Struggling to Recruit?
If you’re a manager, you’ve most likely experienced the frustrations of navigating the traditional hiring process. Managers’ time is a limited commodity, and during hiring seasons managers are often required to read through an endless stack of resumes, only to conclude that there is a lack of qualified candidates.
This difficulty is especially true if you are a manager recruiting for IT positions, because then you are likely competing against America’s top tech companies: Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc. These companies are applicants’ top choice, and they enjoy the pick of the litter, taking the top 20% of the applicant pool.
Despite the intense competition for talent, there are still plenty of highly qualified candidates who don’t attract the same exposure as their top peers. Locating a less obvious candidate is a difficult task for managers, as they are not full-time recruiters, have work responsibilities, and do not have the resources and support to recruit efficiently and correctly.
The lack of time, support, and resources means that managers must rely on the traditional hiring process where recruiters feed them candidates. However, unless you are working with recruiters who have either the necessary professional experience or a deep understanding of the position and its required skills, it is unlikely that the traditional hiring process will reliably and consistently supply you with good fits. For example, let’s say you are hiring a developer, project manager, or scrum master. Candidates may mention having experience with Agile, JIRA, or Python, but unless the recruiter has the technical understanding, it is almost impossible for them to correctly evaluate a candidate's fit.
The importance of human capital is twofold because not only is a strong team fundamental to organizational success, but wrong hires end up wasting time, and money, and hurt productivity. Therefore, recruiting the right people on your team and in your organization must be a top priority.
To attract the right talent into your team and organization, either of the following steps should occur:
Dedicate more resources to the hiring process
The hiring process is time consuming and most managers do not recruit year round. As a result, they do not have the systems and resources in place to attract and recruit talent efficiently. Managers know best what kind of person will succeed on their team, but to satisfy their needs, managers must do the “heavy lifting” of the hiring efforts.
Partner and reduce the burden
Outsourcing, if done correctly, can reduce the efforts spent by managers in the traditional hiring process. Partnering with an external firm that has the technical expertise and knowledge necessary to assess candidates’ abilities and their potential to succeed within the organization can significantly increase the quality of the match, reduce turnover, and provide better long-term results. Furthermore, firms that offer an easy hire process, one that interviews the candidates and summarizes key information for the hiring managers, can significantly reduce the demands the traditional hiring process places on managers.