Technical and engineer recruiters looking for the perfect candidate, you know the one: not too much experience, not too little; not too much money, but not too cheap; not too many jobs, not too much attitude, but just enough so he/she projects an air of confidence.
Well for both corporate and agency IT Recruiters, Engineering Recruiters and Technical Recruiters, finding the goldilocks candidate is fast becoming an excursion into the theatre of the absurd.
The ‘just right’ candidate with 3-10 years’ experience, local residency, currently earning 65,000-105,000k/yr., in possession of an emerging list of accomplishments along with some maturity and quiet confidence is an endeavor with a rapidly diminishing likelihood of success.
Rather than continue to delay recognition of the highly unlikely, perhaps it’s time to become more assertive educating our customers/hiring managers on the realities of the current candidate market.
As we know, it is in a word: superheated.
If they really want to fill their openings in a timely fashion, they should be thinking not just about the ideal candidate, but also creatively about the profile of a candidate who could assimilate relatively quickly into the role.
What does that mean?
We recommend you schedule a meeting as soon as possible with your customer to discuss your search status. Review candidates that you are currently developing within your pipeline, approaches you are taking and making, databases you are leveraging, ads you are running. In short, bring him/her up to date on the fact that your extensive efforts on their behalf have
not yielded a slate of suspects remotely deep enough to yield a successful candidate. Inquire about your customer’s sense of urgency. If they really want the role filled quickly, then it is time for a change in tactics. This is your opportunity to educate them on alternative approaches.
Perhaps they will consider relocating a candidate, or sponsoring an H1-b candidate, or selecting a candidate with more or less years of experience than they’d prefer or someone whose degrees don’t match or perhaps an altogether non-degreed person or even simply just hiring a very bright person they will invest in training.
We won’t know if one or more of these approaches is an alternative your customer/hiring manager is willing to embrace until you fully educate them about the extent of your efforts to date and the realities of the candidate market. Facts and empirical data about job market realities can go a long way to ending you and your customer’s frustration; indeed, they may aid in the identification and selection of a candidate who will be grateful for the opportunity you’ve provided and will likely be a terrific longer term hire.
Good hunting!
