Leading on nicely from Max discussing ‘meet-up’ events and Brogan the previous week on the power of referrals I wanted to discuss the topic of Job adverts and why you can no longer rely on this method alone to attract and secure top Data Analytics & Technology talent.
Only last week I had a conversation with a client who asked; “Where are you currently advertising this job and how many applicants have you received so far?” The job was advertised on our RP website, some well known job boards and some specialist ones too. After 3 weeks of being advertised I’d had a total of 12 applications, of which 8 weren’t even remotely relevant for this very specialist Business Intelligence requirement (Retail assistants, courier drivers, etc.) and the 4 applicants who’s skills and experience do appear to be a match are all based outside of the EU and require sponsorship, something my client was not willing to consider offering.
Because the market is so competitive and candidate driven, the top % of talent are constantly bombarded with opportunities and know that they no longer need to spend time trawling job boards and applying for positions. Instead they wait for prospective employers and/ or recruitment consultants to contact them!
Here at RP Analytics we use a variety of methods to attract the top talent our clients demand, these do include job adverts but just a brief selection of other methods we use are;
Networking & Meet-up events
Max mentioned the benefits of these meetup events last week, as a specialist recruitment consultant it’s a fantastic opportunity for us to meet with talented professionals who are keen to further their personal development and are probably not ‘active’ in the job market. We DO NOT speak to them about recruitment unless we are asked, instead we focus on building new relationships for the future and broadening our knowledge.
Referrals
Similarly, Brogan spoke about the importance of referrals to both the client and candidate in her blog a few weeks ago. From our perspective, it’s great when we are able to work with and represent candidates that are referred to us as they are usually very good candidates.
Social Media
As with most things nowadays social media importance is paramount. We use LinkedIn and Twitter as the main social tools to reach our candidates and continue to proactively network with them for when we have that perfect opportunity for them.
Search & Selection
I’ve already mentioned how competitive this market is, quite often our clients have a long list of important requirements for their next hire that can often be business critical! We completely appreciate this and therefore often run a thorough search and selection campaign where we head hunt talent with these specific skills & experience.
So the overall message is, do not wait for the talent to come to you, be proactive and go and get the top talent your business requires and deserves!
If you currently have a difficult recruitment requirement in the Data Analytics & Technology space and would like to discuss how we can help, please get in touch today.