Business is going well, and you and your team have more work than you can handle - or maybe a key member of your team received an offer they can’t refuse, and they just put in their notice that they are moving on. Either way, you’re looking to hire a full-time employee in the hottest candidate market in the past 60 years. A little background on today’s current market:

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment across the board in the U.S. is 3.5% (https://data.bls.gov/). To put this in context, unemployment was around 10% during the great recession and “full-employment” is 4.6%.

Full-employment is the percentage of people employed where wages start to inflate because demand for workers outpaces supply. Unemployment includes all industries and job types across full-time, part-time, and seasonal workers who are actively looking for work but are not working. Specific areas that require high amounts of skill, like the roles that RX2 Solutions specializes in filling, have significantly lower local/regional unemployment rates, estimated in the 0-2% range.

Many RX2 Solutions customers reach out to us as a first step when they are looking to hire. They appreciate our consultative nature, Respectfully Professional values, and our Quality over Quantity recruiting approach. RX2 Solutions is a trusted partner with all our clients providing them a wide variety of staffing solutions – but why work with a Quality first organization? Maybe this sounds like your company, maybe it doesn’t:

Some organizations believe - “why pay a headhunter to help fill the role if I can fill it on my own?” So, you create a job description, go to the job boards to post your job and wait for the resumes to flow in. Depending on the role you are hiring for, you may find your candidate and you may not. However with unemployment being so low – I’ve heard from numerous organizations who post their open jobs that they are often inundated with candidates who aren’t a fit and they spend hours sifting through unqualified candidates to try to find a diamond in the rough often leading to a big waste of time.

So why not start with a trusted solution to hire in in this environment? RX2 Solutions has several proprietary methods to help identify your ideal candidate and here are some best practices to have the most success possible in your search.

1. Make time for a call or meeting with the recruiter and the direct hiring manager. If everything goes through HR, HR should attend the meeting as well. Investing 15-30 minutes of a busy hiring manager’s time to discuss the ideal candidate will save time over the course of the search
2. Streamline your interview process. Provide timely and meaningful feedback. When interviewing, fit everyone that the candidate needs to meet into one or two on-site visits. An extended interview process is one of the largest turnoffs for a candidate - and significantly increases the chance of having competing offers.
3. Communicate with the candidate through their recruiter (this includes discussing salary). Communication is key in life, when you are provided a candidate from RX2 Solutions, the salary expectations are discussed several times before you receive the resume and the expectation from the candidate is that a competitive offer will meet or exceed their salary number. Allow us to help you; we know your interview process, how your organization likes to make offers, and what else a candidate has going us because of this we’ll be able to streamline and simplify the interview-to-hire process at your organizations.
4. Stop worrying about internal equity - make an offer based on the market. The U.S. economy has been above “full employment” for 30+ months and counting, with some sectors being at full employment for significantly longer than that. This high demand and low supply market have caused wages across the board to increase higher than inflation. If most of your team was hired more than 30 months ago, chances are your “internal equity” is below or well below the market. If someone down the street is willing to pay your ideal candidate more, offer better benefits, more vacation time, higher bonus, etc. you need to meet or beat your competition to remain competitive and attract top level talent. Artificially pegging your offered compensation to internal equity will often cause you to lose out on the A-level player that will help take your company to the next level. Partnering with a Quality-First Recruiter can and should be one of the most reward experience your company should have. You will fill your key positions in a tight employment market as well as saving your organization time and money from not having this person in place.

Thanks for reading and if you or your organization needs assistance please do not hesitate to reach out to us at info@rx2solutions.com or 610.340.3490.