Why it's hard to hire right now...
If you’re wondering why it’s so hard to hire good talent at the moment and why it’s taking a lot longer than usual, you’re not alone.
Job ads in Australia hit a 12 year high last month and according to Talent’s recent recruitment report hiring demand has increased 145% over the past few months. Combine this with little to no migration to Australia for skilled resources and you have an extremely candidate-driven market with an abundance of opportunities for them to choose from.
There’s also a huge internal talent acquisition shortage and they are often working on up to 30-40 roles at a time. This means more roles are being pushed out to agencies to provide support.
In my own experience working across the Australian market, candidates are generally receiving 2 or 3 offers at the same time, as well as counteroffers from their current employer. This can make it difficult for employers to hire specialist skills in a quick and efficient manner, especially if your recruitment process takes longer than 2 weeks.
Here are a few things to consider and implement to ensure you are mitigating the risk of losing out to another employer:
Interview process
This needs to be cut down to 1 week ideally (2-3 stages) and certainly no longer than 2. Be prepared to miss out on a lot of talent if you have a long-winded interview process. It’s a good idea to nail the hiring process from the get-go. Ie) know who in your team will be conducting interviews and if they are too busy or onsite with a client, know who will be a back up to interview your candidate.
Flexibility
Most candidates don’t want to work from home 100% of the time so offering this is slightly less important than you might think. However, giving them the option to choose the days they come into the office is important and if you expect them in the office 5 days a week, you’re going to have a hard time against the competition.
Offer stage
Once you’ve completed the interview process, offer fast and don’t lowball candidates. Not only does this turn off potential candidates, but it’s also not a good look if they decline the offer and then you turn around and offer an extra 10k. Most likely they will accept the role that was transparent from the start and offered them what the role is paying coinciding with their experience.
Communication is key
It’s important to keep in contact with candidates throughout the process. This means setting their expectations such as if they are likely to go through to the next round or not and when that will potentially be scheduled. Ensure you communicate either directly or through your Talent Acquisition partner after every interview.
There are many more stages of the hiring process I could talk about but I will save that for another day. I’d love to know if you have had good or bad interview experiences lately and if you’re a client if you’ve had to adjust your process because you were missing out on talent?