How Employers & Employees Find Each Other (Sept. 2021)
Editor's Note: Before we explore poll results & other solutions to your hiring headaches, we wanted to let all job posters know about an exclusive offer from Indeed, giving you $200 off your next post. U.S. employers should go here. For Canadians, please click here. And be sure to add your comments at the end of this post, as we want to get the latest from you.
Results from Alignable's September Hiring Poll
Alignable’s network is made up of over 6.5 million business owners which include many solopreneurs who often work “side hustles” as secondary sources of income.
We created a two-sided member survey running from Aug. 21 to Sept. 13, 2021, to gain an understanding for how both employers and employees were navigating these challenging times.
Our survey collected responses from 4,079 Alignable members of which 52% were employers, 22% were employees, and 26% listed themselves as both employees and employers.
We then split the survey to collect specific information from the perspective of the employer and the employee.
Here’s what we learned from our members:
What Roles are Employers Looking to Fill?
This chart highlights the distribution of roles the 2,533 employers listed as jobs they were currently looking to fill.
Full-time hourly positions topped the list with 53% of businesses looking to fill one or more open positions, followed closely by part-time hourly positions, which 49% of businesses wanted to fill.
Over 20% of the open roles are in the “temporary-hourly” bucket, which is why companies like Wonolo are finding success helping these businesses tap into the Gig employment economy.
The majority (69%) of the roles businesses are looking to fill are for in-person roles, while only 12% could be completed by a remote employee.
Are You The Only Employer Struggling To Find Employees?
Heck no. Only 6% of businesses looking to hire are not finding it difficult. That leaves 94% telling us they're having trouble sourcing the right employees, and 66% say it’s “very difficult” right now. This is up from roughly 50%, based on a poll taken just three weeks ago. That's a staggering increase.
How are Business Owners Adapting to Challenges?
Employers are relying on solutions many might imagine: increasing compensation or adding benefits or perks. And they're trying some newer approaches like tapping into the Gig employment market.
Interestingly, the top answers from small business owners seen in the “other” bucket were:
- doing the work themselves or
- giving up on finding someone to fill the role.
What Are Employers Using To Find Employees & What Works Best?
Now, this is really fascinating data.
Here you see the vast array of solutions business owners are engaging with to fill roles.
And here they list the solutions they're using that are working best:
As you can imagine, it's gratifying for us to see that "personal referrals from other employers" is the answer that our poll-takers deemed most effective in helping to find the right employees.
After all, as the largest online referral network for small businesses in North America, that's what we strive to provide for our members every day here at Alignable.
Looking to fill a role?
Use your network and the local community to help generate referrals by simply posting your job openings here and selecting "network" and "community" to show where you would like the job posting distributed.
Hoping to pick up some additional hours?
Either add the services you can provide as a featured service post here and keep an eye on the local discussions in your community to see when business owners are posting job openings.
Also if there's a business you'd really like to work with, search for them using the search box in the top left menu and send them a personalized connection request letting them know.
So What Are Job Seekers Looking For?
Shifting gears from employers to employees, here are some insights from the job seeker’s perspective.
We'll start off with what solopreneurs hope to find when they're looking to pick up some additional work:
And here we asked people seeking work to share what solutions they use to find jobs:
And, as we did for employers, we asked employees what they find is working best in their job searches:
Top 4 Take-Aways:
- Regardless of which side of the equation you are on, the best way to solve the hiring challenge is to build and leverage your network. Granted, this may seem slightly self serving. but the data supports this and Alignable can help you make it happen. Follow these links to learn more:
- Tips on Building Your Network on Alignable
- Post a Job to Share it With Your Network and Community
- Indeed is the highest-rated solution provider from both an employer and employee’s perspective. New Indeed users from Alignable also get a $200 credit when they use this link.
- If you are interested in tapping into the Gig Economy, we’d suggest taking a look at Wonolo or one of the other solutions we outline in our Edge Report.
- Be sure to rate your top hiring solutions using these links so other biz owners can learn from your experiences.
Indeed Ratings & Reviews
Indeed Flex Ratings & Reviews
Wonolo Ratings & Reviews
To see other polls we’ve conducted since March 2020, please go to the Alignable Research Center.
ABOUT THE ALIGNABLE RESEARCH CENTER
Alignable is the largest online referral network for small businesses with over 6.5 million members across North America.
We established our research center in early March 2020, to track and report the impact of the Coronavirus on small businesses, and to monitor recovery efforts, informing the media, policymakers, and our members.
For more details about any of these findings, please contact Chuck Casto at chuck@alignable.com.
Comments (1-10)
Let people know what you are looking for and word-of-mouth will do the rest.
One article on the topic of new work weeks was to drop Monday as a work day and start the week on Tuesday. This I think is really a bad idea in that taking off on Friday or using it as a “light” day has become so heavily ingrained that it would still go on if we didn’t start work on Mondays. Thus we would be down to 3 day effective work weeks!
That survey was very interesting and confirms the impressions that I have gotten: employees want work flexibility and higher compensation.
Now the media focuses on child care but what I get more often than not is flexibility for senior care particularly to get seniors to medical appointments which have become more frequent, harder and more complex to get and thus requiring more time. But I totally don’t discount more time for beaches and bars; especially in Southern Alabama on Thursday nights to start the weekend off. I think business owners need to think seriously about going to 32 hour weeks to get and retain these frisky bright younger folks.
Now as to compensation, I can’t really blame workers for wanting more all the time as inflation rages; like in reality double the official rate and like 13%. I don’t see this going away and I think we need to go to an index based economy where as prices go up wages go up according to save all the trouble with employees jumping ship to get more pay and the resulting high costs of this turnover to businesses.
Mr. Eric Groves, Mr. Chuck Casto, and the other members of Alignable: several independent and small business owners are very pleased with your August and September graphics and hiring reports, etc. . As in the past, we were quite interested in your comments aiming to help small businesses, with the rise of the Delta virus. However, there is another recent and new concern; the Mu virus. As usual, your business reports have been very unique in the past, and once again, independent and small business owners are waiting to read Alignable's comments on the effects on small businesses with the advancing of the Mu virus. We encourage Alignable to please "keep up the good work", we are listening.
Thank you for this information. It is informative and helpful.
Eric, thank you for this article, it contains some good insights. Although it's not focused on small rural communities such as where I live and offer consulting, it does cover a wide variety of businesses (different industries, sizes, needs, etc), and I know each employs different methods to identify potential job candidates. Even in our small community, I see many of the current situations and challenges for both companies looking for employees, and employees looking for jobs.
As this was taken just as the Federal Pandemic addition to the individual States Unemployment compensation was finishing up (at least in CA), I suspect more people are looking for jobs now than in early September when they were receiving higher unemployment benefits which kept many at home. It would be interesting to see the changes in the job market in October!
Referrals are still the best method for making connections be for acquiring new clients or talent (employee or contract employee) or those looking for work. Who you know is just as important as what you know. Those that know your abilities from experience will give you that all important endorsement.
Interesting survey- results as suspected. Going to narrow my shot gun approach for new hires. We are in a labor intensive Artisan trade- marble and Terrazzo polishing.
Great information! It's amazing how much the job market has changed over the last couple of years. Smaller businesses are really struggling because employees are expecting more in the way of flexibility, compensation and remote opportunities. If you're a small business owner, it's a tough spot to be in because you don't have the resources that larger organizations have but you still have to compete with them both for customers and employees.
Fantastic insights & info! Our company can help employers (at NO cost) attract, retain, and build loyalty of employees, let's connect and see how we can help your organization in these challenging times!