Blog
Why Recruitment is Tougher for Middle Market Companies:
Share this Post
Many growing, middle market organizations struggle with finding sustainable recruitment strategies that work. Most of their efforts are not effective, are frustrating and expensive. It’s overwhelming because:
- More often than not, you were not prepared to have to bring in new talent. It’s usually due to someone leaving the organization.
- If it is a newly created role, your organization likely isn’t prepared for the process. Although you are prepared to bring in new talent, you aren’t setting yourself up to attract the top talent in the market.
- You do not pipeline talent, so every search starts from scratch, and it becomes a long, painful process to make a hire.
- Most middle market hiring teams do not know how to interview effectively and don’t have resources internally to train.
- There is not a closing method in the process to ensure there is an accepted offer after you determine your top candidate.
- Your internal team is stretched for time and can’t spend the necessary time to recruit top talent.
Prior to Covid, the top business challenge for the last decade has been attracting and retaining top talent. In 2019, The Conference Board polled over 800 CEOs about the biggest business challenges they expected to face and the top anxiety was their organizations ability to recruit top talent. In 2018 Forbes listed finding talent as a top concern of CEO’s. It’s a challenge that remains during and post pandemic. Chances are, if you are hiring a leadership role, you are going to face the same, if not amplified, challenges you have been in the last 5 years if you don’t examine and shift your recruitment strategy.
Here are some common barriers and some cliffs notes solutions to attract and secure talent that will impact your business growth:
You don’t typically have name recognition with limited employment branding
Solution: When you don’t have name recognition, you must have a good story to tell. Examine your business and come up with a great story to share with the market. Even if you are in turnaround mode or growth is flat, there is a story to tell that can resonate with the right candidate.
Your HR team should be partnering with your marketing team to not only come up with your story but should be consistently sharing your business story and milestones on social media. This will help build your employment brand.
You rely on job boards:
This is the biggest misstep middle market companies take. They think posting their job will get to their target candidate market. Top performers are not looking at job boards, so the right people rarely even see your opportunity. If you rely on this, you are simply choosing the best of whatever you get…not the best that’s in the market.
Solution: You need a passive recruitment strategy. This is how you get your business and opportunity in front of the right people.
You have a recruitment process but no recruitment strategy
Most middle market companies THINK they have a recruitment strategy when it’s really just a recruitment process. Many believe creating a job description, posting it, reviewing applicants and scheduling interviews is the recruitment strategy. That is recruitment process.
Solution: A recruitment strategy is much more complex and will yield a higher caliber candidate pool. Recruitment strategy is understanding the business, challenging the scope of the role, creating the story, creating target lists, creating compelling marketing documents to share with the market, having dedicated resources to capture the passive market, knowing who to network with, training your hiring teams on how to interview and having a formal closing process with candidates. Once you have a recruitment strategy, it can be a repeatable process (with minor adjustments based on the role).
You do not have the right internal resources to dedicate time to a thorough, proactive search
Many organizations in the lower middle market do not have a dedicated internal recruiter. They may have an HR presence, but not a recruitment expert. If they do, it’s common for those internal recruiters to have 10+ roles open at any given time. They do not have the proper time allotment for each open role, so they are forced to post and pray (post on a job board and pray someone that is qualified sees it).
Solution: Hire outside recruiters. They can help you with all of these barriers and capture the market’s attention. Using a third-party recruiter for niche or leadership role also gives the opportunity more credibility to the market. It shows you are committed to finding the right talent. Plus, third party recruiters are the experts and can help transform your business through identifying and securing high caliber talent that you likely cannot on your own.
The middle market often has the most compelling stories to attract A-players. You just need to have the right tools in place to help execute a strategy.
Share this Post