Employment market update: How to ease recruitment difficulty

Let’s first discuss the lack of suitable applicants.

Recruitment difficulty varies between role types

When broken down into role types, it is evident that highly skilled roles are significantly harder to fill. 

Recruitment for roles with required skill levels 1-3 are approximately 10% harder to fill than lower skilled roles.



Employers also reported that higher skilled roles have taken more time to fill, with a large percentage of employers still having unfilled roles vacant for over one month.

The correlation between ‘time to fill’ and ‘recruitment difficulty’ should be noted by employers expecting to recruit in the near future. The Recruitment Insights Report suggested recruitment difficulty may also be a sign of labour market mismatch where skills and attributes of candidates did not align with employer requirements.



It can’t be helped where skills are in shortage. However, it is common for employers to misjudge the skills and attributes required to successfully perform in a role. 

Assess the criteria for candidates before your search

Our recommendation is that employers consider what skills are essential and what are ‘nice to have’. Employers need to list fewer requirements in job ads, only stating the essentials, in order to increase the number of applications they receive.

This is a particularly crucial element in diverse and inclusive hiring processes. Studies have shown that over 40% of women will not apply for a position where they do not meet all requirements listed in a job ad.

Hiring diversly could also be a solution in the construction industry where recruitment difficulty is particularly high and typically represents a male-dominant workforce.

Consider recruiting from within

Another opportunity to combat the difficulty of hiring skilled employees is to consider upskilling and promoting the internal workforce.

Upskilling the current workforce is an effective strategy that prepares a business’s workforce for the future. Upskilling employees to fit with the business’s growth strategy is a way of showing that employers are invested in their employee’s development. Recent surveys have shown that employees are willing to leave their current role for new roles where training and development is offered. 

In saying that, training and development is also an effective retention strategy which is a possible solution to the other concern employers have in relation to recruitment difficulty over the following months.

These solutions may help to increase the number of applicants overall; the other concern raised by employers which we will discuss below.

Candidates are applying to less job ads

More and more businesses are realising that simply posting a job ad will not suffice in today’s market. This is reflected in SEEK’s recent employment market trends which reported a decline in both job ads posted and candidate applications.

One possible cause for the drop in candidate applications is the fact that employee priorities had shifted since the pandemic. Australian workers have become more selective in the roles they apply for, being sure to apply for roles that support their self-care goals.

For example, its been seen that candidates have been more likely to apply for roles where working from home is an option. This could be particularly helpful for parents, or those who travel long distances for work.

A quick look at the ‘Reasons for Recruitment Difficulty’ graph above shows that undesirable working conditions/hours was the third most reported reason for recruitment difficulty.

Candidates are now harder to persuade and it’s going to take extra effort for employers to successfully fill vacancies as compared to pre-pandemic.

A proactive approach will bear greater outcomes

Employers hoping to fill vacancies while unemployment rates remain significantly low need to rely on the passive candidate market. A market that is generally untapped due to the demands required to do so successfully. 

Over the last few years as the candidate market grew tighter, our teams at Fuse Recruitment have adopted automation and AI technology to communicate with our combined networks to successfully identify well-matched candidates for our clients.

Our industry specialised consultants keep their finger on the pulse of employment trends to ensure they optimise their recruitment strategies for our clients. If you’d like to speak to someone who specialises in your industry, fill in the form on this page and our consultants will get in touch.

If you’re looking for hiring advice in 2023, take a look at our hiring guide below.