Hiring in a “shortage” industry? Here’s how you can build a robust candidate pool.

It’s a common challenge for many major industries and employers: despite employment abundance and “Great Shift”-inspired changes in the way we do business, finding, engaging, and hiring qualified candidates is still a significant challenge. With each job post, you’re getting fewer and fewer applicants — too few to build a meaningful talent pool. Push through and hire anyway and you may wind up with performance, productivity, and retention issues on your hands. Keep headcounts open for too long, and you’ll likely fuel declining morale, burnout, and turnover among existing employees. 

So, then, how do you hire the right talent in “shortage” industry — e.g., manufacturing, construction, nursing, food services, and hospitality? Or any market-specific vertical or functional role that has more open headcounts than job seekers? Start here. 

#1. Make it easy to apply

Simplifying the hiring process — and reducing time-to-hire — may help overcome competitive challenges. Not only will shortening hiring time reduce the internal resources needed; it can also provide a better candidate experience. This is key: faster hiring means that fewer candidates will drop out or be hired by other companies, offering you greater access to more (and potentially stronger) talent.

It’s also important the candidate experience is simple, intuitive, and quick. To identify potential pitfalls, try applying for a role at your organization. From the candidate’s perspective, you’ll be better able to assess any issues with the job post, level of requirements, and screening mandates. If the role or next steps feel unclear or overly complex to you, potential job seekers probably feel the same way. This is a good opportunity to review the posts with your team and identify ways to attract more candidates while streamlining the next steps for engaged applicants.

#2. Tout job training and education as a benefit

For industries that don’t require a specific degree, offering tuition assistance may be a good way to attract talent. Not only does this benefit help workers progress in their careers; in the U.S., it also helps curb student loan debt while promoting higher earnings in the long term. 

Even job seekers with the requisite education and training may be enticed into accepting roles with companies that offer on-the-job training and upskilling. Showing potential candidates a path forward, supported by company-provided training, certification, and education may be what draws a job seeker to your organization over the competition.

#3. Look back to build a future-focused candidate pool

More than ever, building a strong, qualified candidate pool for your open jobs can be a challenge. By revisiting past and ongoing engagement workflows and best practices with your team and recruiters, you’ll be more likely to spot areas for improvement — an activity that may have been overlooked during the pandemic. Reimaging these processes for today’s increasingly competitive marketplace can help accelerate engagement and hiring.

#4. Consider your employer branding 

If your team is struggling to attract enough talent to build a meaningful candidate pool, take a step back to better understand why. Ask yourself:

• Is traffic to your team’s job posts declining?
• Is your response rate to job posts declining?
• What do your application starts look like compared to completions? Are people dropping out when they reach your screening questions?
• Is there a major drop-off between applicants and interested interviewees?

These challenges may hint at any number of problems, but most commonly they’re a sign of:

• Failing to put job posts in front of the right audiences (i.e., relevant job seekers in your specific field or industry).
• Unclear job requirements or excessive requirements that alienate even top candidates.
• A decline in positive sentiment surrounding your brand — specifically, challenges to your desired employer branding that may be keeping candidates from searching for your business and, ultimately, applying for open roles.

#5. Bring in third-party resources 

Finally, consider leveraging third-party resources to evaluate and analyze your job posts and placements to ensure they’re optimized for success. Get in touch with Indeed to identify next steps and how, together, we can determine where your business is right now, and from there, create new benchmarks based on your current needs, KPIs, and look-ahead plan.

These targeted deep-dives can help you continue to fill your candidate pipeline, attracting and activating top talent, even for hard-to-fill roles. With enhanced best practices and processes in place, your team will be well-equipped to overcome the most common hiring hurdles.

What comes next? 

For many HR leaders hiring in a “shortage” industry, the last few months have represented an abrupt shift from “feast” to “famine” — and, not surprisingly, this has put many organizations at a significant disadvantage as they strive to attract, engage, and hire top talent. For many, even the simple act of building out a talent pool of sufficient depth has been difficult, especially for niche and/or specialized roles such as nursing and engineering. As a result, many HR and recruitment professionals have been forced to make difficult choices to balance immediate staffing needs with the desire for high-performing talent.

These hurdles can be mitigated and, ultimately, overcome. The first step, though, is to understand what job seekers want and what they’re experiencing when they engage with your brand — and that starts the minute they encounter a job post. Ensure you’re projecting a positive, welcoming employee experience in your posts, application process, and overall employer branding and you’ll be well-positioned to attract talent, even in shortage industries.