Is It Us or Is It Them?
By Amy Champigny, Deltek
You are sitting in a resource planning meeting and suddenly realize that you will need a new Architectural Technologist to round out a team for a project starting in two weeks! Time to start the acquisition engine. A job description is found or cobbled together and posted along the usual channels. Plenty of resumes are sent in, but the qualified pool is the slimmest pile imaginable. (Meanwhile, the competition is going through the same process and has the exact same slim pile of applicants.) After weeks of interviews, reference checks, and approvals, the offer goes out and is subsequently turned down. What happened? You thought you’d found THE perfect candidate. Now, you are starting the whole hiring process over. The consequences are real. The project start date may have to be delayed and the client is NOT happy! You are losing sleep and dread the words “we need to hire”. A key employee quitting feels like a catastrophe and there is no time for anything beyond keeping projects staffed appropriately.
Employee turnover combined with growth creates a perfect acquisition storm and traps HR in recruiter mode. Entry level positions can be hard enough to fill and when the firm needs a more senior or highly specialized role filled, I have seen otherwise cheerful HR professionals burst into tears of frustration. At the time, I had to wonder, is it us (the firm)? Or is it them (the candidates)? The trouble is, without realizing it many firms are part of their own acquisition problem. No one can control the number of applicants in their local geography, but it is possible to stop contributing to those acquisition challenges.
Two Ways A&E Firms Contribute to Their Own Acquisition Problems
(And What to Do About It)
#1 You Don’t Have an Employer Branding Strategy
Don’t you want to be the firm that makes candidates shriek with delight when they receive an offer? If the answer is yes, let me ask you a follow up question. How often do you spend time strategizing about your employer brand? For most firms, the answer is rarely, if ever. What if I told you that 69% of candidates would turn down an offer from a company with a poor reputation, even if they were unemployed? A lack of employer brand presence online can hurt your recruiting efforts almost as much as a bad reputation. If you weren’t sure whether to invest time and effort in employer branding before, I hope that convinces you. It is time to accept that perception matters in talent acquisition.
- Understand your target candidates. What motivates them to perform? What are they looking for from their employer? Answer those question and then use the information to help craft your strategy
- Come up with your employer value proposition and then optimize its use. All communication to employees or candidates should be consistent with that messaging
- Develop a communication plan and get out there on social media. Show off the culture of the company by sharing articles and posts that reflect your employer value proposition
#2 Expectations Are Out of Alignment
Some firms miss out on fantastic candidates because they have a narrow or inflexible perception of the perfect candidate. There are some fantastic potential employees out there that do not look like your typical applicant. If you are willing to think outside the proverbial box even a little bit, you may be surprised what you find. While maybe not the perfect candidate the right candidate can have a ton of potential. This candidate can be groomed, engaged and developed within the firm.
Now, what if the problem is with the role itself? When you post job descriptions, are they engaging? Descriptive? Realistic? You may have a ton of ‘nice to have’ qualities for a particular role, but how many of them are really needed for the candidate to be successful on the job? Ask yourself, are there any humans that could actually perform the work of engineer, project manager, and marketing guru? Sometimes, certain skillsets just don’t come in the same neat little package, but we try to jam them together anyway.
- Rather than struggle to find a project manager/marketing guru, it may be better to rejig job descriptions and expectations so that unlikely skillsets aren’t getting in your way
- Everyone wants the best possible candidate, does not want to wait for said candidate, and wants to pay the minimum amount possible. Research your compensation packages to ensure that money is not getting in the way of candidates accepting offers
- Go back through that large pile of rejected resumes and look for the diamond in the rough
At the end of the day, acquisition success means you can staff your projects appropriately and easily. In order to achieve that, you may need to take a long hard look at the processes and the assumptions made during the recruiting process. If processes or assumptions are not aligned with the best interests of the firm, it’s time to change them. The new workforce has different ideas about the employer/employee relationship, so start taking candidate perception into account to attract the talent at the very top of the applicant pool.
Deltek is the leading global provider of enterprise software and solutions for government contractors, professional services firms and other project-based businesses. For decades, we have delivered actionable insight that empowers our customers to unlock their business potential. 22,000 organizations and millions of users in over 80 countries around the world rely on Deltek to research and identify opportunities, win new business, recruit and develop talent, optimize resources, streamline operations and deliver more profitable projects. Deltek – Know more. Do more.®
