Speedy and efficient recruitment is essential in helping companies to fill crucial vacancies and accelerate the growth of their business. However, simply hiring a candidate quickly is not enough to ensure success - careful attention needs to be paid to ensure that the new recruit possesses the right combination of skills and qualifications to perform well in the role.
This can often be difficult to accomplish, especially for firms operating in highly specialised industries such as engineering and manufacturing, where it is necessary for candidates to bring very particular skill sets to the roles. Finding the best way of filtering your prospective applicants down to the best-qualified candidates needs to be a top priority.
In this blog, we will look at the steps that sector managers should take to find and secure candidates with the right skill sets, as well as how they can orient their employment offering to make the best of these skills.
How to find and secure candidates with the skills you need
Finding and recruiting a candidate with exceptional or specific skills is naturally going to be a more complex and in-depth process than a standard recruitment effort. Sector managers should consider the following steps:
● Refine your job description - if your role requires very particular skills and qualifications, your job listing needs to be tailored to reflect that, and to communicate the specific challenges and responsibilities that come with the role. However, the description also needs to be persuasive enough to ensure that skilled workers will want to join your company, and therefore need to balance technical detail with persuasive information about the benefits associated with the role.
● Target the right audience - advertising a highly specialised role through traditional channels may not be the most cost-effective approach, as it will not necessarily be reaching the right audience. Carry out research into the sites, venues and channels in which your target audience is most likely to be focusing their time and attention, and target these outlets accordingly.
● Skills-based assessments and screening - candidates need to be screened more rigorously when recruiting for particular skills. This means asking the right questions during interviews to put their knowledge and capabilities to the test, and scrutinising their work history to find evidence of the skills you need. You may even need to carry out a formal test or skills assessment process to ensure that candidates are able to fulfil your requirements.
● Consider soft skills and candidate potential - sometimes a ready-made candidate with all of the necessary skills and qualifications will not be available right away. In these cases, it can also be effective to hire based on potential, if you feel you have found a candidate who has the ability to develop the skills required - as such, you should look out for important soft skills in less experienced candidates, such as an aptitude to learn or transferable areas of knowledge, that suggest that these individuals can be trained up over time.
● Act decisively when you find the right candidate - workers with highly specific skills are likely to always be in high demand, meaning that your company should move quickly to secure good prospects when they are found. This means making quick decisions, communicating proactively with candidates to keep their interest, and being willing to pay talented workers what they are worth.
Creating the right environment for skilled workers
In order to ensure they are in the best position to attract and retain skilled workers, managers need to ensure they are delivering a strong employment offering that can help these recruits to fulfil their potential. This may include:
● Invest internally in training and development to ensure that candidates can see that your organisation will offer them opportunities to progress their careers and gain more skills and responsibilities over time
● Be generous with salaries, rewards and bonuses to ensure that your company is able to compete with rival organisations who are likely to be pursuing the same talent
● Make your recruitment process as streamlined and transparent as possible, to remove potential barriers to bringing skilled workers on board
● Foster a business culture that prizes innovation and achievement in the areas who want to recruit in, as this will help you to develop a reputation as a go-to destination for skilled professionals with ambition
By taking these steps, you will be giving yourself the best possible chance of finding candidates with the specific skills you require and outcompeting other employers to bring them into your team.
How Employment Solutions can help
To ensure your company takes the most intelligent approach to find the right skills for the business, it can be immensely helpful to work alongside a specialist recruitment agency with experience and expertise in identifying candidates according to highly specific briefs.
Employment Solutions has been doing so for engineering and manufacturing clients for more than two decades. We work closely with our clients to understand their recruitment needs, establish a detailed candidate profile and find them a tailored selection of high-quality prospects who are able to meet their requirements, and we are also able to provide educated advice to companies on how best to refine their recruitment approach.
To learn more about how Employment Solutions can help you find candidates to deliver a specific skill set, call us on 0161 839 5353, or complete the contact form below to arrange a call back.