What is Hiring Challenge Priorities?
Hiring challenge polls identify the most pressing recruitment pain points across an organization, from sourcing volume to offer acceptance rates to time-to-productivity. SHRM reports that 83% of HR professionals experienced difficulty recruiting suitable candidates in the past 12 months, but the specific challenge varies dramatically by industry, role level, and region. Polling hiring managers and recruiters on their top obstacles replaces assumptions with data, enabling targeted investment in the areas that will move the needle most.
Why This Matters
Resource allocation requires knowing where the bottleneck is
Recruitment budgets are finite. Spending on employer branding when the real bottleneck is screening speed wastes resources. SHRM found that organizations investing in their top-ranked hiring challenge reduced average time-to-fill by 23% compared to those spreading budget evenly. Use the Recruitment Cost Calculator to quantify the financial impact of your hiring bottlenecks.
Employer brand strategy must address real objections
According to LinkedIn Talent Solutions, 75% of candidates research a company before applying. If your biggest hiring challenge is offer rejection rather than sourcing, your employer brand work should focus on EVP clarity and Glassdoor reputation rather than job board advertising. Polling reveals whether brand investment targets the right stage of the funnel.
Process optimization starts with diagnosing the right stage
The hiring funnel has distinct stages: sourcing, screening, interviewing, offering, and onboarding. Each stage has different failure modes. Polling hiring managers surfaces whether candidates are dropping out at screening (too slow), interview (poor experience), or offer (non-competitive packages), so process improvements target the stage that matters.
Common Mistakes
Treating all roles as having the same hiring challenge
Engineering roles typically struggle with sourcing volume, while sales roles struggle with quality filtering and customer-facing roles struggle with culture fit assessment. Aggregating all roles into one "biggest challenge" masks the role-specific interventions that would actually help. Poll by department or job family, not company-wide only.
Ignoring candidate experience data
Internal polling captures the employer perspective, but candidates who withdrew or rejected offers hold critical information. Talent Board research shows only 28% of employers collect structured feedback from candidates who decline. Pairing internal challenge polls with candidate experience surveys closes the blind spot.
Focusing only on sourcing while neglecting screening
Most organizations assume their hiring challenge is "not enough candidates." In practice, SHRM data shows that screening and selection inefficiency wastes more recruiter time than sourcing shortfalls. A company receiving 200 applications per role but taking 60 days to screen them has a screening problem, not a sourcing problem. Use the Hiring Speed Calculator to benchmark your funnel velocity.
Industry Benchmarks
Source: SHRM Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Report