Why adapting our recruitment techniques can help solve the skills shortage

Peter Cobley

Skills shortages are having a serious impact on businesses across a number of sectors in the UK.

Last year, one in four jobs weren’t filled due to there not being enough talent. Research shows that this is having a detrimental impact on some business’ profits – with more than two-thirds stating it had a direct financial effect on them. The feedback I have from my clients is that the issue hasn’t improved this year. I work with media companies, and the digital talent shortage continues to grow and have an impact on them directly. But what can these companies do to safeguard their business against this problem? And how can we, as recruiters, help?

In a market where inflated wages and ludicrous company perks are becoming common in the media sector, you couldn’t blame some businesses for feeling helpless in their recruitment efforts.

This is where we come in. As recruitment experts, it’s our job to explore the confusing market and bring our clients the talent that they so desperately need. But for us to do this properly, we need to really understand the issue at hand, and then use different techniques to attract candidates in this competitive market. And this doesn’t just apply to media businesses – skills shortages are across the board.

Understanding the issue

Not being able to recruit staff is going to have a direct effect on any business: that’s obvious. It’s near impossible to take on more work if there’s no one to service it. But as a result, businesses increasingly have to find the balance between steadily growing their company, and being careful not to overload their existing staff as it could potentially push them to leave. The skills shortage isn’t just impacting how easy it is to bring in new talent, but also poses issues around retaining existing staff, too.

Retaining talent

Retaining staff becomes more problematic when we consider upskilling junior employees. If a business is only just servicing its clients, it can be impossible to take on graduates or apprentices and train them up, or even upskill existing members of staff. This would create added pressure on the senior team, which might be struggling to cope with their workload from clients in the first place. But if competitors have a big enough budget to offer candidates inflated salaries, in-depth progression plans, and attractive company perks in order to attract the little talent there is out there, then concerns about losing employees are understandable.

For recruiters, this means that we need to look at this bigger picture when we place candidates into new roles. It’s no good sending a candidate’s CV to every single one of your clients, or placing a jobseeker in a role that you’re not confident is right for them because they might not stay, which will just add to the existing pressures for that business.

Creating a talent pipeline

Creating a solid talent pipeline is something that the majority of big businesses are, or should, be doing. It’s a brilliant way to make sure that there is a list of potential candidates to call whenever a job comes up. It’s also a technique that recruiters can use as a way to get to know candidates and increase the likelihood of matching them with the right job.

Creating a talent pipeline basically involves getting to know candidates before they become job seekers. It’s a time-consuming recruitment method, but in my experience it works – particularly with senior candidates, which I mostly recruit for. By speaking to people that aren’t looking for a new job imminently, you can build genuine relationships with them and find out about them outside of their job role. This will arm you with more information so that if a job comes up you will know if it’s perfect for them, and if they do decide to look for a role in the future, you’re likely to be the first person they call. If you do this with multiple candidates, you’ll end up with a pipeline of talent.

Find out what their hobbies are, the kind of work/life balance they’re looking for, or even their favourite pub. This information will help in finding out the kind of business culture that would suit them, and the kind of hours they would prefer to work. If you can go to a client with this information, you can then work with them to offer a package that will be attractive to both parties. Particularly for your client, if you put together a package deal it often means that they won’t need to overindulge in terms of salary. For candidates, it means that they will end up in a role that is well-suited to them.

Ultimately, we need to pull together to close the skills shortages in the UK. Businesses need to make their environment a good place to be as far as they can, but as recruiters we also need to put in the work. Developing our own talent pipeline will mean that we are making better matches for both candidates and clients. And if we do this, candidates are likely to be happier in their new role, making them more likely to stay in the long term.

Peter Cobley is Founder and Managing Director at recruitment consultancy Found Us