Having trouble finding good candidates for your job openings?

When you post a job, are you getting nearly zero replies that match your job requirements? What's going on?

In today's full employment economy, there are now more job openings than job seekers (see BLS chart below). However, for scientific professions, we are finding there are more like 2-3 open jobs for ever job seeker, making it a real challenge to find strong candidates.

Some strategies on finding and hiring the best talent in this environment:

When a strong candidate becomes available, it requires a quick hiring decision. In this environment, if you wait 2-3 weeks to see more candidates, that strong candidate will be gone.
Be open to promising candidates, that have 90% of the job requirements, instead of waiting for a 100% match. In the long run, after your 90% match gets up to speed from training, he/she may be a better employee than the 100% match.
Look beyond 5-10 years experience With over 15 years experience, senior level candidates bring you many valuable skills and perspectives, a strong work ethic and loyalty to your company since they are less likely to "job-hop".

How do you attract candidates who are already employed?

During the 2009 – 2012 recession, there were many strong candidates who were unemployed through no fault of their own. With more job openings than job seekers, a gainfully employed candidate will not leave his or her current company unless there are solid reasons to do so. To attract a candidate to leave their current job, your company will have to offer one or more of the following, in order of priority:

More career growth and/or a more financially stable company.
Better compensation. An employed candidate today will not leave their current job (all other things being equal) without at least a 10% compensation increase. However, unless the candidate is currently underpaid, you should not need to offer more than a 20% higher salary for a lateral move. If a candidate has unreasonable salary demands, they are taking advantage of the labor shortage and are likely job hoppers who won’t stay with your company for long.
Better health insurance with a higher employer contribution. Given today’s substantial cost of health insurance, this is a very important benefit to candidates, especially those with families to insure.
A better work-life balance (flex hours, flexibility to work from home, ability to attend children's school/sports events etc.)
Better 401(k) plan with higher company matches.
A shorter commute.

How can we help?

Candidates who are gainfully employed are not searching the job boards, and they will never see your job posting. To recruit candidates who are already employed, you need the services of a recruiting agency.
When we receive a job opening, the first place we search is our own database of local candidates. We communicate with our candidates to find out their ideal jobs and salary requirements so we can contact them with jobs matching their background and objectives. If they are not interested in the job presented, we contact them and ask to refer us to colleagues who may be interested.

Why would they do that for us?
- - We may have helped them in the past and will do so again in the future;
- - They trust our integrity and professionalism;
- - They are more than glad to help a colleague who is looking for a better opportunity;
If we are not able to locate available desirable candidates in our own database, we target prospective candidates in similar jobs via on-line paid-subscription databases. Although most are not actively looking for a new job, by us presenting your company’s better opportunity, a good candidate will likely be more comfortable initially communicating with an agency over another company in their industry.
We of course advertise on all the job boards and we have licenses for searching major on-line resume databanks. However, we realize we cannot rely solely on these to recruit candidates who are already employed.

To discuss your scientific staffing needs in detail with one our recruiters, give us a call (973-605-8500) or, if you prefer, use our staffing request form.