Shrinking Talent Pools Mean Shifting Hiring Strategies

With the labor market is tighter than ever, HR professionals and those tasked with hiring need to be ready to attract potential workers from competitors.

According to Fast Company, organizations focused on hiring recent grads should be prepared to discuss strategies for work flexibility, collaboration, professional development, how success is measured, and opportunities for giving back. Shifting one's mindset from focusing on the challenges the tight market creates to instead emphasizing the opportunities it provides to attract the right talent can help organizations make needed innovations to their hiring practices and company culture.

With full employment, staffing agencies have to get creative as the pool of qualified talent is limited. Add in changing visa and immigration laws and the pool shrinks even smaller. Companies seeking talent are frustrated, and staffing agencies are working harder to appeal to the remaining talent. Workforce magazine highlights one solution: investing in training programs. Helping candidates upskill can help fill hard-to-staff roles with the same pool. Called a “build-your-own-talent” approach, organizations can focus training on skills that are harder to source with a promise of commitment to working for the employer for a set amount of time.

This helps explain why recruiting is a growing focus for the C-suite, according to HR Dive. For HR, this means ensuring everything from a positive, proactive hiring experience to showcasing a company as an employer of choice in recruitment, and also shifting strategies toward “total talent acquisition,” which means considering full-time employees as well as flexible, contingent, and project-based workers.

Shifting hiring and recruiting strategies will continue to be hallmarks of the tight labor market, so finding ways to attract, train, or retain talent will be what makes the difference for many employers.