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10 Key Challenges in Talent Acquisition Today

Writer: Claus-Peter Sommer
Claus-Peter Sommer
Aug 25
15 min read

Updated: 7 days ago



There is an interesting paradox in hiring right now.


Recruiters have more automation and more tools than ever, but the job is not getting easier. In fact, interviews per successful hire are up 33% from 2021, despite smaller recruiting teams.


Part of the reason is that many roles (including talent acquisition professionals) now carry more weight.


As routine work is automated, employees are expected to handle broader responsibilities, more complex tasks, and more decision-making.

That makes a bad hire more costly.


This raises the stakes behind many of today's challenges in talent acquisition. Companies still need to hire quickly, but hiring managers also want more confidence in every decision.


We are looking at the biggest hiring challenges in 2026 and the solutions that can realistically help, drawing on recent research and what we have seen over 15 years in recruitment.


Table of Contents:




Talent Acquisition Challenges and Solutions


From shifting candidate behavior to outdated internal systems, let's explore the ten most critical roadblocks hiring teams face now and the solutions to address them.



1. Talent shortage


Europe recorded 2,617 occupational shortages and 2,177 surpluses in 2025. Around 53 million people work in occupations affected by these imbalances. But the shortages are often local. For instance, in the Netherlands, 95% of shortage occupations have surplus talent elsewhere in Europe, yet only 6% of employers with vacancies recruit internationally.


Talent shortage is often treated as a simple lack of candidates. In practice, the problem can be much more local.


One example: UWV identified 193 shortage occupations in the Netherlands. For 184 of them, surplus talent exists in at least one other European country. Electronics and hardware engineers, for example, are scarce in the Netherlands while surplus talent exists in Greece and Finland.


For hard-to-fill roles, wider talent sourcing, passive talent, transferable skills, and cross-border searches can materially change the candidate pool. For recurring shortages, talent programs and graduate recruitment may be a good solution.


Either way, expanding the search is usually the answer, whether by location, industry, or skill set.


This is not exactly new information, and most hiring managers already know it.

The problem is (most) often resources. If the internal team doesn't have enough time or capacity to search more broadly, recruitment outsourcing is a practical option.





2. Changing candidate expectations


A 2026 survey revealed that 70% of employers think they understand what workers want, but only 18% of job seekers agree. Just 20% of job seekers think the labor market is improving, and 41% think it is getting worse. Stability, workload, flexibility, development, and clarity matter alongside salary when job candidates consider an opportunity.


Candidates are now asking harder questions earlier. Candidates want to get the feel of what the job will actually look like. The shift is often framed as a Gen Z issue, but the European data show that the same things matter across the workforce.


European research published in 2026 found that around 60% to 70% of workers value job security, good working hours, manageable workloads, and workplace safety. Around half also place high importance on skills development and autonomy.


Job security has become a sharper concern too. Only 21% of European workers strongly agree that their job is safe, compared with 22% globally.


Candidates also want more clarity before they apply. 61% to 82% of European job seekers are more likely to apply when a job posting includes a salary range.


These surveys confirm what our recruiters are seeing in the field:


“Candidates still ask about salary, medical insurance, visa support, and work-life balance, but flexibility comes up much earlier now. When we approach people directly, many tell us they are only considering remote roles or fewer days in the office. They also want more detail about the actual job: the challenges, technologies, projects, team size, locations, travel, and management scope.”

Mila Muskic, Talent Acquisition Partner at Serendi


These questions need clear answers early in the talent acquisition process. If expectations around flexibility, scope, or working conditions stay vague until the offer stage, they can become reasons to walk away.



Wondering why candidates are turning down job offers?

Discover the key reasons behind rejected offers and how to prevent them: Why Job Candidates Are Saying No.



3. Diversity, equity, and inclusion


Companies have spent years focusing more on DEI, yet candidates report more discrimination in interviews, not less. A recent survey found that 34% had faced discriminatory interview questions in 2023. By 2025, that figure had risen to 53%.


So where is the problem?


Part of it may be greater candidate awareness. But it also shows why DEI cannot be managed only through hiring targets. If the sourcing pool is narrow, job requirements unnecessarily exclude people, or interviewers assess candidates inconsistently, the problem is already built into the process.


That is why the useful questions come earlier:


  • Which candidate pools are being reached?

  • Which requirements are actually necessary?

  • Are interviewers asking the same questions and scoring candidates against the same criteria?


Those choices shape both who gets through and how fairly they are treated once they do.


Shared criteria, structured interviews, interview scorecards, and role-specific questions leave less room for vague judgments such as "fit" and reduce cognitive bias in recruitment.


The same applies to sourcing. In one global project, more than 3,400 candidates were identified, 500+ interviewed, and 230+ shortlisted, with sourcing adjusted as pipeline data came in.


