SelectOne Blog

Developing an Effective Hiring Strategy When Talent is in Short Supply

Imagine how amazing it would be if the recruitment and hiring process was a breeze.

You post a job description online and within a few days, you get a whole bunch of qualified candidates sending you their applications. You look through their resumes and cover letters to find the top five, which clearly stand out ahead of the rest.

Phone interviews help you cut that number down to three. When you bring in the remaining candidates, they show up on time for their interviews, are prepared to answer the questions, and impress everyone with their experience and personality. Attracting Talent in the Candidate Driven Economy

After some rigorous debate with the other managers and people involved in the decision, you decide on the perfect candidate. When you make an offer, the candidate is thrilled, accepts the offer, and comes to work right away, ready to contribute to your workplace culture in a great, positive way.

Okay, the daydream is over. It doesn’t usually go like that, does it? In fact, it almost never does.

The Realistic Recruitment Process

There are bumps and bruises in the recruitment process almost every step of the way, including issues like:

  • Not getting enough qualified candidate
  • Applications or resumes trickling in slowly
  • Candidates already having accepted offers elsewhere by the time you want to bring them in for an interview
  • Interviewees showing up under-prepared or under-qualified (and let’s just face it, underwhelming)
  • Losing candidates to competitor employers before you have a chance to make a good offer

Several of these frustrations can be traced back to one particular challenge that is currently being faced by recruiters and hiring managers around the country: we are currently recruiting in a candidate-driven market.

Thanks to the downward trend in unemployment that has been continuing for a decade, the candidate-driven economy we’re in now means there are more positions available than there are qualified candidates. When you’re trying to recruit top-tier talent, you have to understand that these are people who have a ton of options and few limitations. What you decide to do in response to this reality will make or break your ability to recruit the best candidates for the positions you need to fill.

What Strategies Should You Use to Hire that Ideal Candidate?

Well, first of all, you’ve got to put away the fantasy of this process being easy or straightforward. Your job as a recruiter or a hiring manager sets you up for challenges you probably didn’t imagine when you started in this field. Now that you’ve set that aside, let’s talk strategies!

  1. Post your job descriptions where the right people are looking. Don’t trust generic job-posting websites that may or may not get your job description in front of the ideal candidates. When you’re posting jobs, make sure you’re doing so in alignment with your industry’s best practices. (Not sure where to post? Talk to us!)

  2. Remember that your candidates have a lot of other job opportunities, so you need to be timely in your communication. Communicate quickly, efficiently, and with plenty of detail. You should also be consistent when replying to emails and phone calls. Develop a system for responding in a clear, concise, and friendly way to questions and concerns.

  3. When recruiting millennials, remember that they care a lot about workplace culture. If you want to hire recent college graduates who are trained with the latest information about your industry, you’re going to need to have a workplace culture that makes candidates feel they are part of a meaningful community where they can play an important part in the workplace.

Want to know more about hiring in this climate where candidates know they have lots of opportunities and don’t really need the specific job you are offering? Check out our free offer, Attracting Talent in the Candidate-Driven Economy. We go into much more detail about these strategies and several more in this useful guidebook, which we want you to have for free.

We are also happy to talk to you about how you can update your hiring policy to meet the needs of today’s employers! Contact us to start the conversation about how you can improve your current hiring strategies, recruitment plans, and interview processes.

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