2018 was tough to say the least for companies looking to hire nationwide. Today’s demand for talent far outweighs the supply in many industries. Due to the low unemployment rates, this is a strong candidate-driven market, where a candidate is approached by multiple recruiters at any given time.
Candidates who are already employed are commonly referred to as “passive” because they aren’t actively applying, but are open to the possibility of a new job. With a growing pool of these passive candidates, recruiters are seeing a rise in unprofessional behavior. Instead of vying for their attention, would-be workers blow off recruiters’ calls and ignore their emails, and even no shows for interviews.
It’s easy for a candidate to “ghost” a recruiter as it’s rare now to catch an already-employed person with the right skill set itching for a change. According to a recent article published by the Wall Street Journal, “The headaches [for recruiters] can have financial consequences. Chris Dove Jr., a recruiter in San Antonio, lost $9,000 in commissions in recent weeks after three candidates failed to show up for their first days of work as diesel technicians. All three completed multiple interviews, got hired, filled out HR paperwork and then disappeared.”
Recruiters find their standing has shifted in the booming economy. The reality is that top talent isn’t waiting around for an offer after several weeks of interviewing. In today’s competitive environment, delays in hiring can cause employers to lose out on top talent.
Here are some creative ways to increase engagement with candidates and expand your talent pool in 2019
- Treat candidates like people. This sounds intuitive but is often forgotten by many recruiters. Build a relationship with candidates and add value to them.
- Be candid, trying to strong arm candidates into accepting positions will only lead to a negative experience and them potentially ghosting you.
- Look for “unfound talent” non traditional candidates overlooked by other companies because they didn’t go to an elite university or haven’t worked at a top company. These candidates are the “found talent” of tomorrow and if done correctly will give you a monumental advantage over your competition.
- Consider distributed teams or remote team members. This will greatly increase the candidate volume, quality and diversity of your interview pool. In fact most Silicon Valley companies are now considering or have transitioned to a model where their executives and sales teams are based in the SF Bay Area and their product teams are distributed to other areas regionally or internationally. With empirical evidence that we’ve seen at Job Mobz showing increases in hiring of technical roles of 3-5x in time to hire.
- 2018 was supposed to be the year of AI and automation of recruiting. However, little changed actually occurred and I suspect this will be true in 2019 as well. What still remains of the utmost importance is building relationships. As a recruiter/hiring manager your job is relationship management with your boss, with the candidates, with your internal stakeholders etc. Keeping the team informed of what’s going on, be responsive and continue forming those core relationships with people will bring you the most success in 2019 and beyond.
Agree or disagree? Comment below I’d love to hear your thoughts or any other key insights you have to add to the conversation. If you liked the content please like and share it. To see future content please follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter @JesseTinsley
