What Happens When You Can’t Find Talent

Recruitment has changed significantly in recent years, and the classical approach to recruitment is no longer enough to find the candidates you seek.

There is a severe shortage of talent which means that, very often, when businesses need to hire new talent, have identified exactly which roles they require and have the necessary budget, they still cannot find the candidate they need.

Not being able to grow your team is a complex problem and will have different implications depending on your role in your company. Most of the consequences are linked to either time or money, but the issue can also severely impact the content and perception of your own job.

Let’s take a look at how not being able to hire the right people in time might affect your work, depending on what your role in your company is.

Implications for Hiring Managers

A hiring manager (or direct manager) is an employee who directly manages other employees and operations while reporting to a higher-ranking manager.  In the context of recruitment, a hiring manager looks for candidates to fill vacancies in their own team. If you are a manager hiring for your own team, here are some of the difficulties you might experience when you cannot find the right people.

 + IMPACT ON TIME + 

The implications of being understaffed will very commonly be linked to time management:

• Increasing backlog – When you are short on staff, you inevitably end up focusing on the most pressing needs in order to deal with what’s most important and urgent. However, after a period of time working with insufficient human resources, the team risks falling into a backlog of piling up work despite the best prioritisation.
• Overload for other members – As undone work is piling up, the rest of the team may need to take over some of the tasks of the unfilled positions. In such situation stress and frustration are inevitable. Your best and most valued members of staff may end up suffering due to having to compensate for the lack of people. 
• Time spent on sourcing candidates – Having to continuously look for candidates for the same positions you cannot fill puts a strain on your daily tasks and those of your team, adding yet more work to an already busy schedule.

 + IMPACT ON BUDGET + 

It is clear that a lack of staff can cost your team money. Even though you are not spending money on paying the salary for the position you cannot fill, you are paying in other, more considerable ways:

• Staffing loss – It’s difficult to keep people happy when your team is under so much pressure. Some of your employees might quit, and you’ll then need to spend more resources on replacing them, which creates a vicious circle. 
• Operational loss – If you hire someone who turns out to be incompetent or unsuitable, you are losing the added value not received by the company compared to the investment of the paid salary, and will need to bare the costs of terminating their contract later. Find out more about this
  in our article “The Real Cost of Not Finding the Right Talent”. 

Implications for HR Managers

HR Managers are often in charge of many duties in their company, which may include recruitment of people to fill other managers teams. This is typically coming on top of other responsibilities such as office management, fleet management, payroll, and many others. 

Additionally, some direct managers may take care of the recruitment for their teams themselves, unless they cannot find the right people easily. This could mean that the HR Manager is tasked with filling the more “tough” positions. 

As an HR Manager, the key consequences of not being able to find the right candidates relate to time or the content of your everyday work.

 + IMPACT ON TIME + 

Recruiting people is time-consuming, especially when there is a shortage of the sort of talent you’re looking for. You find yourself having to prioritise work coming from different departments and not let emergencies get in the way of your deadlines. This has consequences on your schedule and time management:

• Big time investment which may not pay off: Think about how many people you screen and interview and, out of these, how many were not suitable candidates for the role in question. Despite this, you still have to invest time into going through the entire recruitment process, not knowing whether it will ultimately pay off. 
• Excessive multi-tasking: You have to combine dealing with internal clients, external partners, and candidates. Additionally, trying to fill difficult positions may bring you to increasing the number of recruitment agencies you work with and having to manage multiple partnerships at once, all of which disrupts your routine and can prove very time-consuming.

 + IMPACT ON YOUR EVERYDAY WORK + 

As highlighted, you may find yourself having to broaden your search, which often means working with multiple agencies at once. This makes it more difficult to keep on top of all of your tasks, and indeed your overall schedule:

• Finding a trusted recruitment partner: You may be constantly getting calls from agencies, but how can you know which is the right one to work with? Not all agencies provide services of equal quality, and the services they do provide won’t all suit your requirements. This risk could mean that you have to go back to square one if your time investment doesn’t pay off. 
• Implementation and management of systems: Yet another ATS (applicant tracking system) to learn how to use and take care of, not to mention setting up accounts with various platforms… All of this can take up a huge part of your schedule before you can even think about embarking on new collaborations. 

All in all, not being able to find the people you need, and quickly, makes your work a lot more complex. You end up wasting time recruiting for the same position over and over. This then means that you cannot deliver to your clients, leaving them dissatisfied, while you have to juggle multiple projects and vacancies at the same time.

Conclusion

It’s therefore clear that failing to find the right people quickly and easily can have various consequences for those tasked with recruiting candidates in terms of time, money and the overall work schedule. However, the consequences are not restricted to hiring managers and HR managers; they also have a significant impact on the entire company which can affect the budget, operational performance and, perhaps most seriously, the company image and reputation. 

To avoid ending up in such a situation, seek assistance from a recruitment agency that understands your company’s requirements and that can therefore help to take some of the pressure off you. Recruitment is already enough of a challenge due to the general shortage of talent, so it’s important to look for solutions that can help to make your task easier.