Having trouble finding good candidates for your job openings?

Have you posted jobs on Indeed, LinkedIn, Career Builder etc. and found that almost none of the replies match your job requirements?

What’s going on?

In today's full employment economy, there are now more job openings than job seekers (see chart below). For Engineering, the figure is probably more like 2-3 job openings per job seeker.

Here are some strategies on finding and hiring the best talent in this environment:

When a strong candidate becomes available, it requires a quick hiring decision. In this environment, companies don’t have the luxury to wait another 2-3 weeks to see more candidates because that strong candidate will be gone by then.
Be willing to develop a promising candidate from a different industry, providing his or her skills are transferrable. For example, a strong candidate from the aerospace industry, after some industry-specific training, will likely also excel in the medical device industry.
Hire older / more senior employees. They will bring many valuable skills and perspectives, a great deal of experience, and a strong work ethic to your company. Also, older employees are less likely to “job-hop” than younger employees.

Over 40% of our contract employees are over the age of 55, and 10% are over the age of 65! They are some of our most productive employees and often have more energy than younger employees.

How do you attract candidates who are already employed?

During the 2009 – 2012 recession, there were many strong candidates who were unemployed through no fault of their own. They were easy to recruit and easy to convince to take a new job. In today’s economy, this is no longer the case. A gainfully employed candidate will not leave his or her current company unless there are solid reasons to do so. To entice a candidate to leave their current job for yours, your company will have to offer one or more of the following, in order of priority:

More career growth and/or a more financially stable company.
Better compensation. Generally speaking an employed candidate will not leave his current job (all other things being equal) without at least a 10% salary/bonus increase. However, you should not need to offer more than 15-20% higher salary for a lateral move. If a candidate is demanding more than that, they are taking advantage of the labor shortage. They are probably job hoppers and won’t stay with your company for long anyway.
Better health insurance with a higher employer contribution. Given today’s enormous cost of health insurance, this is a very important benefit to candidates, especially those with families to insure.
A more family friendly environment (flexible hours, employees are encouraged to attend their children’s sports events, etc.)
Better 401(k) plan with higher company matches.
A shorter commute.

How can we help?

Candidates who are gainfully employed are not searching the job boards, and they will never see your job posting. To recruit candidates who are already employed, you need the services of a recruiting agency.
When we receive a recruiting assignment, the first tool we use is our own database of over 18,000 local candidates. Most are not actively looking at any one time, but we have worked and communicated with many of our candidates for 10 or even 20 years. We note in our database what their ideal jobs are, and we contact them when a job comes along that fits their ideal-job criteria. Even if we know that they are not interested in the job, we contact them and ask to refer us to colleagues who may be interested.

Why would they do that for us?
- - Because of our long-term relationships with them;
- - We may have helped them in the past and will do so again in the future;
- - They trust our integrity and professionalism;
- - They are more than glad to help a colleague who is looking for a better opportunity;
If the above recruiting methods still don’t produce a desired candidate, we then recruit the old fashioned way. We pursue prospective candidates at competitor companies (who have not been our clients for the past 3 years) and present your company’s opportunity that offers more responsibility / better compensation / better benefits / shorter commute, etc.
We of course also advertise on all the job boards, and we have licenses for searching all the major resume databanks (Indeed, CareerBuilder, Monster, DICE), but if we relied solely on these to recruit candidates who are already employed, we would not be successful.

Give us a call to discuss your needs.
You can use our staffing request form, but it’s best to give us a call and discuss your job requirements in detail with one of our recruiters.