2023 will be another competitive year in recruiting, and the employers that have an advantage will be those that invest in developing their employer brand and know how to tap into new Recruitment Marketing strategies.
At our recent RallyFwd Virtual Conference, expert speakers shared next-level talent attraction strategies including social recruiting, employee advocacy, digital marketing and more. Throughout the conference, we polled attendees to learn about their hiring plans for 2023, the recruiting challenges they face and what strategies they planned to use in order to attract top talent next year. The data we collected reveals some interesting information about the state of Recruitment Marketing in 2023. Dive into the poll results to see how your strategy compares.
1. Recruitment Marketing Challenges Going Into the New Year
We started our polls with the question: what are your top 3 challenges for 2023. Almost 60% of those responded said that they can’t hire talent fast enough. This reflects the December jobs report showing that the job market continues to be strong.
The second highest response was that practitioners don’t have enough resources and budget to meet their recruiting goals. As we’ll discuss further in this post, having a strong employer brand with content about your company to use for organic strategies will help you attract qualified talent while making the most of your budget and resources. And having that strong employer brand content will help further qualify potential candidates, strengthening your talent audience and pipeline.
When asked about their top 3 challenges for 2023, RallyFwd attendees overwhelmingly responded that they can’t hire the talent they need fast enough and they don’t have enough budget and resources to meet their recruiting goals.
2. Recruitment Marketing Budgets and Resources
When asked about the state of their 2023 budget, only 13% of respondents said their budget was increasing, while 14% said their budget was decreasing. 36% said that their budget was staying flat and the same amount said they were unsure what their budget would be in 2023.
For teams where budgets are staying flat or decreasing, you’ll need to use your resources wisely this year. You can’t just throw money at filling roles and see what happens. Especially at the beginning of the year, focus on what’s currently working to attract talent while testing and strengthening organic (and free) channels. Across the board, make sure you’re tracking and analyzing your results so you only spend time (and definitely money) on those that bring the best results.
36% of practitioners surveyed said their 2023 budget was staying the same as 2022. An additional 14% responded that their budget was decreasing. These numbers together make a case for conserving your resources and spending your budget wisely.
3. Hiring Plans for 2023
Despite seeing news of large tech companies announcing layoffs over the past few weeks, many companies are still looking for workers and they plan to hire this year.
61% of those who responded to our poll said they’re planning to hire more and grow. Only 2% said they’re reducing their workforce and 16% were unsure. Two years ago at RallyFwd, we asked this same question, with 66% of respondents saying that they were planning to hire more and grow. This is good news in that, despite uncertainty about the job market and the economy, companies are hiring. This reinforces our previous point to use your resources wisely as you may need to hire with a limited budget.
61% of people surveyed are planning to hire more and grow this year while only 2% are planning to reduce their workforce.
4. Putting Your Employer Brand Front and Center
We asked attendees at RallyFwd where their company is on their employer brand journey. Almost 40% said they are currently refreshing their employer brand and another 10% are in the process of developing their first employer brand. Investing in employer branding is a smart move. Job seekers (active and passive) want to know about a company before they take a job there, and having a strong employer brand (along with content that communicates this) will help attract the talent you want.
Rally note: As you refresh and deploy a new employer brand, it’s important to have a strong measurement plan in place to understand how you’ll gauge the success of your strategies. Our Recruitment Marketing tool, Rally Inside, is an easy and efficient way to track and measure your employer brand content from the very beginning. We suggest using it before you launch your new brand so you have a baseline to compare it to.
Almost 50% of practitioners surveyed are either developing or refreshing their employer brand.
5. Empowering Your Employees
Harnessing the power of your employees and their social networks is a smart option to grow your employer brand content.
Despite all this, our survey revealed that 68% of practitioners do not have an employee advocacy program. 2023 is the year to change that. Not only is it a no (or low) cost strategy, it supports your employer brand by offering an authentic glimpse into life at your company.
Candidates want to know what it’s really like to work at your organization and employee advocacy is the perfect way to show this. An employee advocacy program also increases your reach beyond that of your corporate Recruitment Marketing channels and decreases the need to run paid ads (saving you valuable budget).
But starting a program like this can seem daunting. To help you, check out the advice of VCA Animal Hospitals’ Ally Brown.
68% of practitioners surveyed do not have (or are working on) an employee advocacy program.
6. Strengthening Your Social Recruiting
The cost of job ads is expected to continue to increase throughout 2023, while the amount of quality candidates you get from them gets harder and harder. Social recruiting offers a major opportunity to reach talent through the channels they’re already on, get your employer brand seen by passive job seekers and educate your audience with authentic content.
84% of people polled said they’re already using these channels to promote their jobs and company culture. But Rally’s data shows that 31% of organic social recruiting content gets no engagement. So 2023 is the year to test and improve how you’re using social media to attract talent.
This is exactly why we launched our first Social Recruiting Rally, a 5-day digital event where we’ll use the power of the community plus data to answer the question: what actually works to attract talent on social media? Stay tuned to the Rally Blog in February to learn the results of our rally.
As you build your social recruiting strategy, be sure that you track and measure how your posts are performing so that you can continually improve your engagement and increase your reach.
Rally note: Rally Inside’s EZ Content Wizard feature allows you to create a data-driven social recruiting post in under 5 minutes.
A majority of practitioners are using social media to promote jobs and company culture. 2023 will be the year to understand what actually works in social recruiting.
7. Pay Transparency
In our poll, we asked our conference attendees if they’re already putting pay information in their job descriptions. 53% of respondents are not currently doing this.
Pay transparency will continue to be a hot topic this year. As of January 1, California employers with 15 or more employees must post a position’s salary or per hour pay in a job description (internal or external). Other states and New York City are also adopting various pay transparency laws.
Including this information (whether you are required by law to do it or not) can help increase quality candidates applying to your jobs by showing talent that the salaries and wages you offer are competitive.
Our poll of RallyFwd December 2022 attendees, asking if they are currently including salary and pay information in their job descriptions.
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With so many things to think about as you start the new year, it can be helpful to take a moment and really think about your strategy and plans for 2023. Start by watching (or re-watching) December’s RallyFwd Virtual Conference for all the next-level talent attraction strategies that were included.
