I’ve Looked Everywhere! Where Can I Find More Candidates?
“Water Shortage” by Andrew Hart – used under CC BY-SA 2.0 cropped and re-sized from original
Sometimes, due to either an overly specialized role or a shortage in the industry, it becomes extremely difficult to find the right person to fit the role even if you have the right set of tools to help you do so. This understandably puts employers in a tough position and a common question arises: “Where can we find someone that is qualified for the job? We’ve looked everywhere!”
Search Outside Your Local Area
Surprisingly, the answer to that question may be to search outside of your local area. If you can’t find anyone near the company, it may be worthwhile to post your job ads in areas where there is less work (sometimes across the country). This will not only widen the talent pool for your search, but also may help in generating name recognition in areas where your company is less well known.
Decrease Distance by Decreasing Skill Requirement
There are times, however, that it may not make sense to hire someone across the country for the job. This places us back in the previous predicament: no one locally is qualified for the position. Of course, every employer wants to hire the most-qualified, hardworking, and brightest employees, but in a saturated job market, the expectations must fall in line and become more flexible. What if there was a candidate that filled the ideal benchmark but just didn’t have the years of experience you were quite hoping? It wouldn’t make sense to turn away a prospective asset that could be a valuable team member in the future. Perhaps, if the position allows, you can look beyond the skill requirement and instead dedicate resources in training this new employee into excelling in the position you were looking for.
Spend Money (Wisely)
It’s been said: A problem money can solve, isn’t a problem at all. While that may be the case, it is unrealistic for any business to think in this way. If given only a certain budget to look for an employee, where might be a good place to dedicate resources other than just increasing the salary and benefits, hoping someone might be lured in?
One often missed area are industry-specific job boards. There are numerous paid job boards that are focused on a particular industry and may give you access to skilled workers you previously may not have known about. A few examples are Krop, Jobs In Trucks, Dice and Freshgigs. Aside from just industry-based job boards, there are also many school job boards that are meant for college alumni candidates to help expand your reach.
Another option is through sponsored postings on popular (often free) job boards. Unless an applicant was actively searching for a job, the average person will just look, in passing, at opportunities in the job market and will be very unlikely to look past the first or second page. While the price may be dependent on the position posted, this will allow your company to have more presence and get in front of many more searching eyes.
Referral Program
Perhaps the best way to look for hard-to-find candidates might be through employee referrals. Many times, employees in related roles tend to know other industry professionals. By putting in place an incentivised referral program (run year-round), your employees are able to promote your company to candidates previously unknown to your company. This not only benefits the company, but it lets the employees have input in who they want to work with (no one wants to work with someone who doesn’t pull their weight), in addition to them receiving a small finder’s bonus.
What are some other ways that you employ to employ? Share with us in the comments below!
