There's a global talent deficit &mdash; and recruiters and hiring managers feel the pain. Jobs are waiting to be filled as organizations scale, restructure, and expand to new markets. Ever-evolving technologies and platforms add another layer of complexity in which many hiring managers simply can't find enough pre-certified candidates to fill their open roles.
With projections estimating <a href="https://www.kornferry.com/insights/articles/talent-crunch-future-of-work" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">over 85 million unfilled jobs worldwide by 2030</a>, talent acquisition is a critical need. Why is it that organizations still struggle to find the right fit for every role, especially hires that will be high quality and retainable?
We know that it takes more than sharing a job listing online or relying solely on the power of networking to keep talent pipelines full of highly skilled, passionate candidates.
A proactive staffing and recruiting strategy is the most effective way to fill open roles with the market's best talent. In this post, we'll share five tips to help you build and refine your approach to attracting, evaluating, and retaining top talent.
<h2>1. Assess Your Current Workforce</h2>
You need to do more than simply check a box or fill a space with a body when hiring. Whether you're creating a brand new role, replacing a former employee, or expanding entire sectors of your business, the best way to set clear recruiting and staffing goals is to identify strengths and weaknesses in your past recruitment efforts and your current workforce retention.
Take time to evaluate your current workforce before you start recruiting. Work with your HR team to gather data you have on retention and read through qualitative notes or interview your team. Beyond basic questions about role and timeline, the best way to set yourself up for future success is to gain a clear sense of what's working and what's not in your current system. Think:
<ul>
<li>Where do we see the highest turnover rate? In one role? On a specific team? Is there a trend with employees staffed by a particular outside agency?</li>
<li>What do former employees say about their reasons for leaving? What do managers and leadership staff say about employee retention?</li>
<li>What pain points do current employees note about how a role was presented during the interview process vs. their actual experiences on the team? Do your job listings match up to the day-to-day operations associated with each position?</li>
</ul>
<h2>2. Staff For Future Needs</h2>
Tight turnover deadlines are an inevitable aspect of staffing and recruiting &mdash; you may feel pressured to fill roles quickly when an employee leaves the company. Ideally, your staffing and recruiting efforts should reach beyond putting out fires to include future strategy.
Along with assessing your current retention rates, you should consider long-term&nbsp;<a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/hiring-vs-workforce-development-stop-patching-holes-start-preparing-for-tomorrow" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">workforce development goals</a> as you build a recruiting strategy. The key? Sourcing for anticipated roles before you need them filled. Last-minute recruiting often leads to quick turnover if new <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/empowered-to-be-engaged-new-report-unpacks-the-role-of-rank-and-file-workers-in-bolstering-employee-engagement-300416969.html" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">employees aren't engaged</a>&nbsp;or can't get up to speed with your business. Effective workforce planning can help drive future expansions, new initiatives, and better team structure, so it's essential to consider the lasting effects of your recruiting efforts as you grow.
As you anticipate future needs by role and technical qualifications, be sure you also consider the intangibles. How do personality, work ethic, and life experience impact success in a particular position? If your favorite coworker is retiring, consider not only the work they do each day but how they approach it and what makes them such valuable team player. Do they...
<ul>
<li>Know how to mediate conflict in high-pressure situations?</li>
<li>Bring new perspectives to the table based on experience in another industry?</li>
<li>Get along well with their colleagues, direct reports, and executive leadership?</li>
</ul>
Remember, you're looking for a person to fill each role, not a list of technical qualifications. You'll want to get a <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/blog/post/how-to-uncover-the-hidden-soft-skills-you-already-own" rel="follow">full view of their skillset</a>, beyond what's listed on their resume, to understand if they're the right fit for your organization.
Another Tip: Give yourself 4-6 weeks to source, interview, and evaluate candidates before their anticipated start date. This buffer time helps candidates and hiring managers to ensure that the role is a great fit and cuts down outside pressure from leadership teams in a hurry to fill open positions.
<h2>3. Stay Away From Automated Services</h2>
While resume screening is an extremely time-consuming part of recruiting, it's a necessary evil. It may be tempting to automate reviews with a resume parsing service, but this quick fix can easily come back to haunt you in the long run.
Parsing tools, even intuitive A.I.-powered ones, can't replace the human aspect of the hiring process. These tools rely on data and data alone to assess a candidate's fit for a job, ignoring relevant personal or professional experiences or even cutting out candidates for something as simple as using a standard tech acronym like "PO" instead of spelling out "Product Owner." Plus, they only scan for quantitative measures like years of experience and industry buzzwords, which makes it impossible for recruiters to get to know the real person behind the resume.
Simply put, these tools can eliminate outstanding candidates before you know they exist. They also promote ones that may know how to game the system. Beyond delivering a less-than-comprehensive view of each candidate, <a href="https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-get-your-resume-past-the-applicant-tracking-system-2063135" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">applicant tracking systems(ATS) and other parsing tools are easy to beat</a>, and candidates may be more focused on pleasing the algorithm than they are on showcasing their experience or qualifications.
Instead of automating your resume screening process, look for ways to streamline other parts of your staffing and recruiting strategy with help from outsourcing agencies and the like. By finding ideal candidates in talent pools and outside sources, you'll cut down on the number of resumes you actually have to review. This approach solves resume overload and helps you capture better opportunities sooner.
<h2>4. Rethink How You Evaluate Talent</h2>
Beyond the tedium of review, resumes also don't offer genuine insight into each candidate. They're a rigid, quantitative way to measure talent &mdash; a strategy that's not successful as companies look for people who will enjoy long-term success on their teams.
Instead of ranking candidates based on keywords in a resume, years of experience, or work history alone, evaluate each candidate as a whole. Consider things like work ethic, flexibility, and real-world experience over professional expertise and technical skills. 
You may discover that the perfect fit for your open role has an exceptional work ethic and project leadership experience but got passed over by an ATS because they don't have a Salesforce certification. Of course, candidates need certain skills to complete a job, but the unquantifiable qualities on top of those skills can truly make or break the deal. For example, a former construction contractor has likely mastered budgeting, time management, and conflict mediation, all valuable skills that could transition into a corporate management role with some upskilling and a new certification or two.
This holistic evaluation process opens up new talent sources, and <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/career-paths" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">upskilling</a>&nbsp;makes it easy to get your new hires up to speed on various technical tools and platforms. It helps you fill your pipeline with best-fit leads, which means new hires will join your team with authentic passion and deliver a high standard of work across projects. It also gives you access to diverse candidates you may have previously missed due to resume qualifications, or industry fit, with real-world experiences and unique skills that will make them an invaluable part of your team.
<h2>5. Diversify Your Sourcing Strategy</h2>
As you scale and uncover new recruiting needs, goals, and strategies, you'll likely need external support to make your vision a reality. Big-box staffing agencies or generic job listing sites typically match candidates to hiring managers based on resumes or a high-level list of skills, but these connections aren't built to last.
Instead, boost your staffing and recruiting efforts with a pipeline support partner committed to meeting your organizational goals and connecting you with ideal candidates from diverse backgrounds and non-traditional talent pools.
CareerCircle offers the support you need to improve your recruiting strategy, build an equitable talent pipeline, and add exceptional employees to your workforce. Our specialized IT upskilling produces the workforce leaders of tomorrow, while holistic candidate-to-career matching ensures applicants are an excellent fit for your business.
<a href="https://www.careercircle.com/contact" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">Reach out to our team today</a> to learn more about our talent marketplace and <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/impact" rel="follow noopener" target="_blank">our commitment to creating equity</a>&nbsp;in the workforce.

