3 solutions to improve your hiring success in a candidate driven market

Across our community of CHROs, TA leaders, Hiring Managers and job seekers most people are aware that “the great resignation” and the resumption of hiring (delayed from the earlier months of covid) have resulted in a candidate-driven market. This is search language for when there are more jobs than people to fill them and that every potential hire has multiple options to choose from. It also means that rival companies are pushing salaries up, HR leaders are struggling with internal salary compression (when lower-level team member salaries are outstripping their line managers leading to dissatisfaction and a lack of reward to progress into areas of greater responsibility) and those companies that appear to give more, will attract more.?

In the world of search, people believe that this is a good thing that businesses are turning to search and contingent recruitment firms to help attract the best talent. There is validity that client acquisition is easier in this type of market but it also means that our job is harder. With more search firms engaged, there are more firms hunting in the same pool of candidates. As a result, candidates will be getting bombarded by pitches and calls. The net result is candidate FATIGUE and engagement rates being driven down across the board.?

This fatigue leads to less engagement and reduced talent pipelines. These reduced talent pipelines mean a higher risk of positions staying open because there is less talent depth to cover competition and candidate dropout.?

In brief, here are 3 tested ways to possibly come out on top during this time:?

ENGAGE with potential hires as much as possible:?

• Have your best, most charismatic leaders create content that demonstrates their passion for the company mission – it doesn’t have to be perfect; it needs to be authentic and visible. E.g 2-minute videos about their personal mission, what they’re driving towards and why.
• Curate media content and mission content through company channels.
• Create marketing drip campaigns (series of emails) that go out to all candidates that have engaged with your company. The more they hear from you, the more they will engage, but don’t bombard.
• Have multiple check-ins / touch points from members of the organization – a Hiring Manager, TA Lead, HR Lead. A 2 or 3 line email or text doesn’t take long to write and can make all the difference.

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OPTIMIZE your hiring process:

• The speed with which you can reach a hiring decision will directly correlate to your success. Taking 16 weeks to hire won’t work because you’ll have a competitor that will move quicker to offer. All things being equal most potential hires will pursue something guaranteed over a potential offer.
• Streamline your hiring panel – Who really needs to speak to the candidate? What does that person add? Fewer rounds will mean a faster process.
• Pre-book interview slots: After you kick off a search pre-book interviews with your stakeholders on the interview panel in advance, a place holder on a leader’s calendar is easier to delete than it is to squeeze in an interview into their already packed schedule. Believe me when I say that a little bit of positive pressure never hurt a search firm’s performance either!

RETAIN your best people and encourage them to make the difference:

• Great leaders are huge factor on why a new hire will take a role. When a new hire is on the fence, they have the ability to create belief in the mission, convey how they can help someone grow and ultimately, seal the deal to bring the best onboard. Do all you can to look after them.?
• Create a high performers retention scheme to look after your people. You don’t have to push salaries up beyond reason (worsening internal compression) but you can get creative with a cash incentive scheme (immediate and near term benefit) that is backed up by an equity kicker (long term benefit). Show them how much you appreciate them financially and then recognize them by presenting them with a highly visible award. By letting them know that they matter, you’ll help your high performers feel that they have a strong future with the business.?

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The idea that everyone is replaceable is true but only over time. In a candidate-driven market you’re looking at longer lead times to hire employees of equal or better skill. Even if you can pull in the right new hire, you will experience a delay in performance as the new leader goes through the onboarding learning curve. Throw in that leadership changes in a high-performing team is likely to lead to team churn and you must ask, can you afford an exodus from this high-performing team? If your skills are compromised at this critical time, how will that impact output? What is the business cost of that reduced output? And lastly, when does the controlled cost of a cash incentive scheme become cheaper than the impact of being under-staffed and under-skilled?

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In summary, it’s hard for every business to attract the best talent in a candidate market. However, the businesses that ENGAGE more, OPTIMIZE their processes, and RETAIN their best people will be the ones that come out on top.?

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If ever there was a time to do make the case to do something new in the world of hiring, now is the time.