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Rethinking recruitment: Lessons from a Fortune 50 giant

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Rethinking recruitment: Lessons from a Fortune 50 giant

Indeed
| January 17, 2025
How job seekers found their current role-Indeed

Rethinking recruitment: Lessons from a Fortune 50 giant

For months, the usual recruiting channels were coming up empty for a Fortune 50 retailer looking to fill a tech position that required niche, tough-to-find experience.

It was time for a new approach.

The company, which had never relied on job ads to hire high-priority tech roles, worked with hiring platform Indeed to revise its strategy. Three weeks later, the position was filled.

The successful shift offers several insights that can help all companies navigate today’s tech hiring challenges. First, the tech job market is unusually tricky right now: It’s hard to fill tech roles, despite slowing job growth and industry layoffs. Additionally, candidates are taking a more active role in looking for new positions. And, perhaps most importantly, rethinking strategy is crucial. To succeed, employers need an up-to-date approach to recruitment and hiring.

A Tricky Job Market 

Many tech employers have slowed their hiring but this is not necessarily good news for hiring managers. Too many candidates can be just as challenging as too few.

“Hiring managers are being flooded with applicants,” says Linsey Fagan, senior talent strategy advisor for talent intelligence at Indeed. “They are thinking that they’ll wait for the best of the best of the best talent — they’re waiting for that purple unicorn that they don’t always have the luxury of getting.”

This means it is taking employers longer to fill roles. It is also costing them more.

“In the past two years, spend per tech job has increased by 145%,” Fagan says. 

Adding to employers’ challenges: Rapid changes in technology are making it difficult to determine which roles are most needed — and leading to shortages of workers with specific skills.

Biggest changes in skills demand data from Indeed
Source: Indeed

“There is not enough talent for a lot of emerging technologies,” Fagan says. “Organizations are not only having to figure out how to find that talent, they are also needing to look at skill pairings to identify who they can upskill quickly when the talent isn’t out there.”

Accurate data is essential. Indeed’s Hiring Lab, for example, tracks the rise of AI-related job postings, which made up 22% of software development jobs in February 2024. Indeed’s research also provides insights into common tech skill pairings, which can help employers identify candidates who are most likely to be able to learn new skills quickly.

‘In the Driver’s Seat’ 

Data indicates tech job seekers are increasingly seeking out positions rather than relying on recruiters.

“They want to be in the driver’s seat,” Fagan says. “They are looking for and researching employers and applying on their own, not waiting to be sourced.”

About 60% of job seekers in a recent Indeed survey said they found and applied for their current position on their own — up from 55% last year. The percentage who said they are actively looking for work also rose, climbing to 34%. Another sign of the shift from passive to active job seeking: Over 75% of tech workers who update their résumé on Indeed are actively searching for jobs.

Crucial Strategy Updates

To meet these challenges, employers need effective, up-to-date recruiting and hiring strategies.

“If they haven’t evolved their strategies beyond passive, they’re behind: The shift has been trending in this direction for years, and it’s gathering steam,” Fagan says. “Sending out all these individual messages is time consuming, and conversion rates are lower for passive talent. If you can post a job and get applicants coming to you — and that’s their preferred method — that is more efficient.”

Using job ads effectively is more than just copying and pasting a job description onto a job board, though.

“Employers are starting to understand that job ads are a wonderful tool for hiring talent — but the content that we’re putting in front of them with those job ads is important,” Fagan says.

Experts offer several tips for elevating the content of job ads:

Use data-informed insights to craft job ads that will grab attention. For example, a majority (55%) of tech job seekers are interested in hybrid roles. Interestingly, the percentage who prefer on-site positions (31%) has increased since 2023. Defined job progression plans, training programs and mentorship programs all boost chances that an employee will stay with their employer.

Write job ads in clear language. Ads for engineering and tech roles tend to be some of the least readable, according to Fagan, and the employers who write them often think they are speaking to tech workers by using technical language.

“But our data shows that actually, if you use good old-fashioned human language, you’ll see more applicants,” Fagan says.

Play to your strengths. “The vast majority of tech talent researches every single company before applying. Often the first impression is the job ad,” Fagan says. “We don’t want to just throw budget at putting job descriptions out there. We need to talk about why this role might be a great fit for their career — and also how we’re a best-in-class employer offering benefits that matter to this audience.”

Often, one of the best benefits of a tech job is the work itself.

“Think of all the cool projects that tech is working on right now,” Fagan says. “The way some job ads are written, employers are not even telling these job seekers what they would be working on.”

You can download Indeed’s exclusive research report, Indeed Insights: Tapping Into Today’s Tech Talent, here. To reach a sales partner who can help you take your tech hiring program to the next level, please go here.