Looking for the workforce of the future? It might be time to widen your hiring net
While businesses continue to look in all the tried and tested places for talented staff, they are potentially missing extremely promising candidates simply because their field of vision is not wide enough.
Two leading experts within the recruitment industry, Talentpath directors Dionne Sharp and Jody Fazldeen, have suggested employers and HR managers need to adjust their hiring practices to attract forward-thinking quality candidates.
“Competition for top quality candidates is fierce in this market so it is in the interests of employers to change their expectations to some degree,” Dionne said.
“We are big believers that decision-makers who hire outside of their space, outside of their sector and outside the usual talent pool, achieve diverse-thinking and a new set of skills for their team.
“However, we have found over the 10 year history of Talentpath many still struggle to consider someone from outside their own sector and continue exploring the same talent pool which has been good to them for years.
“We think it is long overdue to challenge this thinking and encourage decision-makers to broaden their horizons when seeking the right candidates.”
Jody said her role has changed over the years to now be more of a business advisor to support employers to adopt this different attraction tactic.
“As long as candidates have the right toolkit, worth ethic and attitude, the subject is secondary,” Jody said.
“In fact, we often find candidates from other backgrounds bring with them new ways of thinking and new energy, which may be just what is needed rather than someone who knows how to work within established and long-standing traditions.
“If you are not looking at candidates with experience outside of your sector, you may well be doing yourself and your organisation a disservice.”
Dionne said it was not always immediately apparent which skill-sets could be transferred to other sectors, with employers often focusing more on experience within a particular industry rather than the skills of the individual.
She said the most easily transferable skill-sets would include communication, organisational management, leadership roles, research and personal interaction, adding this was by no means a complete list.
“The days of people only working in one sector are long gone,” Dionne said. “We believe that given the future world of work, it will become much more commonplace for candidates to transition across sectors giving employers a much wider talent pool which they will recruit within.
“We have no doubt that decision-makers who are prepared to operate outside of convention and consider candidates from sectors other than their own will thrive in future competition to attract quality candidates.
“We are already finding it with our clients who have trusted us to widen their sourcing scope.”
While Dionne and Jody say it’s not just employers who need to widen their scope, this new method also opens up more opportunities for candidates.
“Part of the challenge for the recruitment sector will be encouraging our candidates to challenge their own thinking around cross-sector employment,” Jody said.
“Candidates can sometimes carry the false belief that their experience limits them to one sector also. As recruiters, it’s our job to coach our valued candidates to continue to expand their skill-sets.
“If we all take a step back and look at the bigger picture, we can see that broadening our views of candidate appropriateness for a position offers employers a much broader talent pool to choose from which can only be a win-win for the business.”
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Jody and Dionne started Talentpath in 2007 and have offices in Brisbane,
Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
