One of the most significant impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the change in the hiring landscape with an emphasis on remote work.
Working remotely has grown to be the preferred mode of employment for workers. 91% of workers state that the ability to work remotely, with flexible hours, contributes to their professional satisfaction and happiness. Moreover, the prominence of remote work will continue to grow; 100% of respondents aged 18 to 24 said they would quit their current job for a fully remote opportunity.
To understand this massive shift towards remote work and change in on-site roles and employee behavior, Datapeople created the Hiring in Distributed World report. The report is based on 30 million real-world job posts and hiring outcomes from over 10,000 employers and 122 different applicant tracking systems.
In this article, we will take you through the key findings from the report and also offer tips for attracting large, diverse candidate pools when hiring for roles in this evolved job market.
What are the key insights from the report?
The Hiring in a Distributed World Report does not rely on surveys or anecdotes. Instead, it offers unique data based on actual jobs and candidate behavior over the past three years. Here are some trends observed in the report:
A rising preference for remote jobs
One of the report's key findings is the unprecedented rise in remote work. Remote jobs are five times that of pre-pandemic levels: in 2019, only 2% of jobs were remote, compared to 10% today.
Startups and unicorns were the quickest to adapt to the new hiring landscape. Today over 90% support remote work, compared to 53% and 63%, respectively, pre-pandemic. On the other hand, larger organizations such as Fortune 500 companies already supported some forms of remote jobs due to the sheer size of their workforce. However, they have also seen a 12% fall in the proportion of non-remote companies.
The candidate preference for remote work has also increased every quarter in 2022, with remote professional jobs attracting over 2.2x larger candidate pools than their non-remote counterparts. The difference is more apparent when segregating applications by gender: in 2022, remote jobs attracted 120% more female candidates. This disparity could be due to the disproportionate burden of caregiving carried by women.
The rise of remote jobs in the US is a product of expansion i.e., an increase in remote hiring by companies already carrying it out at some level. However, remote hiring is being adopted by companies previously wholly onsite in Europe, Canada and the UK.
The emergence of hybrid roles
Post the pandemic, the job market saw the emergence of a new type of position- the hybrid role. Today, almost 6% of jobs are hybrid. While there is no exact definition of this type of role, it usually involves having the flexibility of working from home while going into the office with some frequency. Candidates working hybrid jobs are generally required to be located in specific areas so they can work from the office when needed.
The hybrid role hasn’t been accepted evenly, and the popularity varies by geography and seniority. While hybrid roles have become more common in Australia and Oceania (7%), Europe (6%), and North America (6%), only 2% of jobs in Africa fall into this category. Over 96% of jobs in Asia and South America do not support hybrid work; most companies prefer traditional onsite and occasional remote roles. In continental Europe, Canada and the US, hybrid growth is driven by expansion. However, in the UK, hybrid roles are being offered by companies that typically worked onsite to provide greater job flexibility.
Hybrid roles are also more common in higher levels of seniority. While the percentage of hybrid roles is 9% for mid-level and senior positions, it is only 3% for entry-level jobs.
Employers are providing greater perks for remote workers
In addition, employers are providing more perks to attract talent in today’s competitive talent market. In the US and globally, the most difficult sectors to hire are tech hiring (for engineering and non-engineering roles) and frontline hiring (such as warehouse, manufacturing and retail).
There has been a substantial increase in three remote benefits. Stipends to improve home offices have increased from next to zero to about 4% in 2022. This perk is more common among startups (5%). Home office stipends can range from a one-time setup stipend to co-working space reimbursement and monthly allowances.
Similarly, in-person company events for remote workers have risen over the past three years. They are more common in big tech companies, where nearly 10% of job postings reference in-person events as perks.
Having the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world for a certain amount of time is a benefit only offered by a minority of businesses; however, it is growing steadily in the UK and Europe. It is typically offered for a period ranging from three to six weeks to make on-site roles more flexible and attractive.
