How to recruit through a candidate shortage

Finding the top talent to fill your latest vacancies can be hard, especially if they get snapped up by other recruiters quicker. Sometimes it might feel impossible to beat the candidate shortage that many recruiters are experiencing right now. If you take a step back and tackle different ways to source candidates and smarter ways to get ahead of your competition, you could beat the candidate shortage you’re currently experiencing.

According to startups.co.uk, 43% of companies being able to recruit staff with the right knowledge and skills for new roles is one of the biggest issues facing recruiters in the UK since the pandemic.

Source talent smartly

You can put all the effort in and not get much return from it, especially if you continue to do things how you have been for years. The recruitment industry has changed, especially since the pandemic if recruiters don’t look at smarter ways to recruit.

Looking at ways to reduce your time to hire will help you reduce the shortage of candidates you have. Some key things to consider when looking to source more candidates are:

• Sourcing on LinkedIn
• Sourcing on other Social Media
• Sourcing Passive Candidates
• Reactivating Previous Candidates
• Tools to find Candidate Emails
• Advertising on Job Boards

Keep expanding your network

You can’t guarantee that the same candidates will keep coming back. Don’t forget to check LinkedIn daily, social media, and ask for candidate referrals.

A recruiters strength is having a strong network so when you need specific talent for a specific role, you should be able to reach out to your network and get a candidate. To do this, networking with other recruiters can be a big help, knowing anyone you can within the same industry can be a huge benefit in the future.

According to a study from Forbes, 73% of millennials found their last job on social media. Keeping active everyday will ultimately grow your network and following which will result in less chance of a future candidate shortage.

Use our candidate sourcing toolkit

Candidate sourcing can be time consuming and not always rewarding if you don’t get anything back from it. Looking at new ways to source candidates and incorporating them into your existing recruitment process will bring more candidates to the forefront.

To give you a helping hand with this we have created the ultimate candidate sourcing toolkit that you can download for free here >

Review and recreate job requirements

A lot of the time, recruiters’ job listings can be unrealistic, which means that less candidates will have the right skills for the job. Some ways you can improve your job requirements include:

• Take off the need for a degree or special certifications (only add if it’s necessary for the specific job role)
• Take off the number of years experience required because this shouldn’t be set in stone
• Be more flexible where you can