A leading frustration for most professionals is locating best fit candidates for open positions. Here are 5 tips to improve the probability of finding high quality prospects and building robust talent pools to select from.
1) The Detailed and Rich Position Specification as a Nucleus
We all know that without a destination, any road chosen will get you there. A strong and robust position specification will aid in sourcing the right person for the position, function, work group, business unit or enterprise. Ill-defined position specifications create a wandering path that adds unneeded time, money and frustration to the process.
The position specification should include the following knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics:
• What people need to Know. This includes the technical and/or professional credentialing needed to perform the job-related activities
• The Skills people can do. The tasks performed on the job such as decision making, planning and organizing, operating a CNC machine, business development, etc.
• The Abilities of a person. This includes intellectual capacity, psychomotor skills, intellectual curiosity and other hard-wired properties
• Other characteristics include a person’s attitude, beliefs, personality characteristics, temperaments and values.
The position specification now acts as nucleus as you build your search strategy, tactics and campaign around it.
2) Identify the Transferable Skill Range
The person-job fit characteristics of the position specification (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities) can often lead to a trap. When translating from the position specification to practical search criteria we can create unfillable job descriptions or descriptions that need walk-on-water candidates. This occurs when we create laundry lists of must-have criteria – the needle that will need to be found in a haystack.
Broadening the elements of the position specification can be critical to search success. For example, if you are looking for an Operations Director for a Metal Fabrication company that brings skills and experience managing press brake, laser cutting, CNC machining, electro-mechanical assembly, and ultra-high vacuum welding you will be lucky to find a handful of people in any geography that possesses relevant skills in all those areas. However, if you zero in on one or two skills and the rely on the individual’s capacity to learn the remaining competencies you will be in much better shape.
3) Broaden Industry Scope
With decisions made on the transferable skill range a determination can be made on how wide or narrow industry selection can be. For example, if you are looking for a Principal R&D Scientist in to develop Optics measurement systems with Ion Deposition capital equipment, and you look for that specific industry experience, you are in for a challenging search. However, if you allow candidates with the Optics expertise to come from a broader array of industries such as semiconductor, aerospace, solar, laser, metrology, etc. you are still in for a challenging search but are now giving yourself a fighting chance.
4) Select Target Rich Geographies
We have a general idea of where certain industries have a strong presence. For example, in semiconductor the West Coast, Texas and Northeast regions are strong. In agriculture the Midwest and upper Midwest has strong pockets of talent throughout the region. Of course, we do not recommend relying on broad generalizations or assumptions.
Leveraging Bureau of Labor Statistics, commercially available databases, Economic Development Corporations publications, etc. for the identification of specific cities and regions can yield a precise talent mapping. When recruiting for very specific credentials, experience and skills understanding where the haystacks are located makes finding the needle possible.
5) Develop a Winning Campaign
With the alignment of the transferable skill range, industry and geography a meaningful project plan and campaign can be designed. The following are some of the elements that can be blended to create a focused and executable plan:
· Networking the opportunity. This channel takes time to bear fruit so starting off with networking the opportunity to colleagues, industry contacts, employee referral, friends and family is a great way to launch a campaign.
· Posting the opportunity. From you career page to LinkedIn, Indeed, Facebook posting the opportunity to job boards and social media platforms can produce results depending on the role.
· Direct sourcing or head hunting. With very low unemployment levels most positions need head hunting support. This can be accomplished by your staff or hiring a professional recruiter.
· Events. Job fairs, trade association meetings, campus recruiting can produce results for certain levels and job functions.
If the recipe is correct finding the best candidate for your job opening is more likely to be realized. Leverage these 5 tips to improving the probability of finding high quality prospects and building robust talent pools to select from.
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