How to Hire Top Talent with Today's Limited Supply

With a dramatically changing job market, demand for talent in specialized roles has resurfaced in gritty competition between employers seeking to effectively and timely fill positions. Recruiters must have the same creativity they used over the last year emerging from the pandemic to adapt their hiring processes and candidate experience, so they don’t risk losing out on top talent.

Candidates now have greater expectations from recruiters and organizations. As we know, most recruiters are facing the lack of skilled or qualified candidates as the biggest concern in hiring quality talent. How can recruiters adapt to manage this situation?

Begin with your employer’s brand.

Recruiting for highly skilled roles that require extensive training and specialized degrees means standing apart from the competition. Employers must try to attract top candidates to complete their applications using a unique employer identity that can separate them from competitor listings.

Candidates are expecting more in their recruitment processes, so companies must ensure every channel, from career sites to social media, delivers a consistent, genuine message about their identity as an employer and company. Organizations with a thoughtfully designed brand spend less on recruiting because they don’t have to work as hard to sign top candidates.

Building and maintaining an employer brand can provide significant long-term benefits. A company’s career site is a great place to start when cultivating an employer brand. Job postings give candidates an inside look into role requirements and create an opportunity for employers to connect with quality job seekers by highlighting their culture and values.

Elevate the candidate's experience.

We know that attracting specialized candidates requires an engaging candidate experience. The most essential factors to a positive candidate experience are great communication from the employer, ease of scheduling, an easy application process, and a quick hiring process.

Delivering the right experience can often involve a high effort in coordinating several aspects of the application process. Automation can play a crucial role in a talented team gaining a competitive advantage. These tools can automatically tap into resume databases and job boards to build a broader and more diverse pool of talent, identifying the relevant skills and experience needed to excel at any job. Tools like text-to-apply, self-scheduling portals, and chatbots can further help create a streamlined, personal experience for every candidate without the need for longer manual processes.

In this era, most candidates look for jobs on their phones and would prefer to apply for jobs from their phones. Mobile devices serve as an excellent contact point to meet top talent. Ensuring the career site is compatible with mobile browsers will help recruiters reach candidates on the go and prevent candidates from dropping off from the mobile application process.

Update your talent pipeline.

As businesses and corporations return to full operation, a talent pool presents a readily available candidate database to tap into without letting quality candidates slip through the cracks. Build your talent pipeline. It sounds easy, but how do you actually get to it?

To create a robust talent pipeline, recruiters should revisit their database of past applicants, sorting candidates that are a good fit by location, skillset, role, and level of engagement. Maintaining a regularly updated database allows recruiters to generate targeted campaign messages, keeping passive candidates engaged year-round.

Then, cultivate those relationships using targeted texts, job notifications, and recruitment marketing content so your recruiters have that resource when in need of talent.

Also, most candidates are likely to click on a job opportunity posted by someone on their social network. Employee referrals offer speed and quality in hiring skilled candidates, and they’re also very cost-effective. Incentives including leaderboards and other automated gamification elements can keep referral programs top-of-mind with employees.

Make sure you highlight key job details. Remote and hybrid work are here to stay. In the past year, plenty of recruiters have seen candidates turn down an interview or job offer due to a lack of flexibility and remote work options in the workplace.

As organizations scramble to fill openings in the wake of a recovering job market, competition, especially for roles requiring specialized skills and certifications, can lead to a tiring recruitment process. Implementing a comprehensive employer brand, utilizing new technologies, and strategies that cater to job seekers’ expectations and needs can help recruiters hire top-of-the-line talent.