Finding qualified candidates in this job market can be an absolute nightmare. Unemployment is high, and even those who are working aren’t happy. The economic climate has strained everybody, but there are still opportunities out there worth pursuing. So, when a position does become available, thousands of people flock to it, creating an almost insurmountable challenge for corporate recruiters. Time- and cost-to-hire escalate, and many great candidates are missed.
There has to be a better way!
Have you ever had an enthusiastic candidate lose interest quickly? Seen an offer letter turned down after a positive hiring process? These mid- and late-stage candidate losses are frustrating enough, but when you don’t know why it happens, the temptation to pull your hair out can be overwhelming. If it seems like your candidate knows something you don’t, it’s smart to assume there’s a reason why. The clues may be littered all over the internet.
The days when you could control your company’s brand and message confidently are over. A wide range of message boards, job sites and blogs allows users to post content directly – without a filter. Current and former employees have almost complete freedom to publish what they want about your company, sometimes in very highly trafficked environments. While you can’t do much to stop it, you can certainly take action to rehabilitate your company’s image with the prospective employees – you just need the right tools.
Prospective employees care about where they work. Even in today’s constrained job market, a tainted image can cost you a great hire. A weak brand tends to be perceived as a sign of risk, and nobody wants to leave the comfort of steady employment for an environment that could be unstable or unfulfilling. When you enter the talent market, consequently, you need to make sure your company’s brand is in order. Your candidates will be watching.
There are many factors that could cause a candidate to react negatively to your brand. If your business has been beat up in the press, endured a precipitous decline in stock price or lost a few key clients or employees to competitors, for example, candidates will notice … especially passive candidates. This puts you in the position of having to sell your company to the most desirable potential employees, explain your company’s plans to overcome recent challenges and demonstrate your potential for the future. Essentially, you wind up having to convince a candidate that your company is worth joining.
This is no way to recruit!
With plenty of people still looking for jobs, traditional sources aren’t as productive as they used to be. The channels are being stuffed with prospective candidates using all means available to get in front of recruiters (and, they hope, hiring managers), which is essentially making one source about as effective as another. When the usual approaches to finding high-quality candidates have been rendered ineffective by high demand for few positions, it’s time to find a new way to conduct corporate recruiting business.
New sources are necessary, especially if you’re interested in moving past the pool of traditional candidates and mining the market for the passive job-seekers who your hiring managers may find more desirable. For the average corporate recruiter job boards, career fairs and even social media outlets tend to be time-consuming and value relative to the required investment is suspect. High-impact candidates may be out there, but it can take a lot of work to find them … all of which can drag down corporate recruiting ROI.
What happens when you find the perfect candidate for your company? This person has the skills and experience that could make a major difference in the entire company’s performance – and wants to join you. You make an offer, right? The stars are lining up, and you need to take full advantage of the opportunity.
Of course, there’s only one problem: you don’t have an open position for this person. Without the necessary approval, how can you make this great strategic hire?
When you can’t pull the trigger right away, you need to change your strategy from hiring to candidate cultivation. Until you can add headcount, it’s necessary to find ways to keep a candidate engaged and interested in your company … and also from becoming interested in your competitors. When you set out to do this, you need a plan, and that’s where KGTiger can help.
From the time you receive authorization to fill a req through new-hire orientation, there’s a lot that can go wrong. The entire corporate recruiting supply chain is fraught with risk – there are so many reasons why a position can remain vacant for a long time, costing your company ROI every day. To preserve your company’s upside, you need to be able to identify these risks up front and take steps to mitigate them. If you succeed, you’ll accelerate the returns associated with every new employee.
Think about every step involved in filling an open req. There is sourcing, screening, interviewing, reference and background checking, negotiating and finally bringing the candidate in the door for the first day as a new employee of your company. You could run into problems at each of these points, from looking in the wrong talent pools to having a breakdown of communication that causes a person who has accepted an offer not to follow through and arrive the first day.
Businesses need more help these days, but they realize they don’t have to pay for it. It looks as though this year’s crop of college graduates will have an easier time finding jobs, as recruiting is on the rise for the first time since 2008, but salaries remain under pressure for these first-time entrants to the professional workforce.
The National Association of Colleges and Employers notes that recruiting fell 22 percent from 2008 to 2009. While this year’s increase of 5.3 percent makes up little ground, it’s nonetheless a step in the right direction.
For corporate recruiters, the campus recruiting challenges on the horizon are interesting. They will have to hire more people than they did last year, cope with a number of resume submissions per open req that is still high and convince candidates to take positions that pay lower than may be expected. Even with those who are new to the workforce, this may not be easy.
In an employment market like the one around us today, your hiring managers may tend to find passive candidates far more appealing. After rounds of layoffs and pay cuts, those who have held their ground are usually among the best at what they do. So, when the reqs start to open up, corporate recruiters are looking to seize talent from their competitors: they want a competitive edge. If you’re out on the prowl for passive candidates, however, you need to be ready for a unique set of challenges.
The obvious, of course, is that passive candidates aren’t looking. You need to find them, entice them and sell them on your opening. You need to make it clear that it’s worth their time to engage with you and that the upside related to doing so is profound. Further, the experience needs to be tailored to someone who knows that you’re the party that wants something.
The hiring process is built on questions and answers. You ask candidates about their motivations, skills and experience. They ask you about the company and the work environment … not to mention compensation and career paths. At its best, there’s an easy and comfortable back-and-forth, and everyone walks away from the process well-informed. When the process is one-sided, however, it can feel like an interrogation, with only the bare light bulb missing. This dynamic is unproductive and probably won’t lead to satisfaction on either side.
The interrogation problem is particularly prevalent when a corporate recruiter is talking to passive candidates. A lot more selling is required, and the prospect has fewer reasons to engage directly. The recruiter may feel the temptation to pry information from the candidate – and talk too much while doing so – ultimately tainting the interview and costing the company a strategic hire.
The results of an interrogation speak for themselves.
Short-sightedness is the current curse of corporate recruiting. As company executives remain focused on the day-to-day swings of the market and economy, they are overlooking an opportunity to lay the foundation for future growth – by bringing in revenue-producing employees. Everyone is feeling it, of course, which is what creates the opportunity in the marketplace for you to secure a competitive advantage.
According to a post on Monster’s “Recruiting and Hiring Advice” blog:
This resistance cuts across the industry, from temp agencies to retained search firms. “Employers are hesitant to hire non-contingent workers, so they’re hiring contingent employees,” says Tony Gregoire, senior research analyst at Staffing Industry Analysts. “Often they’re even skittish to hire contingents. There is growth in staffing, but it’s spotty. We project 16 percent revenue growth for industrial staffing in 2010, but healthcare should see a 3 percent decline in revenue.”