition of candidates is their top priority in 2020, with the involvement of candidates being a top priority for 27%.

All processes are crucial to overall team performance, selecting the applicants and then maintaining relationships with them. Without a long bench candidate ready to go, jobs could remain unfulfilled, and unhappy customers. It is worth noting here that, for the coming year, a third of recruitment pros have listed client engagement as their top priority.

Talent shortage’s ongoing threat

An overwhelming 77% of recruitment pros believe that their biggest challenge for 2020 is the shortage of talent and skills, continuing a multi-year trend of increasing concern about how to attract and retain top talent.

Then it should come as no surprise that low unemployment has been identified as the biggest macroeconomic and political challenge facing the surveyed. Together, these issues are in direct competition with the increased difficulty of recruiting and employing applicants, which causes many to question how to reconcile the need for top talent with the very same scarcity.

Survey respondents were asked, from a pool of 25 options, to name their top challenges overall for 2020. In their top three, nearly half (49%) included talent shortages, joining pricing pressure (29%) and economic uncertainty (28%).

How to overcome this biggest challenge

While there is skepticism about 50% of respondents claiming that skill shortages are worse now compared to 5 years ago, there are actions that firms can take in 2020 to put their team a step above the rest when finding top talent recruitment.

Reskilling is the process of helping staff turn obsolete skills into skills highly relevant to the modern world. In other words, the aim of reskilling is to upgrade candidates with relevant skills required in a specific role which may vary from the skills needed in their current role.

Conclusion

By creating new roles and teaching the skills required to fill other open roles, recruiting firms that offer programs to train or reskill both their employees and their candidates can directly impact the talent shortage.

While many recruitment pros argue that their reskilling efforts will increase this year (47 %), only 4% actually names reskilling as their top business priority. And yet, 74% of respondents believe that reskilling candidates is an important way to address the talent shortage.

Eventually, companies that have opted to commit time and resources to reskilling will not only have a positive impact on their own applicant pools but will also improve the overall customer experience by trying to fill more of those vacancies that are hard to fill, ever available.