Year: <span>2019</span>

I had a great opportunity to speak to a new Hiring Manager while sitting at our family 4th of July celebration. Over and over I heard, “I need the best and I am not going to settle”. I said, well maybe the best doesn’t exist in your industry, in your timeframe or in your local area. “This is a fast-paced company and we want people that have all ……”. Well that pool is highly sought after and you may not get a chance if you only look inside your industry!!!

I am quite sure that many Hiring Manager feel they must locate a candidate within their own industries for the best fit. They don’t even consider candidates with strong functional experience vs. industry experience. We have found that candidates with exceptional functional experience will take you to the next level quicker. Don’t be that Hiring Manager that follows the industry traditions. Be the Manager that thinks outside the box to locate hidden talent treasures. Traditionally, Hiring Manager’s write job description with the same line items: 1) Education, 2) Years of experience, 3) Industry and Functional experience. HR and Hiring Manager pull out the same job description over and over and expect the best talent to apply for their jobs. If they don’t find the “right candidate” they start tinkering with these variables (less or more). Again, they don’t find what they are looking for in the market.

Let’s start to problem solve, compete and enhance their teams by thinking outside the box. First, look at other industries with the same functional experience. We have found that you may not have the best talent with the best skills within your industry. Pursue industries that are more competitive with a better talent pool. Second, look for candidates that have a history of functional excellence but were required to learn new industries and products. These are the people that have honed their functional skills and have adapted to a wide variety of products and industries. Thirdly, pursue industries that have “like” characteristics such as transformation, high velocity/pace, highly competitive, etc. As always, locate candidates that know how to problem solve, project management skills, collaboration/independent and self-motivated.

Thinking outside the box and taking risks with a high probability of success will allow you to find the talent treasures in the marketplace.

Assumption
As the HR Manager meets with their internal Hiring Manager to start a search, they must feel confident in their recruiting strategy to locate candidates not just produce activity. Do they develop and execute on the most effective strategy to fill their Hiring Manager position? One thing that they done is vetted external job boards and have made wise decisions on where to place their valuable recruiting dollars. They go ahead and post to their corporate website, the ever-popular LinkedIn and one of the job board companies such as Indeed, ZipRecruiter or Career Builder. They assume that their postings will be viewed. Their believe is that the “right candidates” will view the posting and apply. They wait, review a volume of resumes and wait more to no avail. They wonder wants wrong and what’s next. Is this the only strategy to fill the position?

Perform your own Research to Determine Job Posting Effectiveness
As an HR Manager and Hiring Manager, try finding your posting as a job seeker. See how many jobs you review to get to your posting. As Day 1 goes to Day 14, try to find your posting then. What is the shelf life of your posting in this market when a massive number of jobs are being electronically dumped into the Job Boards by BIG COMPANIES? Review the number of jobs on the boards that are from Big Companies. You would think that BIG Companies (larger than 500 employees) are the only employers in the marketplace. These companies have paid for sponsorship to all their jobs and get their jobs to continue to publish to get better viewing positions. The SBA Office of Advocacy, sites small business (fewer than 500 employees) make up 99.9% of US employers, small business accounts for 64% of the net new jobs created (2000-2017). “Since the latest recession, from mid-2000 to 20017, small firms, led by the larger ones in the category (20-499), accounted for 65.9% of the net new jobs.”

The Small Company Disadvantage
The Smaller company gets outmuscled in a very crowded space. These companies post positions periodically and have limited dollars to create the muscle to compete for candidate views with the larger companies. If you have less than 500 employees, you may want to change your sourcing and candidate generation strategy to increase effectiveness.

We all know that locating candidates in today’s marketplace is extremely difficult. Companies are spending significant dollars and time on job boards/postings to no avail. Qualified candidates are just not applying. Leadership is requiring the candidate pool to add value immediately by coming directly from a competitor or related industry. On the bright side, your competitors may not be focusing on culture/retention which sets the stage for you to reach out to their employees seeking a “better situation” and are willing to listen to new opportunities. Are you aggressively pursuing this talent?

What to do?
To fill most open positions in this competitive landscape requires a deep industry dive in research, lead generation and networking. Internally, you will need significant time, dedication and skill to generate the volume of candidates to fill each position. Companies have several jobs that need this type of attention and this is the reason for longer “time to fill” metrics. When Hiring Manager’s patience grows thin when they see limited results.

When time can’t be allocated to meet the Hiring Manager’s expectations, HR needs to partner with an external resource to service their Hiring Manager’s needs.

When seeking an external partner:

1. Make sure your partner understands your business and your position in detail. You can’t recruit without knowledge of the industry, company and the position. A well-rounded experienced business professional can meet your needs.

2. Have your partner define their lead generation and sourcing process. You need to make sure that they know how to continue to create leads for your job opportunities until they are filled.

3. Have them define their process of candidate evaluation. Can they successfully evaluate candidates or are they just seeking candidates the candidate they “like”?

4. Finally, can they manage the candidate process thru the offer stage. Do they understand the key motivating factors on why a candidate is taking the opportunity? Do they feel that this is the best match? Will your chosen candidate will accept the offer?

These are a few ideas from our experienced professionals at InPursuit Search. We look forward to connecting on your next search. Enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend!!!