In his latest blog article, the internationally known HR thought-leader from the Silicon Valley, Dr John Sullivan, wrote about the biggest strategic challenges or problems that corporate recruiting leaders will face in the next few years. In his list, the highest impact problems and challenges appear first.  » If you don’t act proactively to mitigate these major challenges, they unfortunately may grow out of control, causing exponential damage to your firm » he said. Let’s have a look at this top 10 challenges.

1. Not being prepared for the return of intense recruiting competition –recruiting could have been labeled over the last few years as being relatively easy. But as the economy improves, the power will inevitably shift away from the corporation to the job seeker. With this shift, most corporate recruiting functions simply aren’t ready for a return to intense competition where the candidate holds the power.
2. The increased volume of open positions will overload the recruiting system – in addition to having to fight over individual talent, the upcoming increase in the volume of hiring will further stress most existing recruiting systems to the limit.
3. Rusty hiring managers and underdeveloped recruiters have diminished capabilities – a low volume of hiring and the lack of competition may have caused the capabilities of your hiring managers and recruiters to degrade significantly. Adding to that condition the fact that there has been little money for development or training for either recruiters or managers will mean that in growth mode both are likely to initially stumble under this new environment.
4. A lack of speed will restrict your results – the business world moves much faster today than it did during the last recruiting boom. Unfortunately, recruiting hasn’t maintained its speed capability because reduced recruiting resources and a lack of competition have caused many firms to stop focusing on their time to hire.
5. Long-ignored employer brands will begin to negatively impact recruiting – in a down economy with its surplus of applicants, few recruiting leaders paid much attention to their external employer brand image. Few have taken the time to measure their employer brands, and as a result, recruiting leaders often don’t realize how their “talent failures” (including layoffs, pay cuts, promotional freezes, etc.) have hurt their employer brand image..
6. Your current recruiting process may not have the capability of recruiting innovators – one of the things that executives have learned from the success of firms like Google and Apple is the value of innovation and having innovative employees. Unfortunately, most recruiting processes are not designed to effectively recruit innovators, who incidentally expect to see innovation and technology as an integral part of the hiring process.
7. Your recruiting strategy may be years out of date – obviously without the direction provided by a strategic plan, a lack of focus may doom your firm two years of weak results. But surprisingly, most recruiting functions actually operate without any written and distributed recruiting strategy (one that has its own name).
8. Antiquated recruiting metrics lower your credibility with executives –whether you have a seat at the table or not, recruiting leaders simply will not be listened to and funded unless they have the right metrics that demonstrate and quantify the dollar impact that high-performing new hires have on corporate revenue.
9. A shortage of effective recruiters is on the horizon – everyone knows that this long period with a down economy has decimated the ranks of corporate recruiters. Many of those who were laid off have left the profession. And the bad taste that it left in their mouths may cause most never to return to the profession.
10. The lack of recruiting resources —Unfortunately, most recruiting leaders simply don’t have the capability of building a strong business case that quantifies the tremendous dollar impact that recruiting has on corporate revenue and results.

Read the full article « Big Challenges for Recruiting Leaders — The Top 10 Upcoming Recruiting Problems »