For those of you in the “trenches” of daily recruiting, it is pretty obvious that the job market has become very tight for many positions; especially many technical roles.
Gone are the days from a couple of years ago when a company could just run an Internet ad for a position and get several great candidates who applied. This was the case, but not in this market. Candidates have or are gaining the advantage in the market.
Companies are under pressure to fill business-critical roles. With the market beginning to closely resemble the tight job talent conditions of the late 1990s, company are having to shift their recruiting strategies to match what was being done during that period.
Here are some of those winning strategies that companies are employing:
Create Attractive Work Conditions
Believe or not, a higher salary is probably 3rd or 4th on the list as to why a candidate will want to leave their current employer. The main attraction to leave tends to be to move to a new employer with more attractive work conditions: These could include:
- Exciting projects or products to work on
- Flexible work schedule or the ability to telecommute/work from home office
- Regular company events such as lunches, happy hours, etc.
Prompt and Streamlined Hiring Process
As the job market continues to pick up steam, candidates are finding that they are getting a lot more calls from recruiters either from cold calls or in response to resumes submitted to ads. Companies that react quickly to get the candidates into their hiring process are generally the ones that are making the hires.
A general rule of thumb is respond back to candidates within 48 hours of the resume submission. If there is interest in the candidate, scheduling a phone and/or onsite interview within a week is what is needed to move the process along.
Competitive Salary Offers
Because great candidates are so much in demand in today’s job market, the hiring companies need to be sure that they are putting forth very competitive salary offers. Because salaries of current employees may have been held down over the last few years because of economic conditions, you may want to consider sign-on bonuses to new hires as a way of keeping your salary structure in balance.