The Founder of EvoTalents, Olena Volk, recently participated in an expert club on HR and Recruitment. We want to share this valuable information with you in this article.

Let's start with the situation on the IT labor market in 2023. Currently, the market belongs to companies. According to Djinni, the largest number of offers a candidate receives from recruiters in 30 days is 48. At the same time the candidate sends 433 on their own. Despite this, it is quite difficult to find people for more difficult positions.

"We also noticed another trend. The market is not very stable now. That is why those candidates who are doing relatively well hold on to their jobs. Perhaps, if you are an HR or recruiter, and you write to candidates yourself, you probably have noticed that the willingness to change jobs has become many times lower at the moment," says EvoTalents' ideological inspiration Olena Volk.

In addition, Djinni presents analytics, according to which the most popular job vacancy now is Marketing:

"At our agency, we also saw that the most urgent request from clients now is Sales, Lead and Marketing managers."

Mistake #1. Do not respond to candidates at different stages

Due to the large number of candidates, it is very difficult for recruiters to keep everyone in focus and give feedback to everyone at all stages of communication. Sometimes CEOs and founders are involved in recruiting in small companies. Accordingly, they have even less time for candidates to respond. Although the market is now completely run by companies, there will come a time when it again becomes a candidate market. That's when they remember that their candidate experience was bad.

Olena shares her own experience:

"When a candidate writes to me on his own (and I haven't been involved in recruiting for 4 years), I can see in dialogue history that 4 years ago I wrote to them three times, but they didn't answer. Likewise, candidates will see this story in the future, and it may not have a very positive effect on the company's brand right now."

How to solve this problem?

Automate the process. At the beginning of the search for, for example, a Junior specialist, there are a large number of people who do not suit your response. In this case, it makes sense to make an automated response in the form of a letter. For everyone else going forward, you can have a CRN where you track everyone so you don't get lost along the way. Ideally, a special person should be engaged in giving answers only. Because candidates can quickly forget about certain vacancies to which they responded. Especially if they are actively looking for a job and send a large number of resumes every day.

"I know candidates who think the job search is a proper job. They have an Excel table where every company and every answer is recorded. But not everyone does that, so they may not remember who they wrote to," says Olena Volk.

Mistake #2. Founder / CEO does not delegate recruiting

This mistake can eventually lead to mistake #1. After all, founders and CEOs have other responsibilities, due to which they have much less time for recruiting. Because of this, the quality of communication and feedback can suffer.

"I’ll tell you about my own experience. In addition to the IT recruiting agency, we also have an online school for recruiters, EvoTalents School. I am also the founder there, and from time to time I need to find new people for my team. I always try to delegate this task to my assistant. In the initial stages, I can dictate to her a description of the vacancy by voice, what the person will do, and she posts it. In addition, she can make a first screening of candidates whose experience is not relevant to us. I’ll join later," shares Olena.

If hiring someone to perform these types of tasks on a permanent basis is not necessary for you, you can consider other options. For example, hiring a freelance recruiter or delegating a task to an assistant.

"I had a conversation with a potential client recently (a company with a lot of support managers). He said that they have 10 vacancies now and he is closing them himself. There is such a common opinion that if there are many candidates on Djinni or other similar platforms, then you can close the vacancy yourself. But his time is worth much more than 1 hour of recruiter or assistant. Therefore, this is a recommendation for CEOs of small companies: if you can, it is better to delegate and see what will happen."

Mistake #3. Recruiters do not know how to openly talk to candidates about the company's opinion about the war

Most companies have left the Russian market and do not work with Russia. At the same time, there are companies that have the right opinion, and at the same time, they have several specialists from Russia or Belarus who work, for example, in Cyprus. The company claims that these specialists also have the right opinion, and they are not ready to give up their services. In addition, there may be a case when the company's office is somewhere abroad, they have both employees from Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Because of this, they have to communicate with each other in Russian. Sometimes companies even write English and Russian together in their requirements.

"I heard a lot from candidates for whom this position is important, that when they ask questions like: "Why does the company need the Russian language?", then the recruiters simply disappear. I think this is due to the fact that with the beginning of the war, many negative articles began to appear about companies that did not completely cut off relations with Russia. Therefore, everyone is afraid to mention in text that, for example, they have 3 people from Russia who have been living abroad for 20 years and have the right opinion about the war. I believe that if you have people from other countries (for example, Lithuania or Kazakhstan) in your team who communicate exclusively in Russian, then it is absolutely normal to talk about it at the beginning," says Olena Volk.

The recruiting team must know how to act in such situations. Therefore, it is worth giving them all the necessary information about the company and decide how they need to officially convey it to candidates.

Mistake #4. Test tasks that are...

long and difficult (without payment)
without a clear result
before communication with the recruiter

As a result, we lose great candidates.

"I know that sometimes long and difficult test tasks are made on purpose. In order to see what questions the candidate asks, how they will find a solution on their own. But if it is not necessary, then it is better to write very clearly what needs to be done and what result you expect," says Olena.

Usually, communication with a recruiter is the first prescreen where they talk about the company, the vacancy and learn more about the candidate. Candidates do not really like to do test tasks before "live" communication with the face of the company. Now the market belongs to companies, so they started adding test tasks to see people who are really nterested in the job. However, it can lead to situations where the company loses many great candidates. According to statistics, really cool candidates find a job faster. That is why, if they already have offers, they are unlikely to work on the test task. Only if you have already made the first acquaintance, and the candidate is interested in working in your company, they will want to complete the test task.

"A small test task can be added to the first communication if it is a Junior position and you have, for example, 500 candidates. Then something small for screening can be added. But if we are talking about candidates with experience, then I would add the test already after the first or second stages. In this case, the motivation of really good skilled candidates will be much higher," shares the founder of EvoTalents.

Mistake #5. Lengthy hiring process or misunderstanding of who you are looking for

"For example, the company needs a Project Manager, but there is still no understanding of what tasks they will perform. Usually such a search is very long and it changes in the process. Ideally, it is necessary to understand who we are looking for, and what specific functions this person will perform," Olena gives examples.

If we look deeper, there are two problems here. The first one is for companies. If one position is being closed for 3-6 months, the company loses money. First, funds are spent on recruiters, hiring managers, who also conduct interviews. Secondly, the company does not have a closed vacancy for a long time, and therefore no one performs the necessary tasks. The second problem is that the drawn-out process has a negative impact on candidates. Companies often cannot make a final decision, so they do not reject candidates immediately, but transfer them to the "waiting list". This is worsening the candidate experience again, which further affects the image of the company.

Elena has her own case:

"6 years ago I just started working as a freelancer. We were looking for a C-level position and the CEO was not very quick to give feedback. Each candidate waited for 2-3 weeks, that is a very long time. I wrote to these candidates every 2-3 days and told them what was happening with the process at that moment. Not only did I ping the CEO, but also gave the candidates insight into why the process was being delayed. At the final interview, when the candidate was offered a job, he noted that he really liked the company. He liked it because, despite the long process, he was always given feedback. It affected him, and that's why he accepted the offer."

In fact, providing timely feedback is a difficult task. Especially when there is no progress in the hiring process, and the recruiter still needs to write something to the candidate and keep in touch with them. However, it is important to do this in order not to lose potentially excellent specialists.

Long story short, so the main tips:

Delegate
Communicate with candidates
Remember that the labor market is changing