After the stock market crash this week, I emailed our financial advisor and asked, “Don’t panic, right?”
I had added a winky-face emoji, knowing what his answer would be, what it always is, “Yep, just keep swimming.”
Even when the stock market fluctuation doesn’t directly affect the long game, it’s hard to keep swimming when hiring is slowing, unemployment is creeping up, and housing and food prices are still higher than before COVID.
However, according to a Wall Street Journal article:
The second-quarter reporting season has brought mostly good news, with 78% of the S&P 500 firms that have reported so far beating analysts’ earnings estimates—compared with a 74% 10-year average. Both AI-related companies and the rest are reporting net income above what was forecast a month ago. Overall, the U.S. economy still looks robust: The unemployment rate has gone up because the labor force has expanded.
That doesn’t mean there’s no cause for alarm. Layoffs continue with Intel, biotech firms, and other employers across industries. Inflation seems to be finally stabilizing, but the Fed skipped out on reducing interest rates yet again, at least until September, and won’t let the stock market dictate any cuts. Employers only added 114,000 new jobs last month, much lower than the estimated 175,000, indicating a cooling job market and fears of a “hard” economic landing and recession.
I keep hearing the echo of “just keep swimming” with an edge of reluctance and reservation. While hiring is down with so many employers I’ve spoken to who are participating in this year’s CandE Benchmark Research, strategic hiring continues for key roles and hard-to-fill roles.
According to our latest July CandE Pulse research, hiring is down 13% overall, those freezing hiring is up 100%, and layoffs went from 1% in June to 16% in July. Ouch. Redeploying is up dramatically as well (see figure below). This is based on over 100 CandE Pulse responses from companies with 500 employees to over 100,000 (77%) and industries like construction, education, healthcare, technology, aerospace & Defense, government (public sector), hospitality, manufacturing, services, and others.
Candidate frustration globally is higher than ever in our current benchmark research, and resentment as we measure it – the percentage of candidates who said they had a poor candidate experience and are no longer willing to engage with those businesses and brands they had applied to – is higher than ever as well. We had assumed that as unemployment increases worldwide (currently up to 4.3% in the U.S.), so would candidate resentment. But that wasn’t the case. In fact, there was no correlation at all between the two. Resentment is still driven by a poor candidate experience for those not hired, from pre-application to screening and interviewing.
With fewer jobs available to apply to, increased levels of applications for the jobs that are available, continuing layoffs, and leaner recruiting teams that struggle to respond, it’s no wonder that candidate resentment is higher. Recruiting team size didn’t change from last month in our CandE Pulse survey, but the trend line since January still shows teams have been slowly getting leaner (see figure below).
When we look at the trend line for the overall recruiting budget, it’s been on a slight upward trajectory since January (see figure below). Last month, I called it flat, but I’m always the glass half-full kind of person. This may not be a reality unless we see a better trend line over the next few months.
As we do each year in our benchmark research, and now monthly in our CandE Pulse surveys, we again highlight how employers self-rate their own recruiting and candidate experience and whether or not they are leading, competing, improving, or lagging. Will those who said they were competing or improving, the usually biggest segment of responses, continue to decrease? The trend lines are clear – since January, both have continued to decrease (see figure below).
Those who said their leading increased by 30% from June, and the overall trend line from January increased through July. Unfortunately, those who said they’re lagging increased by 350% since May, indicative of the cooling market and the higher level of candidate frustration and resentment we’re seeing in our benchmark data. Each month, these are self-reported ratings and are subjective, and they are also a different mix of employers each month. Still, we definitely prefer employer confidence in competing and leading to remain stable or increase. Of course, there’s constant volatility, and the proof is always in the candidate experience ratings themselves.
Where were July’s recruiting priorities? We’ve asked our CandE Community and beyond in our CandE Pulse surveys since January 2023. Since last December, screening and interviewing had been the number one CandE Pulse recruiting priority through May. Now, in July, it’s analytics and data management, with screening and interviewing dropping to #2 and tied with pre-boarding and onboarding.
This is fascinating because while analytics and data management are critical to understanding all aspects of recruiting and hiring success (and failure), the business impact and return, and accurately reporting to leadership, they’re rarely in the top five priorities. Obviously, it was important for the employers that responded in July, so we’ll see if that continues to be a trend in August and beyond.
Again, it’s always great to see “candidate experience” in the top 5, jumping back to #3 in July. Social recruiting, recruitment marketing, and internal mobility/retention round out the top 5 this time. Even with hiring slowing, key roles are being filled externally and internally.
As always, this is only the partial list of what we ask, and it’s clear that priorities can change. A lot. Every single month. Granted, it’s a different mix of employers responding to these surveys each month, but still a sample set of what the priorities currently are.
In addition to asking what employers’ priorities are month after month, we also ask them how they are going to get all the work done (see figure below). Out of the top five each month, the most regularly recurring one is always “Improving Processes.” This makes sense since it is where companies should tackle priority improvement and implementation first and foremost. The next regularly recurring activities in July were again current staffing (#2), new technologies (#3), candidate/employee experience survey feedback (#4), and current technologies (#5). This follows the theme of leaner teams, improving recruiting and candidate experience, and optimizing technology systems.
Candidate/employee experience survey feedback continues to stay in the top five ways to get recruiting things done. Whether gathering continuous feedback from candidates and/or participating in our benchmark program, companies that analyze and act on this data can create a competitive edge in a continuing volatile marketplace, which aligns with analytics and data management being the top priority in July. Employers need accurate and timely feedback data to improve their processes, and that includes participating in our annual CandE Benchmark Research Program and considering investing in continuous candidate experience feedback with our survey partner Survale.
Overall, our July CandE Pulse results align with the unfortunate trend of cooling economic waters rising around us. Based on my reading, though, most economists agree that the U.S. economy is still strong, something the rest of the world is counting on going into 2025. And many in our CandE community continue to be cautiously optimistic for a stronger second half of 2024 and a stable 2025 (if inflation continues to come down, interest rates are cut, and we all survive this year’s election cycle). We just started capturing data for our August CandE Pulse results, so you can jump right in and answer the survey here.
But I can’t help but think that no matter how high the freezing waters rise, I’m going to just keep swimming and invest in a growth mindset while singing some of Ben Fold’s cynical words from his song You to Thank.
“Yeah, we put on a pretty good act
And they seemed to all need to believe it
So we danced and smiled
And paddled hard beneath it…”
