OVERCOME THESE 3 RECRUITING OBSTACLES
Employers face a number of challenges when it comes to recruiting. According to Manpower’s 2015 Talent Shortage Report, employers say they find it difficult to fill jobs this year, 32 percent of the reason being higher compensation rates, increased employee turnover and low employee morale. Although there might be a number of reasons, among the most prominent include a lack of proper job candidates, budget and data to fill every position a company needs to thrive. No matter what your company’s problem might be, there’s a way to solve it. Let’s talk solutions.
Your Lack of Candidates
According to the Talent Shortage Report, 33 percent of employers can’t fill jobs due to the lack of available qualified candidates. It’s one thing to have job advertisements with such high standards that only a purple squirrel could fill, but it’s another when you’re having consistent problems finding people with any of the skills you’re looking for.
So how do you overcome this obstacle? Get out there and recruit, of course! But you can’t approach it the same way you always have — you need to be more proactive. Place jobs on social media to recruit passive candidates, engage with candidates on a more personal level, and make sure you always have one eye on your recruiting plan. Because jobs are the commodity of the recruitment world, you still need to be able to sell the jobs… after all, they are your products.
Your Lack of Budget
Recruiting on a budget is an art form, and if your company can’t spend money on lavish benefits and big campaigns, you’ll need to do a bit more legwork to get the candidates you want. One way to lower hiring spend is to go into your hiring process knowing you won’t find the right candidate immediately. Matt Niehaus (@matthewjniehaus), CEO of Instore, recommends you plan far in advance when it comes to hiring.
“Because software developers are in high demand, applicants for a job listing who have all of the desired skills in your listing can be few and far between. Instead of hiring someone who isn’t quite right for the role, or getting into a frantic bidding war to hire the one developer you’ve found who seems to fit the bill, give your search plenty of time. We’ve found that by creating a listing six months before we actually need to fill an engineering role, we’ll have a better shot at finding the right person for the role at a reasonable cost.”
Unless the position needs to be filled immediately, let the candidates come to you.
Your Lack of Data
If you don’t know what you’re looking for, how will you find it? Sometimes employers know they need someone else to help with the company workload, but in smaller businesses or teams, understanding which role you need filled to maximize productivity isn’t clear. Knowing that, it’s a little confusing that 75 percent of recruiters aren’t using recruiting data.
The best way to overcome a lack of data is to acquire it. You don’t have to pay for a fancy startup to crunch the numbers for you either; all you need to do to find out which position you need most is to start keeping track of how your employees work. Track performance over time, see which employees are getting the most training, and find out which tasks are the most delegated or take the longest to accomplish. There are a number of software platforms that do this, and once you start gathering this information, it’ll be easier to determine the role you need filled.
There’s nothing that should stop you from having a better recruiting process. Whether you lack candidates, a budget, or information about your company, there are ways to overcome your problems — all it takes is a commitment to improve your company and the diligence to see those improvements through.