Learn five staffing and recruiting tips to help you build and refine your approach to attracting, evaluating, and retaining top talent.

Getting Ahead of the Talent Deficit

In this post, we'll share five staffing and recruiting tips to help you build and refine your approach to attracting, evaluating, and retaining top talent.

Getting Ahead of the Talent Deficit: 5 Ways To Improve Your Staffing and Recruiting Efforts

When we&rsquo;re together in the office, the ability to have genuine, tangible impacts on each other&rsquo;s days is so much easier. It&rsquo;s a lot simpler to look after the person sitting before you than to guess how they&rsquo;re feeling through a video call. As we move forward into more digital workspaces, we can&rsquo;t let this important aspect of cohesion and caring slip. We simply must get more creative with the ways we engage with our team.
The easiest and most important way to maintain adequate morale is to keep up the communication. In fact, you should probably double it. We all crave to be heard as employees, so when it feels like we&rsquo;re going unnoticed, our performance and happiness suffers. Establish consistent check-ins throughout the day and week to engage with your employees on a human level above all. Just because you can&rsquo;t see them physically doesn&rsquo;t mean they don&rsquo;t need the same type of connection. Remember that back in the days of the office, check-ins happened frequently throughout the day in a natural way, so try to replicate that as best as possible when taking things online.
Another important practice you can have is to not take the above too far. Trust your remote work employees like you would in the office. We can get down when it feels like we&rsquo;re being watched in this new space like never before, when the fact is that your employees may actually be more productive and relaxed than ever in this new setup. Know that you&rsquo;ll be well-aware if there&rsquo;s any dip in performance and that for the most part, the general employee will be doing great in their new way of performing this job.
Be sure to celebrate and honor your employees like you would back in the office. Without things like all-office meetings to set the stage for celebrations, replicate this as best as possible in a virtual space to ensure that those deserving are getting the recognition they crave. On top of this, don&rsquo;t lose focus on collaboration. Though it&rsquo;s easier to grab your team and huddle up at the office in some cases, there are still plenty of ways to keep the group work going online. Keep everyone in the loop so it never feels like you&rsquo;re out there alone in your own solo work bubble.
Take things even further by emphasizing the importance of one-on-one conversations and communication. It can be easy to feel like we&rsquo;ve got a good pulse on the team after a group video call, but that might not be enough for some employees. Take the time to speak with everyone directly throughout the week so that you can get a sense of how they are doing. Close this out by giving your employees more freedom for their lives. You have a great opportunity to give them moments throughout the week to work on themselves. To take some time to engage in something they love outside of work. Not only will they be happier for it, but they will likely return to work more energized and ready than before.
It doesn&rsquo;t seem like remote work is going anywhere for the time being, so it&rsquo;s important to make the experience as great as possible while we can. There are plenty of ways to make sure your team is feeling great and productive at the same time. With action and purpose, you can keep team morale high and reach even further without ever physically interacting with one another.

