How can companies with 25 to 250 employees compete for talent with Cummins Engine or Eli Lilly & Co?
How can companies with 25 to 250 employees compete for talent with Cummins Engine or Eli Lilly & Co?
Two points of advice:
•Stop competing with everyone else for the same talent.
•And, recruit to fit your company’s culture.
Before describing further, I want to offer a bit of a disclaimer. There are some talent niches in the current labor market that Career Solutions doesn’t have a solution for.
For example, we’ve been asked to source and recruit recent college graduates for entry level Customer Service / Client Service positions in financial services since the pandemic. Career Solutions has a long history of RPO work for local area financial institutions and this type of work should be fairly routine. But it’s not anymore and requires much more effort and resources. And I can’t say that there is an easy solution to hiring recent college graduates, especially if you’re a smaller employer.
But in sourcing and recruiting experienced talent for local manufacturers, for example, we are still finding that our methods and process provides results.
Stop competing with everyone else for the same talent
In 2024, everyone is bombarded with ads for Indeed, LinkedIN, ZipRecruiter and others. Unfortunately, all these sites and ads are targeting the same groups of people. The result is that people don’t respond. They are overwhelmed by too much recruiting activity. They feel the ads don’t sincerely target them. And ultimately, they choose not to respond. Most employers are fishing in the same pond and catching very little.
The big employers with big budgets have the advantage of being able to bombard potential candidates with multiple recruiting requests. Cummins and Lilly have the brand advantage of being well-known for quality, high paying jobs. There is little opportunity for the smaller employer to compete.
Small employers must look outside the existing pool of talent.
Who are the people not receiving emails and ads from ZipRecruiter and LinkedIn? If you really study the talent within your own company, then I’m sure that you’ll find many people who don’t have an online presence. Some of the best talent does not have a LinkedIn profile and finding an email address or phone number for them is next to impossible.
Recently Career Solutions discovered that only about 10% of a niche engineering community was online. The majority had no LinkedIN profile, no Facebook account, nothing about them on Indeed or ZipRecruiter. Once we figured out a way to reach them, we had a great response because they weren’t being contacted by recruiters.
Figuring out how to identify talent that isn’t online is a huge opportunity for recruiting potential candidates not being bombarded by recruiting solicitations.
Sometimes it helps to look for ideal candidates who are from an employer’s hometown but currently live out-of-state. This is a big advantage because they are outside the talent pool being “spammed” with job postings in your local job market.
Recruit to fit your company’s culture
Smaller employers can’t compete financially with the Fortune 500’s recruiting budget. But they can differentiate themselves by understanding their own existing culture. Why do your good, long term employees stay?
Try to identify potential candidates who have excellent qualifications but might be looking for something that large corporate environments can’t offer.
Smaller employers offer big selling points to those dissatisfied with large corporate culture. Things like:
•Family oriented environment
•Less layers of management.
•More hands on opportunity.
•Quicker opportunities for advancement.
•Longer term goals instead of 90 day goals based upon stock price targets.
There are plenty of elite candidates who don’t want a large corporate environment and would prefer a smaller company culture. You’ll have to reach out to more potential candidates to identify them and not rely on ad generated candidates. Sometimes you need to set expectations. People accustomed to having someone else put paper in the printer and get coffee for them usually don’t fit in a smaller business.
Not everyone fits in a small company environment. So don’t try to force a “fit” if it seems difficult. And you will find that some of your existing employees don’t really fit in your unique company culture and should leave. Some turnover is healthy for any organization.
Recruiting top talent is difficult in 2024. But by reaching out to uncontacted potential candidates and identifying those who appreciate your company culture, you can hire and retain solid long term employees.
Career Solutions is in its 29th year of helping employers and hiring managers, we look forward to the opportunity of assisting you. For inquiries or just general advice, please contact Steve Fero at sfero@careersolutionsindy.com or (317) 502-3361
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