How to Improve Candidate Attraction

If you’re one of the many manufacturers trying to fill management positions I feel your pain.

I realise how challenging it is.  Businesses are having to re-think how they engage candidates.

Below are a few insights that will help your candidate attraction.

Unrealistic Expectations
This is where we put too many conditions on the role which stop potential candidates from applying.  Examples of this can be qualifications, product category experience, retailer experience, management responsibility, X years experience etc.

The Fix
When working on a role we agree the top functional and behavioural competencies with the line manager.  Between the Job Description, Person Spec and Recruitment Brief, you can easily end up with too many parameters.
Keep them broad to get a bigger pool.  You may find with the right development or a few tweaks to the role, you can get a star.
We carry out a weekly campaign meetings with the client where we discuss any potential blockers to candidate attraction.  Based on this, we can change certain parameters and open up the search.

Candidate Availability
In the current climate candidates are reluctant to apply for jobs.  We have been going through a huge period of uncertainty e.g. covid job losses, Brexit impact etc.  Employees want stability and certainty.  There is also the impact of location and skill shortage.

The Fix 
We engage with talent that isn’t actively searching for jobs.  It’s commonly known as “head hunting, passive and executive search”.  We use this approach for all our management roles, not just the exec ones!

I’ll send on another few insights shortly.

In the meantime, if you are looking to recruit give us a call on 01775 729590.  We have limited capacity at the moment so get in quick !

Have a great weekend,

Den