Dear Kristy: What are Challenges YOU Face as a Recruiter?

Dear Kristy,

I’m an HR manager and I have to be honest, recruiting is one of my least favorite parts of the job. Yet here you are, doing it full-time, on a daily basis! What are some challenges YOU face in your recruiting efforts, and how do you overcome them? I hope hearing some of these will help me – and perhaps other HR pros in the industry – feel a little better about our hiring woes, haha.

Thanks,

Jennifer

Hi Jennifer!

Great question, and I’d love to share! Some of our challenges at Wylander are likely pretty similar to what you face in HR. Here are the first three that come to mind. I’m sure more will come in future blogs!

1. Candidate Pool

We know the candidate pool pretty well in a lot of metropolitan markets across the U.S. at this point. We know which markets are trickier than others, and more specifically which positions are easier to fill than others. The candidate pool also varies depending on your company’s size, benefits, and pay structure. Companies with great pay and benefits tend to have a much bigger candidate pool available to them than smaller companies with lesser pay and perhaps fewer benefits, like health insurance. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t candidates! It also doesn’t mean paying well and having great benefits will produce a bounty of candidates. I’m guessing you know both of those things already! It’s all truly subjective. And frankly, with today’s healthy economy and low unemployment rate, that candidate pool is pretty empty these days no matter what – but, hiring IS still possible!

2. Passive Candidates

Many of the candidates we send to clients aren’t actually in the “candidate pool” per se. I would consider candidates in the pool to be actively looking. Many of the candidates we find and send to our clients are not actively looking, but we are able to connect with them through various avenues and pique there interest about a new position. Often the tricky part is getting them interested in the first place and “selling” them on the new company before they even make it to the first interview.

3. Time

We try to be very clear with our clients up front that it could take 30 to 60 days, sometimes more, to fill a position. Honestly, depending on the market, it could be longer than 60 days. The unfortunate part is we aren’t magicians (although we wish we were!). We will search for candidates for our clients until we find the right one, and won’t give up, but we sometimes need the client’s patience with us. Our recruiters send weekly updates on the search process, and will adjust their search criteria if things change.

Fortunately, we believe in building strong relationships with our clients and getting to know the companies for which we recruit. This means a lot of the time-related challenges are easily overcome, or don’t exist at all. As long as there is a two-way line of communication between companies, the process goes pretty smoothly!