Today’s candidate drought can be a frustrating and difficult time for employers looking to hire top talent.
Many top professionals aren’t interested in new opportunities and the candidates who are available, may not have the right skills to fill your open position.
But before you give up on your search, I do have some good news for you. Even though finding a top employee requires more effort and planning than it did in the past, it’s not impossible.
Below, we’ve provided 5 strategies to help you hire the right candidate for your open position.
REFERRAL PROGRAM
If you don’t have an internal employee referral program then you’re missing out on a ton of potential talent.
Chances are that when employees are referring their friends or past colleagues, they’re referring people that possess the qualities and skills needed to be successful within the organization. Also, many employees take referrals seriously and won’t risk referring someone who will reflect poorly on them and their judgment.
If you need even more convincing, referral programs also improve time to hire. According to the HR Technologist, referred candidates are 55% faster to hire, compared with employees sourced through career sites.
Unfortunately, many employers assume their employees will refer candidates to them when they have a position open up. But that’s just not the case.
Even though your top employees know other talented professionals, they might need an extra push or incentive to refer them. Check out this great article by FitSmallBusiness if you want to learn more about creating an internal employee referral program.
PARTNER WITH AN EXPERT
The average time it takes for a company to identify a candidate and fill their open position is 42 days. However, it can take even longer than 42 days depending on the role, industry, and today’s low unemployment rate.
That means you will have to put in at LEAST 42 days of sustained effort trying to find the perfect fit. Many companies don’t have the time or resources in place to perform all of the necessary tasks needed to hire top talent. Some of these activities include:
- Creating a job description and sourcing top candidates (20 hours of labor)
- Reaching out to candidates on the phone, email, and LinkedIn (30-40 hours of labor)
- Following up with candidates who don’t return your messages (7 hours of labor)
- Performing qualifying interviews and in-person interviews (30 hours of labor)
- Reference checking and assessment (15 hours of labor)
- Craft and extend an offer (5 hours of labor)
And this doesn’t even guarantee your candidate will accept your offer. If they don’t, you will have to start the process all over again.
Fortunately, there’s a way to avoid all of the heavy lifting that needs to be done when recruiting top talent – partner with an Executive Search Firm.
Not only will a recruiting firm be able to devote the necessary time and resources it takes to find a talented professional in today’s candidate drought, but they will also have access to the most talented professionals.
Search firms work with top candidates every day and have robust networks of qualified professionals. They also have the necessary subscriptions and databases needed to find passive talent and skills needed to entice them to your open position.
If you don’t have the time or resources to devote to finding top candidates, then this is your best option to hire the talent you need quickly.
LINKEDIN AND SPECIALIZED DATABASES
LinkedIn is a social network specifically designed for career and business professionals to connect. So naturally, this seems like a great place to start finding top professionals in a candidate drought.
However, if you try to use your personal LinkedIn account to find top talent, then you’re going to have an extremely limited and small talent pool to work with. You will, of course, have access to your own network, but you will have little visibility outside those connections. Instead, you should consider getting a subscription to LinkedIn Recruiter.
If you use the LinkedIn Recruiter platform, you will be able to see profiles outside your network and you will have access to100 InMails per month. You can use these InMails to directly reach out to candidates about your openings. There will be a surplus of candidates on LinkedIn looking to connect about potential job offers and opportunities. And the response rate of InMails is three times higher than a regular email.
But one of the best ways to use LinkedIn Recruiter is to use the advanced search features to find people who fit your job requirements and experience. Many of these passive job seekers are open to hearing about other opportunities, even if they’re not actively searching for jobs at the time.
However, the only downside to using LinkedIn Recruiter is that it can be expensive – a subscription can cost upwards of $6,000 per user each year. And that doesn’t even count the hours of labor you will spend using the tool to find top candidates. There is a more affordable version of LinkedIn Recruiter called LinkedIn Recruiter Lite and will run you about $1,500 a year. LinkedIn Recruiter Lite is ideal for companies with fewer hiring needs and you will still have access to the advanced search and InMails, just not as many as the LinkedIn Recruiter version.
While LinkedIn is a great resource to find a wide range of top candidates, there are many industries who don’t use LinkedIn as a networking tool.
We have worked with many clients in the industrial manufacturing industries and have had the most success by going outside of LinkedIn and using other methods to connect with candidates in these industries.
One strategy that helped us gain access to the most qualified candidates was using research tools like Zoom Info. Using these tools will help you find out where candidates work and their contact information.
STRATEGIC JOB POSTINGS
Using job boards to post your open positions is a good complement to your other proactive recruiting strategies. The biggest challenge is that the more generic job boards aren’t generating enough quality applicants due to the low percentage of people actively looking for new opportunities.
However, specialty and niche job boards that specialize in your industry or by role can be helpful. Often, people get visibility to these jobs through targeted newsletters or communications from the industry groups – and they pay more attention due to their higher relevance. If you’re strategic about where you are posting your jobs then you can increase the likelihood of the right candidates seeing your job posting.
If you’re posting a sales job, for example, then a great niche job board to use is on SalesGravy.com
Also, make sure your job posting stands out. Here are some ideas for what you should add to your job description to make it more successful:
- Company culture and workplace environment
- Perks and Benefits
- Contribution the employee will make to the company
- Hiring Manager’s approach and personality
Click here to find out more tips to help your job descriptions and company stand out.
While posting on a job board shouldn’t be your the only strategy you use to find top candidates, sometimes you can get lucky. Top talent may be using the job board and either apply or refer another top candidate to apply.
LOOK OUTSIDE THE BOX
Finally, no matter how many places you search for top candidates, you may still come up empty-handed. The unemployment rate is under 4 percent and the available talent pool is very small, especially if you’re in a growing industry.
If you can relate, then you should consider expanding your talent pool by opening up your job requirements.
For example, consider opening up your education requirements and offer equivalent experience in lieu of a master’s degree. If a candidate is talented and experienced, then you can always develop and train them for the position.
Also, if you opened up the job requirements on a position, would anyone on your current team be a fit? For example, maybe you have a leadership position that has been open for a while and needs to be filled. Even if no one on your team has experience leading a team, you could look for an employee who shows a predisposition to learning and developing new skills and then train them to lead a team.
And finally, consider hiring talent from other industries but with relatable skills. Doing so will open up your talent pool immensely and help you find top talent quickly.
In Review
In today’s candidate drought, a much smaller number of people are actively searching for new jobs. Therefore, you have to actively seek top talent and entice it to join your company. It’s going to take more effort, time, and planning to find these strong people, but if you use the strategies above, you will have much more success.
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