You are looking to fill a position at your company and you have done an analysis of the skills that are needed. You have posted an advertisement for the job. But you have been having difficulty finding people who have the right skills. What can you do to improve your chances of hiring someone?
You may need to broaden your search and look beyond the places where you have looked in the past. You should gather together people who are familiar with the requirements of the job and know the field and the industry and have them come up with possible new places to look.
Another thing you can do is make the offer more attractive. You can do this by increasing the salary or by improving other fringe benefits of the job, such as more flexibility in when and where the person works, more comprehensive benefits, better chances for advancement, and more opportunities for career development.
You can also do more to cross-train your current employees. Doing so gives you more flexibility in your workforce, and it also helps with employee morale because it shows you value your employees enough to invest in them. As part of this effort, you can look into automating the more routine tasks of the job to allow employees more time to master the more high-level skills needed.
Consider hiring for attitude and potential and then training a new-hire yourself. Select a person for an entry-level position based on their willingness and enthusiasm to learn and to do the work needed to master the skills for the job. Then, once she has learned the skills, you can promote her in a few weeks or months into the positions that you need to be filled.
Doing all of these things – improving your recruitment program, enhancing the offer you make, training and cross-training employees – should go a long way toward helping you find the talent you need. If, however, after doing all of these things, you are still having difficulty filling the position, it may be time to reorient your thinking about the job. You may have to simply admit that the talent isn’t there for what you need and reconsider your productivity and profitability goals in light of this.
You also may want to look into partnering with a staffing firm such as the Opti Staffing Group. We know “where the good guys” hang out and we can help you find hard-to-find talent for your temporary, temp-to-hire and direct-hire opportunities. Contact us today.