In recent years the unemployment rate in the US has reached lows not seen for 50 years. Some experts estimate that over 75% of CEOs were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to find enough people for skilled positions, which would hinder their company’s growth along with other consequences. COVID-19 drove unemployment back up temporarily, but as that number began to come back down, coupled with people who were staying home because accumulated government benefits outweighed what they would make at work, companies were in a similar spot. The main department tasked with addressing issues with hiring/recruitment is the HR department and within the HR department recruiters are the people who need to be on the cutting edge of solving recruitment issues. Below are some tested approaches to solving personnel recruitment issues.

The shift in recruiters finding people to fill positions from offline/in-person to online is huge and will not be reversing anytime soon. Consider this though: the shift has not picked up all people looking for work. Analysts estimate that there are still upwards of 60 million Americans who lack Internet access or choose not to use the Internet. So when trying to recruit a qualified candidate online seems impossible because of a shallow talent pool, what is one possible alternative? Use offline sourcing to find pools of talent among those 60 million people! Attend events hosted by professional organizations, civic events, trade shows, or hiring fairs in person to recruit people.

Another problem for recruiters is when they are developing a lead/candidate and then the candidate suddenly stops communicating. In modern lingo, the candidate begins ghosting a recruiter and the recruiter most likely loses all of the time/effort they’ve spent on the candidate up to that point. Also if the ghosting occurs during a time window that was reserved specifically for that candidate, the recruiter now has a gap of dead time in their schedule. One tool a recruiter can use to avoid dead gaps in their schedule is to use an automated scheduling tool that sends out reminders/confirmations. If it’s a requirement for candidates to respond to such reminders/confirmations, and they stop doing so for a long enough period of time, it’s possible the recruiter is being ghosted and should fill that time slot with someone else.

Speaking of a recruiter’s schedule, one last problem many recruiters face is not having enough time in a day to begin with. Don’t we all have that problem? Top performing recruiters recommend getting intentional about one’s time, such as researching a time management technique. There are also many time management tools available nowadays, such as the Tomato Timer.