50 Statistics on Talent Acquisition Trends and Strategies

What are the current best practices on compensation? What are some popular recruiting trends? How is the candidate experience changing right now? Research studies can be a valuable tool for Talent Acquisition (TA) leaders looking for inspiration, validation, or guidance on what to do next. Because in today’s hiring environment, using the same old strategies and tactics just isn’t an option.

Having statistics in hand can help TA leaders secure executive stakeholder buy-in for increasing their hiring budgets or adopting new tools and strategies. In this post, we’re sharing 50 statistics on the most important topics in talent acquisition today.

Employer Trends

Hiring priorities

• 83% of TA leaders shared that hiring has gone from an HR priority to a business-level priority.
• 18% of TA leaders say that hiring has not been a conversation for its business leaders outside of recruiting/HR.
• 33% of TA leaders say that diversity & inclusion is their top priority, followed by sourcing (29%), recruitment marketing (29%), hiring manager relations (23%), and candidate experience (22%).

Hiring strategy

• 68% of TA leaders plan to increase their talent acquisition budget this year and 65% plan to increase their talent acquisition team headcount.
• 44% of TA leaders have evaluated the effectiveness of their hiring process in the last six months.
• 51% of TA leaders say they try to hire the best talent possible with the fewest skill gaps. 46% say they hire the very best candidate that exists, regardless of the cost. 12% say they hire whoever fits their pay scale with plans to train them after hiring.

Hiring technology

• 72% of TA leaders plan to increase their talent acquisition technology usage.
• 66% of TA leaders would use sourcing technology to save time so their team could focus on building better relationships, 61% would use it to find more diverse candidates from other nontraditional sources, and 40% would use it to identify and prioritize contact with candidates more likely to change jobs.
• 79% of TA leaders said that technology that helped to record, analyze, and report analytics on each live interview would improve their hiring outcomes. 59% said it would help them identify best practices for interviewing diverse candidates.

RPO partnerships

• 60% plan to increase talent acquisition service partners, including RPO providers.
• 59% of TA leaders consider their RPO partnership a success when they bring innovative ideas to address their company’s challenges to the table, followed closely by responsive service and technology experience (53%).
• Mid-size companies (with 2,501-10,000 employees) prioritize service over technology when it comes to their RPO provider’s capabilities.

Compensation

• 46% of TA leaders have done a compensation analysis in the last six months.
• 75% of TA leaders agree that compensation has been a sticking point in their company-wide hiring activities over the last year.
• 51% of TA leaders agree their pay rates aren’t competitive enough.

Bonus: What do TA teams classified as “proactive” say?

• They are more likely to be increasing budget, headcount, service partner usage, and technology adoption in the coming year.
• They are 50% more likely than passive talent teams to be implementing more candidate-friendly processes.
• They are 2x more likely to have recently completed a compensation equity analysis.
• They are 50% more likely to be hiring the best person for the job, not just someone who can fill a seat.
• They are 74% more likely to use candidate satisfaction scores and are 50% more likely to say quality of hire is the most valuable metric.

Candidate Trends

Hiring priorities

• 55% of candidates want to know the starting salary before they apply, and that number is even higher for frontline workers.
• 42% of candidates want a fast application process that respects their time.
• 83% of candidates want to know about future job opportunities within the company during the hiring process.

Hiring transparency

• 38% of candidates want transparency on the status of their application.
• More than one in three candidates want to know the status of their application instantly via a mobile app or web portal.
• 70% of candidates want updates weekly or more frequently on their application status.

Applications

• 31% of candidates say that a job application that can be completed on a mobile device is the most important factor to them in the hiring process.
• 38% of candidates say that 10 minutes is the maximum time they will spend completing an online job application.
• 12% of candidates say that 5 minutes is the maximum time they will spend completing an online job application.

Interviews

• 51% of candidates say that in-person interviews and video interviews are both equally stressful.
• Nearly 2 in 3 candidates actually prefer video interviews and hiring assessments to resumes because they help them show off their capabilities in a dynamic way.
• 31% of candidates say that in-person interviews are more stressful than video interviews and 18% say that video interviews are more stressful.

Ghosting

• The top three reasons candidates ghost employers is because the company/job didn’t interest them, they took another job, or the hiring process was too long and complicated.
• A faster hiring process can reduce 70+% of candidate ghosting instances.
• 58% of candidates have backed out after accepting an offer.

Rejected candidates

• 71% of candidates want to be notified as soon as possible.
• 48% of candidates want to be considered for other jobs.
• 37% of candidates want to receive the results from a hiring test or assessment.

Download our sponsored report with Lighthouse Research and Advisory, Innovation & Impact: The Modern Guide to Hiring, for a more in-depth look at these statistics, and be sure to follow the Lighthouse Research and Advisory blog for more industry insights.

If you have questions about any of these statistics or want to learn how an RPO partner can help you overcome your hiring challenges, please reach out to our team.