Are you working around unfilled roles in your team? The finance recruitment market is experiencing a record number of vacancies that remain unfilled and the talent pool looks like it isn’t going to grow significantly in 2023.
In October 2022, the ONS stated ‘Almost a third (32%) of businesses with 10 or more employees reported they were experiencing a shortage of workers’.
The longer your vacancy remains unfilled, the more pressure there will be on the rest of your team to hit their deadlines and the more likely you are to lose good people who are overstretched. My suggestion is that you take a proactive approach to recruitment.
Paying for an Advert
Gone are the days when your company could post an advert and shortlist your top five candidates from the respondents. The shortage of IT and finance candidates is clear and if you are reading this Blog after having advertised a role recently, you will probably have experienced that shortage first hand. You have to be more creative!
As an absolute minimum you need to get the team to share the advert on social media platforms and spread the word beyond the confines of the single jobsite.
Reward for Recommendations
Every employee within your organisation will have a personal network of friends and acquaintances. Encouraging employees to utilise their network can be effective. Implement a cash bonus for anybody introducing potential employees to the business and when you have success, and somebody secures the bonus, make sure that you share their success story.
Speak to the Professionals
Established, reliable and knowledgeable recruitment consultants will have spent their time building an extensive network in their specific field of expertise. At a time when active candidates are few and far between, and responses to adverts are limited, you need somebody who can proactively approach the passive market and have ‘off the record’ conversations with suitable candidates. Don’t waste your time with generalist agencies as they will do nothing more than post yet another advert! Choose somebody who can prove that they have operated in the relevant sector.
Benchmark the Salary
The ONS stated that the average salary increased by nearly 7% up to October 2022 in the private sector. As such, ask trusted recruitment professionals to benchmark the salary with real-time information. Furthermore, don’t rely on historic information from 2022 salary guides as the fast-moving nature of salary increases has resulted in published information being out of date almost immediately. Salary benchmarking should be a service that a good recruitment consultant will provide free of charge.
Summary
It's an ultra competitive fight for the very best talent. You need to be as proactive as possible when trying to recruit and if the process is delayed because you are ‘too busy to recruit’ then your team will come under even more pressure.
If you have any further suggestions, please feel free to share your thoughts.
Savant is informed by market research and has specialist IT and Finance recruiters. If you are looking to build or expand your company, we can support you with the best talent in the industry with experts and market leading onboarding advice and consultation. To find out more about how we can assist you, please reach out to me at richard.alborough@savantrecruitment.com
