How to Solve Hiring Challenges in a High Demand Economy

April 11, 2017
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Your talent acquisition strategy changes with the economy and the dynamics of supply and demand. In 2017, demand now outstrips supply in the DFW market for an increasing number of positions across all of the industries we serve. Through our broad reach, we are helping our client companies to solve these hiring challenges while maintaining high standards in new hires.

If you are seeing supply shortages for key positions or facing other hiring challenges, you’re not alone. According to a recent study by SparkHire, 46 percent of talent leaders say that finding candidates in high demand talent pools is a major barrier. Fifty two percent of hiring managers say differentiating the right candidate from other applicants is the most difficult part of the hiring process. Perhaps most surprisingly, 77 percent of hiring managers say that recruiters’ screening processes are inadequate.

A substantial number of companies are still finding success in hiring for high demand positions in our high-demand city, despite these trends. What they are doing differently is adapting to the current economy by fine-tuning their hiring processes. By incorporating their best practices, you should be able to solve your most persistent hiring challenges:

Nightmare Commute

hiringWith all of the construction in DFW, candidates for high demand positions are often making their employment decisions based on commutability. We talk to candidates who choose shorter commutes over higher pay every day. If you commute on the DNT, Central Expressway, I-35, or I-30, this comes as no surprise.

You can’t terminate your current building lease? Uh-oh! Actually, that isn’t the solution we are about to propose. To ensure that you don’t lose top candidates because of a nightmare commute, ask your candidates if they can make it to work on time. If your top candidates have potential issues, consider offering flexible hours or the ability to work a day or two per week from home.

Image or Visibility Challenge

Today’s field of candidates are highly networked on LinkedIn and engaged on Facebook. The younger they are, the more they generally seek social validation for their employment choices. When they consider new employers, in-demand employees often prioritize companies with a strong public profile and well-publicized employee culture. If your company is not a recognizable name, you may lose your best candidates to higher profile companies.

The quickest solution to this problem is to outsource hiring to a third party, so that someone a candidate trusts can talk up your company and overcome the lack of recognition. Longer-term fixes include sponsoring events that attract your target hires and ramping up your use of social media to provide visibility into what it’s like to be an employee at your company.

Long Hiring Process

When hiring in-demand positions in DFW, your best policy is an abbreviated process. Sure, you want to vet your candidates, have them meet with the key players on the team, and come to a consensus hire. But before you reach that point, your best candidates will likely be snapped up. In this case, not only do you lose out on the candidate, but you strengthen your competitors. Good candidates are also expecting job offers more quickly, so if it doesn’t happen after two interviews, they often lose interest.

If you work with a staffing firm, make sure it’s one that will keep you apprised of the demand level for the position and provide candidates in tiers. Tier 1 candidates should be expedited through your timeline and a verbal offer should be made after the second interview, in a process that takes less than two weeks. Hiring managers can’t sit on their resumes before responding to HR, and three rounds of interviews are out of the question. If you can’t get everyone in the office at once, consider using Skype or Google Hangouts for a video interview.

What hiring challenges are you facing that you didn’t have when the economy wasn’t quite so strong? Share your experiences with our community on Facebook!