There is no doubt that it’s getting harder and harder to find skilled candidates to fill job openings these days, with a talent pool that appears to be shrinking by the year. However, there are other reasons besides the available talent level which may be interfering with your company’s ability to attract and retain qualified candidates for the most important positions in your company.
This can develop into a new very serious issue because without the talent to implement and carry out your long-term objectives, it will be very hard for your company to achieve its business goals. There’s a good chance that any difficulty you might have in securing strong candidates could be traceable to more than just the available talent pool.
Three specific areas will be discussed below, which you should consider in order to determine whether or not your company is losing out on qualified personnel for reasons other than supply and demand.
Company Perception and Job Openings
How much effort have you made to get your company name out there, so that potential candidates are aware of who you are, and what you do? Placing classified ads for job openings is not enough to achieve visibility to well-qualified individuals, so you’ll need to develop some better level of recognition among the demographic you’re targeting for job openings.
One good way to accomplish this is through using the social media since those platforms are routinely frequented by millennials as part of their daily or weekly routines. Another good idea would be to sponsor local events or meetups, which are specifically tailored to attracting the kind of candidates you’re interested in hiring. If you already have people on your staff with extensive social networks, it would be worthwhile to enlist their aid in casually recruiting qualified candidates as well.
Speaking publicly about your company in the local area, as well as attending local newsworthy events, can be a great way of achieving visibility in the community, and for gaining company recognition with the local citizenry. Granted, some of these options will take time to carry out, but it’s a worthwhile effort for both present hiring needs, and to establish an ongoing pipeline of talent.
Hiring Process
For a great many companies, the hiring process moves at a snail’s pace, and from start to finish it may literally involve months and possibly even years, depending on the significance of the job openings. However, when you’re dealing with white-collar workers, not at the managerial level, weeks and months can become long enough to lose out on many of the best candidates available.
In a survey conducted by Robert Half Company, it was discovered that nearly 40% of professionals would lose interest in being hired by a company which they felt extended the hiring process for too long. Nearly half of the same individuals declared that they would be willing to wait as much as a week after a job interview to find out the results, but waiting any longer than that was asking too much. These respondents felt that they owed a potential employer a week’s worth of consideration, but that if any other offers came up after that, they would be quite willing to abandon the original interview to connect with a second potential employer.
If you know for a fact that your own hiring process tends to be a long, drawn-out affair, it would be worth your while to adopt a few changes that might give you more of a fighting chance to secure the kind of talent you want.
One way to accomplish this would be to prepare ahead of time to make a preliminary verbal offer to a very promising candidate right after the interview, so as not to lose out on the most skilled and qualified personnel. You can, of course, make this contingent upon a clean criminal background check, and all the candidate’s references checking out, but the important thing is that you don’t let a good candidate get away.
If you’re going to do this, you should also be prepared to include preliminary offers for salary, perks, benefits, and a start date. This may seem like a radical departure from your past process, but if you’ve been losing candidates to an over-lengthy hiring routine, it might be the right thing to do.
Location, Location, Location
Location isn’t just a real estate concept which carries a huge impact on a transaction in progress – it’s also true about hiring qualified candidates. Obviously, if your company is located near one of the major metropolitan hubs, that could be an added attraction to potential candidates, whereas if you’re located in more remote areas, that might have just the opposite effect.
However, even if you don’t have prime location operating in your favor, there are certain perks you can offer which will help to offset any disadvantage of location. For instance, you could offer flexible work schedules or telecommuting one or two days a week, to make the job more appealing. If you have a company fitness program or a daycare service which is provided on-site, those could also be very appealing to candidates. If you don’t have the advantage of the prime location to offer qualified candidates, it’s up to you to provide some other advantages which will make applicants want to give your company strong consideration.