How To Find the Employees You Need When Good Candidates Are Hard to Come By

For too many employers, finding needed workers has gone from a minor frustration all the way to full-on hopelessness. Jobs are everywhere it seems, and they often remain unfilled. It’s no longer a question of who is hiring because the fact of the matter is, almost everyone is hiring.

So how does an employer go about filling their openings when there’s such fierce competition? Unfortunately, some businesses are starting to take anyone with a pulse. Maybe you’ve thought “Oh no, this isn’t going to end well” as you hire the least horrible applicant you’ve interviewed. If that’s the case, you need to start getting more creative.

Fortunately, there are ways to break out of the cycle of posting openings with little hope of attracting high-quality candidates. By reworking your hiring processes, you might find that your options get a lot better.

Seek Remote Employees When Possible

There are definitely some occupations and individual positions where it’s necessary for the employee to be physically present. Stocking grocery shelves, delivering products, and framing houses just can’t be performed by someone in another state from their computer. However, there are many jobs that can be adapted for remote employees with minimal headache.

If you have positions to fill that could be performed remotely, there are multiple benefits. You can expand your search either nationwide or even globally. Not only are far more people able to apply, but you might see significant cost savings.

You might need some assistance if you’re opening up the hiring pool across state or country lines, though. For interstate help, you can look into contracting with a professional employer organization. What is a PEO? It’s essentially a third party that takes over certain HR tasks such as payroll and benefits administration. PEOs are especially useful when hiring across state lines to make sure you’re adhering to all the state-specific payroll rules.

If you open up your search on a global scale, you’ll need to retain an employer of record. While EORs also perform the functions a PEO does, only an EOR can hire international employees on your behalf. When choosing an EOR, keep in mind that not all are the same. An EOR must open an entity in each country they offer services for (although some EORs outsource their entities to third parties). So make sure your EOR not only has availability for the countries you’re interested in hiring from, but also owns their own entities everywhere they offer service.

As for cost savings, these are most likely if you’re located in an area with a fairly high cost of living. For example, maybe your company is based in California and has a remote position open. Wages that are considered fairly low in your area might still be very desirable to a skilled remote worker in Missouri.

Other cost savings of taking on remote workers include the potential to downsize your business space. Having fewer people present can lower your square footage requirements and monthly utilities.

Of course, there are a few things to take into consideration if you’re contemplating making your workplace remote-friendly. If your office printer is constantly churning out paper and physical copies get passed around as an essential process, changes will be necessary. Going paperless — or as paperless as you can — is a good first step. Then you’ll need to get everyone on board with online programs that make remote collaboration possible.

Beef Up Your Training Program

Most of the time, it’s easier to change someone’s skill set than their personality. If you keep running into otherwise promising applicants who haven’t directly worked in your field, ask yourself how trainable the position is. You also might consider whether seemingly unrelated employment history might have some transferable skills.

There are obviously some positions you can’t train for in-house. Very few people would appreciate certain medical procedures being performed by someone who is learning as they go. Other tasks, however, can absolutely be learned on the job.

If you are willing to put a training program or even an educational reimbursement option in place, you can broaden your candidate field. Sometimes finding the right person who is open to being trained can pay off in the long run despite the time investment. And if you offer outside education reimbursement, that can usually be written off as a tax deduction.

Transferable skills should also not be overlooked. A former warehouse manager at company A might not seem like a possibility for filling an account manager position at company B. But if both companies deal in building supplies, it changes things drastically. The applicant might do well in account management since a warehouse manager would already be familiar with the products and supply chain. They could potentially be far ahead of an experienced account manager who has worked mainly in digital marketing.

So make sure not to count someone out because their past experience isn’t a direct match. If you’re using software to filter out applicants, don’t make the filters too restrictive. You might miss out on a great hire because their resume never made it to a human being.

Find Your New Team

Successful businesses sometimes have trouble adapting to changing circumstances if their procedures have been working for decades. But as current hiring trends have shown, simply posting a job is no longer guaranteed to yield quality applicants. There are people out there who would be great additions to your team, but finding them is the challenge.

So take a look at your current open positions and determine where there’s some potential flexibility. Once you start to explore the possibilities, you might discover some options you never would have considered. The best part is that your new methods might prove useful as a long-term practice rather than just a short-term solution.

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