When we talk about a barren wasteland, we don’t mean trekking through Mordor on a quest to save humanity, but more trying to fill positions that require difficult to find skill sets. Which to be fair, can often feel like you are trudging through Mordor on a seemingly impossible mission, and you don’t even have a fellowship of magical creatures to help you through. You have a telephone and an internet connection, which honestly just doesn’t seem to compare to a wizard and an elf.
However, as difficult as it may seem, there are things that can make the search easier, more comfortable and less painful. For example:
Be prepared to stand out
Convention does not always work in your favour. Put a toe out the box, peer over the parapet and stand to the side. Organise events that are bold, different, and are actually for the candidates you’re looking to recruit. Autotrader, for example, dressed up a min-van with music and flashing lights and drove around areas java developers typically congregate. They did something different and it garnered a lot of attention. If you know.Net developers are all crazy for Star Wars, put on some kind of Star Wars related event. It doesn’t always have to directly relate to applying for a job. You’re building networks.
Utilise your secret power
Also known as your recruitment database. Your CRM is not, and never should be, an electronic telephone book. It’s a highly curated piece of technology that makes your job easier. You can use your CRM search and match capabilities to find those hidden skills. For example, RDB ProNet offers users full Boolean text searching of both documents and CVs. Features such as stemming (offering grammatical variations of words) and thesaurus searches will begin to expand your search quickly and efficiently.
Tell your story
Be truthful. Be raw. Be open about your business, who you are and what you stand for. Through brave content and building your employer brand in the online community, you can start to create a brand that people want to be a part of. Once you have that, you’re also creating evangelists of your brand who will spread the word. That’s not to say you’ll get hordes of people knocking on your door, but that when you go to them, they have already heard about you or engaged with your brand at some point. You won’t be starting off on the back foot.
Create the right platform
While we crane our necks searching for the difficult to find talent, it’s often easy to forget that our own walls are busting with it, and they might just need a helping hand. You can create talent mobility programs, extra training opportunities and upskilling arrangements with your current employees to prepare them for the role. Having someone from the inside who understands your organisation and culture is a wonderful asset, and they might not be that far off what you want.
We know it’s hard, and the groans of recruiters as they receive particular job specs can ring through the halls, but it doesn’t need to be such an arduous task. Put the right things in place, play with a few ideas and get creative. Your difficult to find skill sets will begin to pop up soon enough.
Find out more about how search and match can help you find candidates with difficult to find skills.