Creative Sourcing Strategies: Actionable Advice for Tackling Hard-to-Fill Roles and Programs By Janel Stedtler, Marketing Manager, RippleMatch (Reprinted with permission) Almost every recruiter is faced with the challenge of filling challenging positions or programs. Unlike those positions where you have dozens of qualified applicants and your biggest struggle is deciding who to advance among a number of great candidates, these roles might receive few applicants each season. Or perhaps you receive hundreds of applications, but very few candidates fit the requirements of the role. What do you do when you have a role you just can’t fill? We shared some tips during RippleMatch’s User Conference. Here are the top takeaways from that presentation.
Shortage of Qualified Candidates There are a few reasons you might be having difficulty finding qualified candidates for your roles. Chances are, it’s not just because there are no candidates to choose from.
Your qualifications are too limiting.
Students don’t know they’re qualified.
The first thing to consider is whether your job description itself is filtering out otherwise qualified candidates. Do you have a strict, yet unnecessary GPA requirement? Are you expecting candidates to have skills that can be taught or trained? If you’re hiring for a specialized position like a mechanical engineer, you won’t be able to consider English majors, but if the student only had one internship instead of two, are they really unqualified for the role? It’s important to decide which requirements are truly critical, and which are simply nice to have.
Do you have a relatively obscure role that candidates might not know about? Similar roles often have different titles at different companies, which can be confusing to students who aren’t familiar with the opportunities available to them. Or you might have an entry-level management position, but students automatically assume a job with “manager” in the title requires years of experience. It’s important to educate potential candidates on the requirements of these types of roles, or you risk losing applicants who don’t realize they’re qualified.
How to resolve: Remove gate-keeping qualifications.
How to resolve: Source candidates and focus on education.
Take an audit of the job description requirements that could be needlessly limiting your candidate base. Remove those that aren’t completely necessary. Once you have expanded your preferences, renew your search for talent.
Reach out to students who could be successful in your role, even if they don’t feel they are an obvious fit. Tools like RippleMatch can help you easily find good fits for your role and allow you to reach out to them with a click of a button. It’s also important to create robust educational and marketing materials for the role to ensure more students apply on their own.
There’s a skills gap and systemic shortage. In some cases, there really are more roles than qualified candidates. How is your company helping close the overarching skills gap? How to resolve: Invest in Early ID programs & support. Work to help students develop the skills necessary for these types of roles. In order to ensure your pipeline is filled with more qualified candidates in the future, make long-term investments in helping candidates learn the skills they need.
Take an audit of the job description requirements that could be needlessly limiting your candidate base. Remove those that aren’t completely necessary. 38 MINNESOTA Recreation & Parks | www.mnrpa.org