On the other hand, benefits relating to food, such as in-office meals and commuter stipends, have dropped from 2019 to 2022.
There’s also been a fourfold increase in the number of bonuses in frontline and professional roles. Frontline jobs have seen a jump in sign-on bonuses between 2019 and 2022, while other bonuses, such as retention and merit-based, are more common in professional roles.
Broadening of talent pools
Employers are finding new ways to expand the candidate pools to cope with the tight labor markets. They are doing this by lowering their degree and certification requirements.
Degree requirements have reduced across industries from 2021 to 2022. Only 39% of frontline jobs required some form of degree in 2022, compared to 48% in 2021. Professional jobs saw a similar decrease in degree requirements, with 47% of roles having ‘no degree required,’ a reduction from 53% in 2021. Reducing degree requirements gives way to skill-based hiring, which has been shown to decrease biases in the recruitment process.
There has also been an increase in second-chance hiring with more jobs being ‘felon-friendly,’ i.e., encouraging applications from candidates with prior arrest or conviction records. In professional roles, second-chance hiring has grown by 50% in California and the rest of the US. While fair chance hiring ordinances have existed in Canada since 2018, the pandemic has dramatically increased the number of such roles.
An introduction of vaccine requirements
Since the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced in 2021, nearly 10% of job roles have explicit vaccine mandates. The vaccine requirement is higher in North America (12%) and Australia and Oceania (16%) as compared to Europe (under 2%).
The vaccine requirement also varies by role: amongst frontline positions in North America, healthcare jobs have the highest vaccine requirement (16%), closely followed by production and facilities (14%). Moreover, job postings in Democrat states are four times more likely to have vaccine requirements than those in Republican states.
Tips for Evolving Your Hiring Practices
The report makes it clear that remote and hybrid work will continue to rise in the coming years. Given the evolving job market and tight labor market, hiring managers must use innovative ways to attract quality talent. Recommendations to improve your hiring practices include:
Offer remote jobs whenever possible
If your organization can support remote work, even for limited roles, you should make this clear in the job descriptions. While tech jobs are more tech-friendly, making non-tech roles remote in areas like legal, HR, and recruiting will give you a significant advantage while hiring.
Make your recruitment process more candidate-friendly
If your recruitment process is too long, candidates may end up losing interest in the role and applying to other companies. A lengthy recruitment process also creates a poor candidate experience, resulting in anxiety and confusion.
Use technological innovations to your advantage to make hiring better and quicker. Instead of manually screening resumes, a time-consuming and tedious process, use an AI-driven resume screener to shortlist candidates more accurately.
Lastly, consider switching to remote recruitment. Video interviewing lets you assess a potential employee’s aptitude, interpersonal behavior and skills while allowing the candidate to appear for the interview from a location of their choice. This reduces the time, effort, and money involved when traveling for in-person interviews.
Focus on your DEI efforts
Diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace is becoming a priority for many businesses. This is because it positively affects business culture, overall performance, and customer representation.
FloCareer helps you create a structured interview strategy to conduct more focused and objective interviews, allowing you to hire quickly at scale. This also reduces recruitment bias, making the process standardized and more transparent and resulting in more inclusive hiring.
How can FloCareer help hire remote talent effectively?
Remote hiring comes with new challenges, such as lip-syncing during interviews and deepfake technology. If you’re struggling to hire remote talent effectively, consider partnering with FloCareer.
FloCareer provides various advanced solutions and products to help you elevate your hiring efforts. Our Live Interview Platform includes interview structure curation, auto-scheduling, and efficient feedback submission. Moreover, it has built-in tools to detect various kinds of interview fraud.
Our team of 4000+ expert recruiters is trained to evaluate candidates for technical and non-technical roles. We’ve helped over 250 clients conduct 400,000+ interviews and helped them shortlist the best candidates for their needs.
Request a live demo to see how FloCareer can make remote hiring a breeze.