That inclusive hiring case example worked because inclusion was built into sourcing and assessment from the start, rather than checked only at the end.

The same principle applies to broader inclusive hiring practices.




4. Digital transformation


AI adoption is moving quickly, but measurement is a different story. Recent research found that 27% of organizations use AI in recruiting and 89% of HR professionals using it report time savings or higher efficiency. On the other hand, 56% of HR teams do not formally measure whether their AI investments are working.


AI recruitment infographic comparing recruiter and candidate AI use, efficiency gains, and rising verification challenges.

AI tools can test several search angles at once and cover in one session what might take a recruiter several days manually. They also improve through feedback. But it depends on the quality of the feedback. AI can make weak recruitment actually harder to spot.


"When a junior recruiter builds a bad Boolean search manually, the mistake is usually visible. When AI misunderstands a role, it can return a clean shortlist with polished summaries and confident explanations. An inexperienced recruiter may trust it. A senior recruiter is more likely to notice the drift, challenge the assumptions, and pull it back on track."

Mila Muskic, Talent Acquisition Partner at Serendi


AI needs an experienced human on the other side.


A good brief still matters. So does a structured role intake. But someone also has to know when the output is wrong, even when it looks right.


The lesson from talent sourcing automation: AI can multiply the amount of work produced, but the quality still depends on the person directing it.


And what about the cost?

An in-house AI sourcing setup can exceed €300,000 a year and take six to nine months to build. Off-the-shelf tools are much cheaper and launch faster, but one product rarely covers discovery, outreach, workflow, and analytics equally well.




5. Employer branding


It seems that employer branding gets budget more easily than it proves results. For instance, a research paper shows that 78% of organizations invest in employer branding, 41% measure ROI, and only 18% can clearly communicate it internally.


Candidates can compare a careers page with online reviews, social media posts, interview experiences, salary conversations, and employee-generated content. Company messaging still matters, but credibility matters more.


That is one reason employee advocacy is becoming a bigger part of employer branding. In one B2B survey, 55% of organizations said they already had an active employee advocacy program, rising to 62% in the UK. Another survey found that 73% of candidates would trust a careers page more if it included employee testimonials.


The interesting question is: how much guidance is too much?


A 2026 benchmark found that 87% of employee advocacy programs provide training. Some structure is useful, especially around compliance, brand risk, and what employees can share publicly. But if every post is heavily scripted, the content starts to lose the authenticity that made employee advocacy valuable in the first place.


For most employers, the better approach is to give employees enough support to participate confidently while still letting them sound like themselves.


A recent case study shows what that can look like in practice. A company entered several European markets with low employer awareness and later ranked in the top 2% of companies for employer attractiveness. Across the wider recruitment program, 1,890 people were hired, and 95% of offers were accepted.


The test continues after hiring. Recruitment marketing can create attention, but the role and hiring process still have to support the promise.


If the workplace culture does not match the promise made during recruitment, it will affect employee retention.

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6. Remote work and hybrid models


In one US analysis of comparable jobs, remote vacancies received 366 applications on average versus 51 for non-remote vacancies, more than seven times as many. In Europe, one in five workers now either teleworks or has control over working time.


There is no universal percentage for how much remote work expands a talent pool. Role, country, seniority, language, and salary all matter.

But location can dramatically change applicant volume.


The U.S. Office of Personnel Management compared similar federal jobs and found 366 applications for remote vacancies versus 51 for non-remote roles. All ten agencies that separately compared the two found higher application volumes for remote jobs.


The figure comes from U.S. federal hiring, so it should not be treated as a worldwide benchmark. However, it still shows how strongly a location restriction can affect application volume.


Our recruiters see the same pressure from the candidate side. More people contacted about roles now specify that they only want remote positions or fewer office days.


"One of the biggest hiring challenges we currently face is attracting candidates for fixed-term positions, especially when relocation is required. There has been a significant shift in candidate expectations: remote and flexible work arrangements are a clear preference, and many are more selective about roles that require on-site work or relocation.


To assess whether candidates are truly a good fit, we take a holistic approach: beyond evaluating technical and professional qualifications, we place strong emphasis on understanding their motivation, adaptability, and alignment."


Milica Milosevic, Talent Acquisition Partner at Serendi


“One of the first things candidates want to know is whether the role is remote, hybrid, or office-based. If the answer is fully office-based, many lose interest straight away.

Irena Mehoj, Talent Acquisition Partner at Serendi


Remote hiring has made virtual interviews standard for many roles, but location requirements still determine who can realistically accept the job.


Keep in mind that flexible work can be a sensitive matter. Eurofound reports that one in five EU workers is contacted for work outside normal hours several times a month. Flexibility can make a role more attractive, but employers still need clear boundaries around when people are expected to be available.





