Attracting the best talent is top of mind for any hiring manager. Yet, the task gets harder when recruiting for specific roles, like tech and engineering. Whether you’re attending college career fairs or posting on a top job board, promoting specialized jobs can create a unique barrier. Ask yourself if your current methods are helping you reach the talent you’re looking for.
As a job seeker, there are so many postings to comb through. To recruit strong talent, it’s important to pay attention to what your current staff is telling you. Use this information to improve company culture or to promote your company to a future candidate. Make candidates excited to apply to your open role. To learn more about attracting talent specifically in hard-to-staff areas, read this article.
Work with a Staffing Agency and Strategic Partner
Staffing agencies can be a great way to recruit candidates with niche skill sets. In fields like engineering or technology, it can be difficult to find the right fit for your team. Working with an engineering staffing agency, for example, could provide you with a pool of industry-specific candidates. Staffing agencies are full of people who are experts in matching companies with open roles to great talent.
Staffing agencies typically screen your candidates, saving you a lot of time. You won’t have to sort through unqualified applicants or read hundreds of resumes. With a network of quality candidates, staffing agencies can foster a quick hiring process.
Not only that, but they can streamline the whole onboarding process and shift responsibilities off of your staff. Working with these agencies can even improve employee retention if you’re hiring contract employees. Employees who are temporary placements found by the staffing firm can more easily become permanent hires.
Diversify Recruitment Channels
Companies typically post their jobs to the same few big job boards. While Indeed and LinkedIn are great resources to find candidates, it can be beneficial to post on industry-specific job boards. These job boards may be specifically for social impact or education technology jobs. They could be for machine learning developers or cloud solutions architects. These job boards can be incredibly helpful for a candidate with a specific skill set.
In addition to these boards, locating diverse job boards can be beneficial to bringing diversity into the workplace. Job boards for Black, LatinX, LGBTQ+, and female professionals exist to promote safe spaces for these individuals to work. Not only will this provide diversity of identity, but hiring diverse individuals can also promote diversity of thought within your company.
Create Detailed Job Descriptions
The first thing that a candidate notices is the job title. The next thing? Your job description. An effective job description should be personal, relatable, and professional. The candidate should have an idea of what the day to day would look like. They should get a feel of company expectations and measurements of success.
Your descriptions don’t need to be fluffy, but candidates want the scoop on your company culture. They want to know what it’s like to work for your company. Even more so, they want to know if they would fit in. Recruiting specific talent doesn’t just focus on skills, it means being a strong team fit too. Be specific about what you’re looking for in a future colleague.
Participate in Pay Transparency
While pay transparency is a fairly new conversation, in some states it is legally required. According to WorldatWork, pay transparency is what, why, how, and how much employees are being paid, and the ability to discuss it. Organizations that participate in this best practice build equity and trust amongst their employees and leadership. Promoting pay transparency can help shift the culture of your company in a small way.
Listing the salary range for a role in the job description can save both you and potential candidates time. If a candidate knows that your organization is paying under their salary request, there may not be the need to even submit an application. Promoting pay transparency can help close the gender pay gap as well. And your specialized candidates will appreciate your honesty.
Foster a Positive Company Culture
Creating a strong company culture is not something that can happen overnight. In fact, it’s not something that a pizza party or Friday happy hours can create either. Organizational values are embedded from the top down. Regardless of the cohesiveness of employees, leadership can make or break the organization.
In recruiting specific talent, company culture can be a draw for these individuals. Highly specialized candidates from fields like tech will seek out specific cultural characteristics of an organization. Think about the organizational cultures at tech giants like Google or Facebook.
Organizations with a strong culture produce an environment of autonomy and trust.
Candidates are likely looking for a place that allows them to try new things and continue to develop their skill sets. Good culture promotes personal and professional growth. If employees are happy, they are more effective. Creating a positive work environment requires leadership to truly get to know their teams.
Recruiting specific talent to your team doesn’t have to be difficult. Try new job boards or working with a staffing agency. Whether you lean into your great benefits or rewrite your job descriptions, you’ll be attracting quality candidates in no time.