It’s an employee’s market out there, with employers scrambling to fill open positions and keep people in them. With some openings, virtually any warm body will suffice. With others, you need to attract the best talent you can find.
It’s the latter situation that poses the problem. Where can you find these rare creatures?
Top talent is a hot commodity these days, and every company is vying for it. Looking in all the obvious places simply isn’t enough right now. You need to find some new fishing holes.
If posts on LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Monster, or Indeed aren’t producing great applicants, expand your search. When you do, don’t overlook these four places to look for great hires.
1. Over the Border and Across the Pond
If you learned one thing during the pandemic, it probably was that more positions are remote-friendly than you ever imagined. If work can be done remotely by employees across town, it can be done remotely from half a world away. That makes the prospect of hiring internationally extremely feasible.
Of course, you can’t hire, onboard, and pay an international employee like you do your domestic ones. In fact, if you don’t have a business location in the country of hire, you’ll need to work with an employer of record (EOR). Otherwise, you may find yourself out of compliance with international labor regulations. While you manage the workers, the EOR will facilitate onboarding, payroll, benefits, and everything else that comes with employment.
It’s a global marketplace for employees and for customers. Technology provides the tools workers need to do their jobs from wherever in the world they are. If you’re finding the talent pool a little shallow in your own backyard, dig a deeper pond.
2. Mass Exodus Industries
Call it “The Great Resignation,” “The Big Quit,” or whatever term you want to use. The mass exodus of employees is real. Recent research tells us why resignation rates by the end of 2021 were the highest in two decades.
In a nutshell, employees believe they are underpaid, undervalued, and under the bus when advancement opportunities come along. The hardest-hit sectors have been in hospitality, call centers, retail, and supply chain jobs. The latter include trucking and delivery, fulfillment, and warehousing.
Many of these workers are now looking for jobs, and they’re ripe for the picking if you’re creative. Don’t think “truck driver”; think “logistics.” And who can deliver great customer service better than someone who worked in a minimum wage retail job?
Search this massive talent pool for recruits with skills and talent that can translate to your open positions. It’s true that these individuals might need a little more training. But pay them well, value and respect them, and help them grow, and you might find natural talent that sticks around.
3. Colleges and Training Programs
Student loan debt is the major concern for students in college and trade schools. Students count on getting good jobs when they graduate. That way, they can move out of their parents’ house or a fleabag apartment and still pay off their debt.
So be the organization that gives them that job. Entry-level employees always take more time and training, but find good ones, and it’s worth the investment. You will need to arrive early to find the best collegiate prospects, so learn how to recruit them successfully.
Students begin testing the waters long before they graduate, so consider offering them an internship or a part-time job while they’re still in school. Not only will they begin on-the-job training early, they may not need to borrow as much money to finish up. Providing money to help the best and brightest repay the student debt they do accrue is also a worthwhile tactic.
Of course, once you recruit and hire college and trade school talent, avoid the same mistakes that have made other employees leave. Give the brightest and most driven new grads a chance to punch above their weight. They may return the favor many times over.
4. Within
Many companies frustrated by a dwindling talent pool fail to see the talent they have right in front of them. Too often, an employee hired for a certain position is always seen as an employee in that position. So many of them want to and can do more.
Your company works diligently to achieve employee buy-in to its unique mission, culture, and values. Employees who invest in your company are more productive in their jobs. If they are invested and productive, you want to keep them around.
Identify talent among your existing employees and cultivate those who demonstrate management potential. You can teach them the leadership styles, philosophies, and team-oriented attitudes you want them to possess.
When trying to fill positions where candidates are scarce, don’t make the mistake of failing to look within. Cultivate your own upwardly mobile talent, backfilling the openings they leave with easier-to-recruit entry-level hires. There may be nothing better for the company than growing your own.
In a tight recruitment market, you may feel like prospective employees are playing hide and seek. They aren’t really hiding. You just may not be looking in the right places to find them.
Wherever workers are, they’re seeking jobs that fulfill them in ways you might have been blind to before. You need to seek them out wherever they are and address those needs. Once you have them on the line, all you need to do is reel them in.
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