7. Skills gap


In 2026, 68% of HR professionals reported difficulty recruiting full-time employees, while 80% struggled most with judgment, decision-making, complex problem-solving, and other systems and resource-management skills. OECD research suggests fewer than 1% of workers will need advanced AI-specific skills.


AI is creating new specialist roles, but most workers will not need to become AI engineers. For a much larger group, the change is in how existing jobs are performed: digital skills, data literacy, problem-solving, judgment, and the ability to work effectively with AI.


For hiring teams, this changes how they should view role requirements.

What do we mean by that?


Job descriptions often mix skills candidates must have on day one, skills they can learn, and preferences carried over from the last person in the role. When you treat all three as mandatory, the skills gap widens.


The problem is especially visible in technology hiring, pharma, and IT specialist recruitment, where tools and role requirements can change faster than job titles. Advanced manufacturing can require combinations of engineering, automation, and operational knowledge, while finance and fintech recruitment often adds regulatory and digital skills to the same search.


The practical answer is to separate what a candidate must know from what they can learn. If a requirement can realistically be picked up in a few months, treating it as mandatory may only shrink the pool for no good reason.




8. Evolving recruitment techniques


In 2026, 85% of recruiting executives expected candidates to use AI more often in applications and 74% expected more AI use during interviews. At the same time, 28% already identified filtering irrelevant applications as a significant operational burden.


Generative AI can rewrite CVs, draft cover letters, tailor application answers, and help candidates prepare for interviews. On the other side, recruiters use AI too for sourcing, screening, job descriptions, and analytics.


It is not hard to imagine recruitment reaching a point where a recruiter’s AI is speaking to a candidate’s AI, with only limited human involvement.


That creates a more immediate problem: the more automation there is on both sides, the harder it becomes to know which signals are real.


A polished CV is now pretty easy to create.

Creating a strong interview answer is not much harder.


For now, “interview cheating” can be spotted, thanks to the human factor…


"Language suddenly sounds unnatural, answers are overly polished, eye movements drift off-screen, and follow-up questions expose gaps. Even when technical checks eventually flush them out, these candidates still waste time and resources that should be spent on people who are genuinely qualified."


Candidate screening is becoming more structured for exactly this reason. Follow-up questions, scorecards, skills evidence, and consistent criteria help recruiters test whether a candidate understands the answer they just gave.


The same shift changes the value of sourcing. Gem's 2025 Recruiting Benchmarks found that sourced candidates were five times more likely to be hired than inbound applicants. In its 2026 report, that had risen to nearly eight times.


At the same time, companies are spending more time evaluating each successful hire. Gem reports that employers now conduct about 20 interviews for every hire, 33% more than in 2021.


Recruiting teams are 14% smaller; they handle 93% more applications, and hiring volume remains around 30% below 2021 levels.


More automation has made it easier to process candidates, but it has not removed the pressure to verify quality before making a hire. Quite the opposite - it may have made that pressure even greater.


More inbound volume doesn’t automatically mean a better pipeline. What's more, candidate pipelines built around volume can create more candidate screening and interview work, without really improving candidate quality.


The direction is clear: as both sides automate more of the process, recruiters will need better ways to verify what they are seeing.


That means putting more weight on source quality, structured screening, follow-up questions, and evidence of actual skills. The easier it becomes to generate a strong application, the more valuable real human judgment becomes.




9. Candidate experience


Candidate experience is suffering, and it is not hard to see why. Applicants are about 50% less likely to reach an interview than in 2021, while companies now conduct 33% more interviews for every successful hire. At the same time, 61% of job seekers say they have been ghosted after an interview.


In 2021, around 7% to 8% of applications resulted in an interview. By Q1 2026, that had fallen to 4.7% for business roles and just 3.6% for technical roles.


Hiring funnel infographic showing fewer candidates reaching interviews and 33% more interviews per hire in 2026.

So candidates are moving through a narrower funnel, and those who make it through face more evaluation. Gem reports around 20 interviews across the candidate pool for every successful hire, 33% more than in 2021. For technical roles, that rises to around 35 to 36 interviews per hire.


Some of that caution is understandable. Companies are making fewer hires, teams are leaner, and individual roles carry more weight. But the more stages you add, the more chances there are for delays, poor communication, and frustration.


However, due to the slow job market, candidates are more tolerant than before. Here is one example: In a 2024 Candidate Experience Report, 52% of job seekers said they had rejected an offer because of a poor candidate experience. A year later, that figure had fallen to 26%.


Recruitment statistics show that poor candidate experience (lengthy interview processes, lack of communication, etc) can drive away potential employees. Providing a positive and seamless experience for candidates throughout the recruitment process is essential.


However, when jobs are harder to find, candidates are more likely to tolerate a frustrating process and accept an offer anyway.


Companies should not rely on that. A candidate who accepts despite a poor experience may already be starting the relationship with doubts or frustration. Starting with an unhappy employee isn't exactly best business practice.


