3 Recruiting Challenges and 3 solutions

 

Our digital age has brought with it a whole host of new challenges for recruiters. Not only is there an incredible demand for new talent in emerging markets, but candidates also have more control over their jobs than ever before, thanks to the increase in flexible and remote work opportunities.

In many cases, there is likely only a small pool of candidates that represent the right fit for your business—and competition for those candidates is going to be high.

Knowing that these recruiting challenges exist in today’s modern talent marketplace, how can companies prepare appropriately to address them? Consider the following challenges, along with their respective solutions.

Challenge: Information About Your Business is Widely Available Online

Nowadays, candidates can (and will) dig further than your website for information. They’re more effectively able to block out recruiters’ white noise and do their own research.

With this in mind, you need to own your brand and make sure you’re seen on the platforms potential employees are using in their research.

Solution: Take Control of Your Brand Story

Expect that potential employees will scour your social media profiles to build a better understanding of your business. Be active on channels that are relevant to your industry, and ensure that the content on them reflects how you want potential employees to see your brand. As Josh Spilker, Editor of Recruitment.com, explains, “Social media has become the number one go-to source for potential employees checking out the culture of your brand. One thing they’re looking for? Personality. This doesn’t mean your brand has to be outgoing or to be different than your culture. But it should be representative of what your culture is really like. So if it is fun and different: make it that way. If it’s strait-laced, that’s okay too. Your social media shouldn’t give a false sense of who your company really is.”

Another resource candidates have available to them now is Glassdoor, which has become the go-to place for potential employees to figure out what working for your company will really be like. As a result, it’s vital that your company claims its Glassdoor profile and actively manages any reviews left by current or ex-employees.

Challenge: Recruiting People with the Right Skillset

Successful recruiting has always been about employing people with the right skillset. This hasn’t always been easy, but in the digital age, companies have more tools at their disposal to improve hiring outcomes.

Solution: Create Candidate Personas

Save time and make better hiring decisions by creating candidate personas that’ll allow your company to draw from a qualified shortlist.

There are several paid tools to help you achieve this. If you’re building candidate personas for the first time, Hubspot’s free persona creator is a great place to start (though it’s typically aimed at marketers, it can be easily adapted to HR needs). You can also use Twitter profiling tools or an app like Crystal Knows to add further data to your personas.

Challenge: Attracting Talent to Your Business That Fits Your Culture

In the digital age of recruitment, the talent you attract needs to have more than the right skillset alone. They also need to be a culture fit if they’re going to be successful within your organization.

Solution: Create a Strong Company Culture

Company culture is a big deal for modern job hunters—it can even be the deciding factor in whether a candidate chooses to work for you or one of your competitors.

On the flip side, as an employer, you also want to make sure that new hires will fit in and build on your culture, rather than cultivate a negative work environment. But before you can evaluate whether a candidate will be a good fit, you need to make sure you have a solid, clear company culture in place.

Despite what many organizations and their employees believe, company culture is not a well-stocked beer fridge and an arcade machine. Those things can help to create a positive culture, but they don’t define it.

Company culture is the environment and personality of your organization. It’s an embodiment of all the things that make your company a good (or bad) place to work. In addition to offering enticing benefits and flexible work options, make sure you’re tuned into employees’ needs and that you address any issues or feedback promptly to improve employee satisfaction across the board.

Challenge: Filling Talent Gaps at Your Organization

Making sure that your business has all the skills it needs—when it needs them—can be another significant challenge for some companies. Economic uncertainty can put a financial strain on businesses that have to balance employee numbers with the current needs of the organization. If these needs change quickly—or if certain skills are only needed for a short period of time—this can result in talent gaps that can be difficult to fill.

Solution: Embrace the On-Demand Workforce

Talented freelancers can be hired on an as-needed basis from sites like Upwork and Peopleperhour. Alternatively, you can find freelancers using standard recruitment platforms like job boards and LinkedIn.

Building a team of reliable freelancers can lessen the pressure of recruiting, while also reducing business overhead when you don’t have the resources or the need for a full-time hire. This makes it possible to continue meeting client expectations without overstaffing on skills for which you don’t have full-time demand.

In today’s economy, recruiters can no longer rely solely on traditional hiring tactics to be effective. Embrace change. Adapt your strategies. Monitor recruitment trends and embrace them as needed to ensure you’re able to attract and retain the right talent in the digital age.


Authors

Matt Shealy is the President of ChamberofCommerce.com. Chamber specializes in helping small businesses grow their business on the web while facilitating the connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide.