Bryony Gibson, managing director of Bryony Gibson Consulting, talks about the most common reasons why a business could struggle to fill their job vacancies.
It’s an age-old conundrum when your company is hiring, you have what you believe is an attractive job opportunity, but you don’t seem to be able to find the right person. When recruitment is an add-on to your full-time job and you’re struggling to fill a vacancy, it can be difficult to work out why, so, here are five things that could potentially be holding you back.
1. Market Knowledge If you don’t know the recruitment market it can be very difficult to know whether what you are looking for is realistic, let alone assess the quality of a candidate’s CV; particularly if you’re hoping to bring new skills into a business. Without this essential insight, it’s easy to miss people who are worth investigating further because they don’t appear to tick all your boxes at first glance.
2. Company Culture In a candidate-led recruitment market, the importance of your company’s culture cannot be underestimated. The best people often have choices when it comes to deciding on their next employer, so the thought of working for you should not only be appealing, it must be projected clearly, honestly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process.
3. Employer Brand The view you have of your company as an employer might be very different from your reputation so, if you don’t already know what people are saying about you as a place to work, then you need to find out. If you have high staff turnover, then you must build a plan to proactively influence people’s perceptions in order to attract good people to join your team.
4. Salary & Benefits Not always the deciding factor, but the compensation package you offer will be an important consideration for future employees and must be fair and reasonable as a bare minimum. Try to get your hands on a current industry salary survey or seek some advice to ensure you stay inline with market levels and your benefits remain attractive.
5. Sales Technique If you want to attract the best people, you must clearly demonstrate why they should join your team and, while you are assessing candidates, throughout every stage of the recruitment process they will be forming opinions about you. Start with a well-crafted job description and targeted advert. Think carefully about who will field enquiries, as their communication skills will be crucial to the way you are perceived. Each interview should be treated as a two-way process, giving you the opportunity to establish common interests and explain why someone should want to work for you.
If you have been struggling to fill a vacancy and don’t have a recruitment strategy or plan in place, then you need to make time to get one or, at the very least, speak to a specialist recruitment consultant.
There are so many potential touchpoints during the recruitment process that it often feels difficult to find the time to manage them all, especially if this is on top of your day job.
If I had to offer you only one piece of advice, it would be to make sure you dedicate time to engage and communicate with potential new recruits. Keep in touch with people regularly throughout the recruitment process, into their notice period and beyond, until they join your business.
A lot can go wrong in recruitment and making someone feel like the decision they are making is the right one will make all the difference.