And some of that frustration starts inside the hiring team itself, especially as teams become leaner and change more often:


"During periods of organizational change, frequent turnover within hiring teams can lead to inconsistent decision-making. Lacking full context, interviewers often default to instinct rather than evidence, rejecting candidates without a clear explanation.

More often than not, the underlying concern is 'team fit', a difficult assessment to make, especially when the interviewer is new to the team themselves. This creates unnecessary frustration for both employers and candidates."


That is where more structure helps. Clear interview criteria, agreed decision-makers, and faster feedback make the process easier to explain and reduce unnecessary delays.


Candidate NPS can help show where the process breaks down. The useful part is not the score itself, but what candidates consistently say went wrong.




10. Data-driven decision making


Only 20% of organizations measured quality of hire in 2025, down from 27% in 2022. At the same time, 61% of recruiting executives said a lack of qualified candidates was a hiring challenge. Companies worry about candidate quality, but most still don't measure what happens after the hire.


If time to first shortlist is slow, sourcing may be the problem. If plenty of candidates are presented but few reach interview, look at role alignment or candidate quality. If interviews go well but offers are rejected, compensation, expectations, or candidate experience may be the issue.


Different metrics answer different questions.

  • Time to shortlist shows sourcing speed.

  • Presented-to-interview conversion shows shortlist relevance.

  • Offer acceptance shows what happens at the end of the funnel.

  • Cost per hire shows how efficiently the process is running.


Serendi case studies show the same distinction. One Hybrid RPO engagement covering 96 roles across 14 locations averaged 19 days from intake to first qualified shortlist. In separate End-to-End RPO programs, cost per hire fell by 48% in one case and came in 65% below the German benchmark in another.


Good recruitment data should make the next decision easier: where to invest more effort, where to change the process, and where to leave it alone.


Learn more about Hiring Strategies.



Challenges in Talent Acquisition Infographic


Challenges in Talent Acquisition: Conclusion


These ten challenges are connected, but they rarely have the same cause.

A talent shortage may be a geography problem. A skills gap may come from an unrealistic job description. A long hiring process may be a decision-making problem inside the team. AI can speed up sourcing while creating more work in screening and verification.


The useful first step is to identify where the process is actually breaking.

Sometimes the answer is better sourcing. Sometimes it is a clearer brief, stronger interview structure, better communication, or more internal capacity.


And when the hiring team simply does not have enough time or resources, external support such as Recruitment Process Outsourcing can help.


The benefits of outsourced recruitment services are:


We streamline talent hiring by giving you control, customization, and a performance-driven approach through our flexible RPO models and Recruitment as a Service.






About the author


Claus-Peter Sommer photo
About the author

Claus-Peter Sommer heads the Serendi Group as CEO. He has gathered 20 years of experience in the recruitment business and more than 15 years in RPO services for multinational companies, in global and regional projects.


Operational Insights provided by:

Milana Stamenkovic-Djokic, Talent Acquisition Partner & SME Service Delivery.

Milica Milosevic, Talent Acquisition Partner at Serendi

Irena Mehoj, Talent Acquisition Partner at Serendi

Mila Muskic, Talent Acquisition Partner at Serendi



Talent Acquisition Challenges: Frequently Asked Questions


The main challenges are talent shortages, changing candidate expectations, DEI, AI adoption, employer branding, remote and hybrid work, skills gaps, evolving recruitment techniques, candidate experience, and using recruitment data well. Several can affect the same vacancy at once.

Talent scarcity happens when demand for a skill is higher than the available supply in a particular market. It is often more local than it first appears. Companies can widen the search by geography, transferable skills, passive candidates, or cross-border sourcing, and bring in external recruitment support when internal capacity is the limiting factor.

Soft skills are critical because they enable employees to adapt, collaborate, and lead effectively. Key soft skills include:


• Communication

• Problem-solving

• Teamwork

• Adaptability

• Time management

• Leadership

These skills enhance productivity, improve team dynamics, and contribute to a positive workplace culture. Emphasizing soft skills helps companies build a well-rounded workforce capable of navigating complex challenges.

AI can speed up sourcing, screening, and analysis, but it also creates more noise and can make weak outputs look convincing. Recruiter judgment, a clear brief, and structured role intake become more important as AI takes on more of the repetitive work.

Reduce unnecessary interview rounds, keep candidates updated, agree who makes each decision, and give clear feedback. As hiring processes get longer, communication matters more. Candidate NPS can also show where delays, confusion, or poor handoffs are damaging the experience.

Track metrics that point to a specific part of the funnel. Time to shortlist shows sourcing speed, presented-to-interview conversion shows shortlist relevance, offer acceptance shows what happens late in the process, cost per hire shows efficiency, and quality of hire shows what happened after the person joined.




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