April Update for TA Leaders

Hi there,

Congrats on finishing Q1 – here’s to a good Q2. 

I’ve just returned from working in Costa Rica with my family the past few months. It’s good to be back home but it’s been strange coming back to North America and seeing excess of everything everywhere. It has got my wife and I thinking about the “nice-to-haves” versus the “must-haves” in our home. We have a young daughter and we want to show her the importance of living a more minimalist lifestyle. Less clutter, less stress, and more space for things that matter. 

Personally, it also has me thinking about our business. What are the nice-to-haves and must-haves? What are the 1-3 things we want to accomplish and what are the critical resources we need to get there? I encourage everyone to think about that as we continue 2024 and see what you come up with. 

Alright, thanks for indulging in my little perspective change. Let’s jump into the April update for talent acquisition. 

🗞️ Headlines

• Bank of Canada officially keeps interest rate at 5%. Inflation continues to slow (great news), and the forecasted global economy growth is at 3%. I feel we’re finally starting to see an upswing. Cross our fingers and hope it continues.
  

• Over in the U.S, federal interest rates also stays at 5.25% to 5.5%. Despite a stronger than expected economy, inflation rises to 3.5%. We’ll keep an eye out on how this affects business growth and talent acquisition leaders downstream.
  

• Canada’s unemployment rate rises to 6.1% while US unemployment rates fell to 3.8%. Most of this is from: accommodation, food services, wholesale, and retail. Canada is struggling to create jobs for the influx of newcomers and the 91,000 of Canadians aged 15 and up in March. For those in hourly hiring–was your business affected?
  

• Skilled talent sourcing is a common challenge I’m hearing from talent acquisition folks. This means companies who have ongoing specific needs for extremely specific types of skilled talents. We’re talking roles like occupational therapists, aircraft technicians, vets, train conductors, digital transformation and such. 

The issue is our standard recruitment channels like Indeed or staffing agencies don’t solve the problem. Our in-house teams are usually tasked with a large portfolio of hires and are understandably stuck focusing on open recs. 

So, these extremely specific hard to fill roles end up being a major roadblock extending the hiring process to months at a time–wasting hundreds and thousands of dollars. Here are some of my tips.

✅ TA Tips for Skilled Talent Sourcing

Here’s the ideal dream scenario to always have a pipeline of skilled talent: 

Some caveats.. it’ll depend on 1) resources available 2) industry and the type of roles you’re looking for and 3) whether you prefer to keep it in-house or if you’re open to outsourcing

Dream scenario – 

• Successfully finding ways to access skilled talent at scale via information databases or 3rd-party databases 
  

• Develop your recruitment marketing capabilities (think demand generation for marketers) so that your recruiters are not stuck trying to chase active jobs and can switch to proactive sourcing

• Have a marketing automation process and CRM to constantly siff through people so that only folks meeting the specific needs are surfaced to the team 

• Develop a robust screening process with automated screening tools AND human interaction. Our team has found the quicker your recruiters can speak to a candidate, the more likely they are to fill these tough roles.

Now you might think I’m crazy as these sound daunting on paper. But with the right steps and plan of action.. It’s possible to get here. 

I’ll pause here in case this skilled talent sourcing challenge doesn’t apply to everyone.

For those that are facing this challenge–feel free to shoot me an email at [email protected], and I’m happy to chat, learn more about your business, and see what specific tips I can provide.  

Bonus tip: for iPhone users, Apple has a neat feature where you can automatically send unknown calls straight to voicemail! Enjoy!

We’ll end here for today with a family pic from Costa Rica!