Boost team morale in digital workspaces with creative engagement, consistent communication, and trust.

Staying Positive: The Importance of Maintaining Team Morale from Afar

When we’re together in the office, the ability to have genuine, tangible impacts on each other’s days is so much easier. It’s a lot simpler to look after the person sitting before you than to guess how they’re feeling through a video call. As we move forward into more digital workspaces, we can’t let this important aspect of cohesion and caring slip. We simply must get more creative with the ways we engage with our team.

2020 was a&hellip; weird year, to put it mildly. Extremely mildly. As this year finally comes to an end, we need to look forward to the types of skills that will be in demand coming up, because they&rsquo;re more important and dynamic than ever after this past year has moved the goalposts in so many ways. It&rsquo;s never too early to start sharpening your skills for the future ahead and we&rsquo;ve got a few of the must-haves to be the most well-rounded candidate on the market in 2021.
<h3>Desire to Learn</h3>
Upskilling will never go out of style. In fact, it&rsquo;s becoming only more important as we go forward. Showcasing your insatiable desire to add more skills and tools to your bag is as attractive to potential employers as anything else you can do. The great news is, it&rsquo;s never been easier to find ways to become better and more talented than ever before. With online courses in a variety of different fields and disciplines, <a href="https://www.careercircle.com/career-paths">your ability to showcase</a> your thirst for knowledge is waiting for you to come get started.
<h3>Problem-Solving</h3>
It&rsquo;s no secret that 2020 was full of problems. More so than any other year in recent memory. If anything, it&rsquo;s highlighted that our ability to deal with them gracefully, intelligently, and compassionately makes all the difference. Showing off your problem-solving skills in 2021 should be at the top of your list because every team can use someone to depend on. Someone who can bend with the circumstances, but never break. A more innovative approach to solving the problems of the team and organization will absolutely go noticed.
<h3>Flexibility</h3>
We&rsquo;ve learned a lot this year, but one of the biggest lessons was in flexibility. Going forward, let&rsquo;s showcase this as a genuine positive for any organization that wants us. By focusing on your flexibility, you&rsquo;re signaling that you&rsquo;re adaptable in these uncommon times. That you can roll with the punches to get the job done under a variety of circumstances. Flexibility in the workplace is sure to excite any potential employer because it means that you&rsquo;re as dependable as you are diverse.
<h3>Virtual Mastery</h3>
Tagging alongside a sharpened dedication to flexibility, one of the top skills you can hone in on in 2021 is your ability to be a virtual asset. With work from home becoming something of a norm for the foreseeable future, demonstrate that you&rsquo;re ready for this world ahead. An employer needs to know that you have turned your own working space into a virtual office that in many cases exceeds their own, and that you&rsquo;ll have no issues getting the job done from the remote space should they bring you on board.&nbsp;
<h3>Dedication</h3>
2020 kicked many of us down. But you know what? We always picked ourselves back up. Show this off through proving how resilient and dedicated you are for the year to come. Turning the year that was into a positive can be displayed through how much you&rsquo;ve learned from it. A future employer will love to see a candidate that has become tougher in the face of hard times and become an even more dependable employee because of them. This year stunk, plain and simple, but kept moving. Proudly show this off to anyone looking for a top potential candidate.

It’s never too early to start sharpening your skills for the future ahead.

Off to a Skilled Start: 5 Important Skills You’ll Need in 2021

It’s never too early to start sharpening your skills for the future ahead and we’ve got a few of the must-haves to be the most well-rounded candidate on the market in 2021.

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Staff Writer

142 Articles

Getting Ahead of the Talent Deficit: 5 Ways To Improve Your Staffing and Recruiting Efforts

Staying Positive: The Importance of Maintaining Team Morale from Afar

Off to a Skilled Start: 5 Important Skills You’ll Need in 2021