Elaine Harding here from Storm Recruitment and today I want to give advice to companies out there currently struggling to hire. We are living in unprecedented times in Ireland now and there are certainly more jobs than candidates in the market right now. For the most part, companies have been on a hiring freeze for two years and lately, things have become chaotic. So, I wanted to pull from my 23 years of experience in the recruitment sector to offer 3 main tips to combat the excessive demand we are currently witnessing.

Start Your Recruitment Early:

I know this may sound obvious, but the importance cannot be understated in the current climate. If somebody is leaving, you need to give yourself extra time to replace that person – because it is going to take extra time and you will not fill the job immediately. It is going to be a trial-and-error situation, because now, most candidates have two to three interviews a week and they are getting offered two out of those three jobs. So, give yourself that extra time to try and find the right candidate. This is especially pertinent when you are hiring a replacement for a key team member.

Be Proactive When Applications Land:

When you receive an application from a promising candidate, do not wait for enough CVs to come in before scheduling a screening call or interview. If you see a good CV, jump on it, get the candidate to interview very, very quickly. As I mentioned, if you are waiting for all the candidates or CVs to come in by the time they do, the first candidate is gone. You need to, at the time, jump on those CVs as soon as you can and bring them forward to interview. This goes against the typical gauntlet structure of interviewing candidates one after the other, and although this is less efficient, it is essential accounting for the current, excessive level of demand.

Find New Sources of Competitive Advantage:

My third tip and this is mainly for SMEs, for whom competing with MNCs is quite difficult – salaries are going sky high, and if you are a small company trying to compete against a larger company, it is exceedingly difficult. So, just to give an example of what we do here in Storm, to compete as a small ten-person agency – We offer nice benefits like a day off on your birthday, extra time off at Christmas and flexible working times. We also finish at four on a Friday, for example. These are extra things that small companies can do if they cannot afford to match the salaries of larger companies. Compete with the little things that people value. Consider how you can improve work-life balance, or a day off for the top performers that month or a treat for somebody who has been the most improved.

There are many ways of attracting staff other than through base salary, and that certainly is true now, especially because most want to maintain that work life balance, especially after working from home for the last while. Trying out a hybrid working system, which a lot of companies are doing, even if it is just one day a week working from home, is another great option. That may not be possible for a lot of companies, but these are things which you will have to really explore if you want to start attracting candidates, especially if your company cannot compete on salary alone.

At Storm Recruitment, we recruit primarily for Dublin, Wicklow, and Wexford. However, we do also cover the whole of Ireland – so, if you would like any advice or if you are looking to hire, please do not hesitate to call us here. We cover all areas of the recruitment sector, including; Accountancy and Finance, Sales and Marketing, Warehouse and Industrial, Engineering and HR and Office Administration.

If you would like to speak to me directly, give me a call on 012557377, Extension 4. Or visit https://stormrecruitment.ie to learn more about our Agency and Services.