If you haven’t noticed yet, the job market is slowly picking up steam. What this means is, companies that rely on skilled talent and already facing a talent shortage could be at serious risk. Business owners, especially those in the life sciences and technology fields, are already feeling the sting.
Hiring Is Heating Up!
According to a recent survey of more than 300 entrepreneurs, 60 percent said their greatest challenge is finding skilled professionals. That’s because the majority of small and mid-size businesses simply post jobs to their websites in hopes of finding top talent. Those days are over. Today, companies need to conduct targeted searches to find good talent. If you want the best employees on your team, it’s worth outsourcing your hiring needs to a third-party recruiter who specializes in the field for which you are hiring.
How else can your company stay one step ahead of the looming talent shortage?
►Act quickly. Professional recruiting firms can significantly reduce the amount of time it takes to find qualified applicants. But don’t let that talent slip through your fingers and into the hands of the competition because you took too long to reach a decision. Once a candidate completes the interview process, employers should be able to decide in less than two weeks—especially if you’re searching for engineers or technicians who are quickly getting snapped up. Another survey of 200 IT professionals found 47 percent said they believe they could quickly find a new job.
►Have a process in place. Before picking up the phone to arrange an initial interview, be sure your logistics are ironed out. Who else within the company needs to interview the candidate? What is their availability? Once you sit down with a candidate, you should also never tell him or her when to expect a job offer if you are not certain.
►Be flexible. With the talent war heating up, it’s important to adequately compensate candidates with whom you make an offer. Experienced engineers, for instance, are taking regular calls from headhunters and being offered salaries that can reach as high as $200,000 to $350,000 for senior, non-executive positions.
As your company heads into 2014, it’s important to be prepared by using dedicated teams of specialists. While your human-resources staff focuses on healthcare and other time-intensive employee benefits, let an HR outsourcing company handle your hiring and applicant tracking process, craft effective job descriptions, and pre-screen candidates to only send you the ones that best match the job opportunity!
Jyoti Patel is President of Anuva Resource Solutions, a full-service human-resource and financial solutions outsourcing company based in Morrisville, NC, that specializes in helping startup entrepreneurs, professional service firms, and midsize companies spend less time on day-to-day tasks and more time on expanding their businesses!
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