8 Challenges Faced by Recruiters and How to Handle Them

The challenges faced by recruiters right now include skills gaps, uneven applicant flow, and candidates who drift during slow interview loops. Some of these sit inside your own recruitment process, and others only move when the hiring manager or client changes something. Sorting the two early saves you from pushing harder on a problem that needs a pay change or a faster interview schedule.

1. Finding candidates with the skills the role needs

Start by agreeing with the hiring manager or client on the skills the job needs. Then search for candidates with those skills, not only those who have specific job titles and degrees.

Skills are also what employers report struggling to find. In SHRM's 2026 survey of 2,094 U.S. in-house HR professionals, 68% had difficulty recruiting full-time employees. Of that group, 53% said recruiting had become harder than a year earlier. And 80% named systems and resource management skills, such as judgment, problem-solving, and time management, as the hardest to find.

Those skills rarely show up as resume keywords, so the intake call has to turn them into something you can search and screen for. In a warehouse supervisor search, for example, you might ask which staffing decisions the person will make alone in the first month.

SHRM's Finding Talent report describes recruiters who work with hiring managers to define skills-based success factors and broaden talent pools. Once the skills are clear, you can include people from adjacent roles who did the same work under a different title.

2. Applicant numbers that are too low or too high

Low and high applicant volume call for different responses, so first check which one your role has. In SHRM's 2025 release, 51% of U.S. organizations trying to fill full-time roles reported a low number of applicants.

When applicants are scarce, direct sourcing and past candidates often produce more than reposting the ad. Past finalists from a similar search already know the team, and a new opening is a natural reason to re-engage them.

Other roles bring in more resumes than anyone can read closely. A staffing firm president told SHRM that the firm's applicant tracking data shows more applications per position. In that one practitioner's view, recruiters now have "a lot more resumes to plow through" as a result. For a high-volume sales hire, list the basic requirements plainly in the posting and run a short first screen on just those.

3. Hiring managers with unclear or shifting requirements

A short intake call that separates day-one requirements from preferences gives you something to return to when the requirements move. Send both lists to the hiring manager or client the same day, so you're both working from one version.

Requirements often shift for understandable reasons, and the first set of candidates is what prompts it. Schedule a quick review after you share the first few profiles. Ask which ones came close and what kept the others out, since that turns a vague "not quite right" into a change you can search on.

The same SHRM report describes recruiters who challenge hiring managers' assumptions, and this review is a natural place to do that. In agency work, the client contact who briefs you may not be the hiring manager, so ask for a short call with the manager before you start sourcing.

4. Candidates who drop out or stop responding

A short process with clear expectations about steps and timing gives candidates fewer reasons to drift away. The same SHRM release found organizations filling full-time roles seeing candidates ghost them during the interview process, alongside low applicant numbers.

Candidates go quiet for many reasons, including another offer, a pay gap they didn't want to raise, or a change at home. Treating silence as a signal about the process, and not about the person, keeps you focused on what you can change. On the first call, tell candidates how many stages there are and when they'll hear back.

Between stages, send a brief update even when there's no news. Building those updates into your candidate experience plan means they happen on every search. In a nurse manager search, a candidate may be weighing other offers. Asking early what else they're considering helps you spot a competing timeline before it decides the outcome for you.

5. Slow interview scheduling and feedback

Agreeing on interview slots and a feedback deadline at intake keeps a search moving after the first interviews. Ask the hiring manager or client to hold recurring interview times for the length of the search. Agree on a feedback window too, such as the next business day.

As the coordinator, you can cut much of the back-and-forth by sending candidates the held times or a self-scheduling link. Scheduling software helps most when a search has several interviewers or many candidates. For a one-off senior role, a direct call is often quicker.

Agency recruiters can't see the client's calendar. Agree on the feedback timeline when you take the search on, and revisit it if the first round runs late.

6. Pay expectations that don't match the budget

Checking the pay range against market data before outreach lets you raise a gap while there's still time to adjust. Use more than one independent pay source, and compare the same level, location, and work arrangement. A salary benchmarking guide can help you decide which data to trust and how to set a range.

When the budget sits below the market, bring options to the hiring manager or client. The main levers are a higher range, a different title or level, and remote or hybrid work. A later start date or a less experienced hire who can grow into the role can also close the gap.

In a senior engineer search, a short summary of who dropped out over pay during early calls makes the trade-off concrete.

7. Sourcing channels that stay busy without producing hires

Tracking qualified candidates, interviews, and hires by channel shows where your sourcing time pays off. In the same SHRM 2026 survey, HR professionals used social media more than any other recruiting strategy. Yet they ranked it ninth in effectiveness at filling open roles.

That finding doesn't make social media wasted effort for every role. It shows that the busiest channel and the most productive one can differ, and your own results tell you which is which. A few sourcing metrics, such as replies, screens passed, and hires per channel, are enough to compare.

Review the numbers every few weeks and move time toward the channels that produce interviews and hires. Compare channels within similar searches, since a channel that fills warehouse roles may do little for engineers.

8. Fake candidates and identity fraud

Spreading identity checks across several stages gives you more to go on than one signal. The FBI's October 2026 alert covers North Korean IT workers using false identities for remote IT roles. It says they "can't be identified reliably with a single indicator or detection," because their activity overlaps with legitimate remote work.

The same alert lists E-Verify, a U.S. passport, multiple forms of ID, and live verification as ways to "raise friction" for these workers. It also warns that aggressive controls risk false positives that harm legitimate employees and screen out qualified applicants. These are employer decisions with legal implications, so agree on them with your HR team or the client's HR and security teams.

In your own work, confirm on camera that the person in a later round is the person from the first. Compare the work history with what references say, and use these steps to verify a resume if it raises questions. A mismatch can have an innocent explanation, such as a nickname, a recent move, or a poor connection, so ask before drawing conclusions.

Start with one challenge before your next search

Several of these recruitment challenges get easier once the hiring manager or client agrees on skills, pay, and timing up front. Tracking which channels produce hires covers much of the rest. Of all the challenges faced by recruiters, pick the one costing you the most time on your current search, and raise it at your next check-in.