Do you keep seeing the same applicants over and over for the jobs you advertise? Are you looking for new talent to bring in, but failing to attract the right people? It can be difficult to know what to do to break the deadlock in this circumstance. Have you thought about any of these ideas before going for the more expensive agency approach?
- Make sure you are covering all bases with your candidate attraction strategy. That means making sure your job adverts are reaching the right audiences: double check you've got sufficient coverage on the jobs boards, within the local community and across social media, and even in specialist publications / websites which are not necessarily job sites. Check if it is possible to place job adverts with websites that fall within the same niche that your business does and see if you can attract clients that way. They may not be traditional job sites but it is possible they will welcome the advertising revenue that you are offering them.
- Is there a possibility you can promote your jobs within Colleges or Universities? Will there be interest from students who, once they've gained their qualifications, will be ideal for the opportunities you have to offer? Being able to approach students before they are quite ready to take up your positions will at least seed the idea of working for you in their minds and this may percolate when they come to the point of graduating and looking for a job.
- Are you being too strict with the level of qualification or experience you specify in the person specification? We will all have our picture of the ideal candidates in our mind, but sometimes we have to accept, they either aren't available or they don't actually exist. We have to make the decision to work with what is actually out there, not just what we may wish was available. Think about whether some of the skills you are looking for can be learnt on the job, rather than being a prerequisite, and adapt your person specification accordingly. This can help to reframe the job as one that can be open to many more people. There are often some who are almost the finished article but just lack one or two skills that would have really made them a stand out candidate. Sometimes it is a case of helping them to develop these skills and grow into the role, rather than expecting them to show up for the role fully formed.
- Finally, are you setting your salary and benefits package at the right level? Do you need to refresh what's on offer? It may be that your offer is too low and not appealing enough to capture the interest of the people who have all of the skills that you are looking for. It is definitely time to see what your competitors are offering to check you are at least in the same ballpark as them.
