Tips to make effective hires.

Recruiting at the moment is a challenging task for agencies and companies. With so many companies looking to recover, expand and scale after Covid the biggest hurdle they are coming up against is resourcing and building out their teams.

There is a serious shortage in the market of talent, and we are putting this down to excellent working conditions, competitive salaries, and the wide range of Tech companies here in Ireland. Candidates simply are not looking to move at the moment.

I have spoken to colleagues, peers, competitors, and clients and they are all saying the same thing – they haven’t seen anything like it in 10+ years.

We like to pride ourselves on supporting companies through times like this and are always trying different things and learning from the market.

I have compiled a list of some of the most important things you can do to help optimise your search.

Brand – stand out on the market

Candidates are attracted to exciting, innovative, popular, fun companies and one way to attract people to your company is to have a very strong brand/marketing campaign to showcase the best qualities of your company. The likes of culture, working conditions (early finish on a Friday for example), your product, your people, etc.

Get people talking about you, LinkedIn is a very powerful tool for this. This way you may find candidates coming to you – or at least when you approach them, they are familiar with you.

Processes – move fast or lose out

With so many jobs and so few candidates, they hold the power, my biggest learning is to move quickly and efficiently through a process can be make or break and can really turn a candidate off a company or result in them accepting another offer in the meantime. We always advise when candidates are involved in processes to ensure we move them through the process, but this should be a given. I would suggest when you start planning to make a hire – make sure the relevant people who will be required to interview will be ready and available to interview within your timeline.

Be competitive

A lot of candidates aren’t motivated by money at the moment, funnily enough – although it is always an important factor for them judging how serious and interested you are in them. You will need to be competitive in your offering – pension is very important for candidates at the moment along with hybrid, flexible working options

Think outside Dublin

If you can allow your employees to work remotely or visit the office once a week it is worth widening the pool and considering candidates outside of Dublin. I am working with some super candidates right across the country who would be an incredible asset to a company.

They are always willing to visit the office occasionally so definitely worth considering.

Pre-empt

Giving yourself lots of time to recruit will be essential too – where possible of course. It can take up to 8 weeks to make a hire at the moment, so allow plenty of time and don’t rush into a hire.

If you meet with 2 candidates that you like in a process – is there a role you could open for them to allow strong talent within the company to ensure a strong team – we are seeing a lot of clients doing this also.

Partnerships

If you are choosing to go to an agency to support with hires, we would always suggest partnering with 1 agency – we find this is a much more effective approach – having a dedicated partnership with an agency means they can promote the company using their marketing teams and be a real brand ambassador. They will also commit their time to the process and ensure the right hire is made! Arranging weekly process updates/breakdowns of searches and feeding back insight from candidates will help to fine-tune and adjust the search where necessary.

Here are some examples of testimonials from our clients who have seen the benefit of partnering with us for their hires:

"Mason Alexander’s personal touch and deep understanding of our needs and the industry has helped us source the top talent we need. We have a reputation for having a very high bar in terms of technical ability in the staff we hire. As we reject many candidates, other recruiters are lazy and run away. MA operates as a true partner and has always taken time to carefully understand our needs and present us with candidates that are a good match for our needs.”
– David Barry, Head of Engineering, Munich Re

“In May 2019, Optum selected MA as a key resource partner to help us rapidly scale our strategic Technology R&D Hub. The roles were across Software Engineering, Product, Data & Analytics and QA. MA helped us to quickly ramp new technology teams, both permanent and contractors, with 40+ high calibre technologists who critically enjoyed a first class personal candidate experience throughout onboarding.A key element for us was their ability to create a continuous pipeline of talent due to the MA ecosystem and their impressive talent intelligence capability as well as their ability to proactively network, headhunt and deliver targeted search projects.The dedication, communication and execution from all the MA team was central to our success in delivering the key value impact to the business.I would strongly recommend Mason Alexander for all their support in this new capability build out.”
– Ken Carney, Associate Director, Talent Acquisition EMEA Optum/UnitedHealth Group

I hope this has been helpful and should you like to discuss further and like me to emphasise on anything – please get in touch!

Jessica Grant – 👩‍💻🧑🏻‍💻 j.grant@masonalexander.ie