At a time when recruiting key positions is a cornerstone for corporate competitiveness, a survey of 775 recruiters and managers show that locating qualified candidates for key positions is a huge challenge. The Adler Group, a training and consulting company focused on helping companies hire top talent, today announced this trend among the results of their third annual Recruiting and Hiring Challenges survey.“When you compare the results of this year’s survey to previous years’ results, it’s clear that the situation is getting worse, not better,” said Lou Adler, President of The Adler Group and author of Hire With Your Head, 3rd Ed. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) and the new Nightingale-Conant audio program, Talent Rules! Using Performance-based Hiring to Build Great Teams (2007). “Despite all the new recruiting tools and technologies that have been introduced to help recruiters, an astonishing 89% of respondents indicate that hiring top talent is getting increasingly difficult.”775 recruiters and recruiting managers participated in the employment survey, which included questions on their most significant recruiting challenges, the quality and consistency of hiring processes, the effectiveness of specific recruiting tools, use of metrics, and a self-assessment.“Recruiters report even greater difficulty in finding highly specialized technical positions including scientists, engineers, health care workers, and software developers, despite all the resumes they receive” commented Bryan Johanson, Chief Operating Officer of The Adler Group, who analyzed the survey results. “Still, overall it does not appear that companies are managing their recruiting resources and processes to effectively meet their rising sourcing challenges.”The biggest problem identified in the survey is not seeing enough qualified candidates for important positions:- 76% of respondents indicated this is a growing or a huge problem- 63% felt that the quantity and quality of candidates from major job boards is droppingAnother major issue is the lack of a consistent hiring process and trained hiring managers:- 60% of recruiters feel that hiring managers aren’t strong at assessing competency- 60% of recruiters feel that hiring managers won’t devote the time needed to recruit properlyUnfortunately, the feeling is mutual. Recruiters’ legitimate concerns about hiring managers’ commitment to a quality hiring process is also a sign of the growing frustration managers feel when working with recruiters. “Hiring managers feel that recruiters don’t have enough job knowledge, and recruiters feel that each hiring manager has his or her own way of doing things, and most of them are pretty ineffective. It’s hard to make hiring a core competency of an organization when there is no consistent process,” commented Adler.For a copy of The Adler Group’s 2007/2008 Recruiting and Hiring Challenges Survey Whitepaper, please go to adlerconcepts.com.