5 common recruitment problems (and recruitment solutions!)

Luckily for anyone taking on this trying task, we know a thing or two about recruiting at JOIN. We’ve spoken to several clients who’ve had problems throughout the hiring process and identified which issues we see cropping up regularly.

And, as we aim to make hiring easier for everyone, we’ve got hiring solutions to these recruitment and hiring problems, too! So, all you need to do is look through the list below, find your recruitment problem, and learn how to solve it!

• Niche hires are hard to find
• Hiring outside of home country
• No HR department
• Not sure where to start
• No collaboration

1. Niche hires are hard to find

Hiring any particular role has become increasingly complex, with a shortage of skills across Europe and hiring trends showing a rise across job openings in many industries.

But, niche hires are even harder to find. The smaller the talent pool, the less talent to choose from, and if you don’t know where to look for these niche hires, you’ll struggle to fill open positions.

This was a situation our clients at Catawiki had found themselves in. They were looking to hire specialists with a high amount of knowledge in incredible niche areas such as wine, art, and jewellery. As these are such specific areas, finding someone with intricate knowledge was a struggle.

Because while posting to generic job boards is excellent in terms of the volume of potential applicants who will see your job advertisement, the talent is much less concentrated. Applicants from all areas of business are likely to see your advertisement.

Pair this with the fact that the level of competition on these boards is so high, and any niche talent who may see your job advertisement will likely see hundreds of similar postings too. So, getting unique talent to apply for you instead of the competition can be extremely tricky.

The recruitment solution

Of course, you shouldn’t give up hiring hope! We have the perfect recruitment solution for finding niche talent to take your team to the next level.

The first solution is to broaden your search. While generic, highly used job boards like LinkedIn and Indeed are an excellent starting point; they aren’t an exhaustive list of the options available to you.

Increase your chances of reaching niche talent by multiposting your job advertisement to multiple job boards! Not only does this mean your advertising is visible in more than one place, it means you can choose more tailored, niche job boards alongside the big names to reach specific pools of talent.

2. Hiring outside of home country

If you’re hiring in a new city, country, or even continent, you might not know where local applicants are searching for new roles. Of course, global generalist job boards exist, which you can use to attract a portion of the talent. But, by sticking to these, you’re missing out on hidden local gems.

Additionally, if you’re hiring in a new country for the first time, you’re likely not to have the most robust employer branding in said country. Therefore, if job seekers don’t know your name, they may be a little wary of applying for your role, especially if competitors surround your job advertisement on generalist job boards.

The recruitment solution

Using local job boards is a great way to build trust and target more local candidates. For example, Berlin Start-Up jobs is a perfect board to post to if you’re a start-up in Berlin. These job boards are full of potential candidates looking for jobs in these specific areas, meaning you’re targeting the perfect talent for your role.

Of course, if you’re not familiar with the area, you’re recruiting for, manually researching to find these job boards is going to be time-consuming. This isn’t ideal, especially when you need to write your job advertisement and respond to applicants too.

The perfect recruitment solution to this is having a recruitment automation tool that can suggest these job boards for you… like JOIN! Our automated job board suggestions mean JOIN analyses your job advertisement, and presents job boards to you based on the role and location you’re hiring for.

Our clients at Chimpy were struggling to hire an international team because of this exact problem, and by using JOIN’s recruitment solution, they now utilise up to 11 job boards. The result? Hiring success!

Do you want to learn more about global recruitment? Then check out our separate article on Global recruitment: How to hire international talent

3. No HR department

Smaller companies and start-ups know this hiring struggle all too well. Managing your usual full-time role alongside the role of an HR professional, headhunter, or recruiter is a sure-fire path to burnout. And, if you’re not giving your full attention to either project, the quality of both is at risk of slipping.

Not only this, but as a non-HR professional, your knowledge of the world of recruitment may be limited. How do you write a good job advertisement, for example? Where do you post your advert? These are all things you need to know when recruiting.

On top of this, properly recruiting and interviewing a candidate takes time. So, without an HR department, you’re at risk of losing talent while you’re doing your day-to-day role.

The recruitment solution

Luckily, a good applicant tracking system (ATS) is the perfect recruitment and hiring hack.

An ATS can automate a good chunk of the recruitment process for you. For a start, you only have to write and post one job advert while still having your position open on multiple platforms, which shortens the search dramatically. As mentioned before, JOIN’s ATS can even recommend the job boards for you, perfect if you lack recruitment knowledge.

An ATS can then collect the applications in one place, show an applicant’s status in the recruitment process, allow you to communicate with candidates inside the tool, and much more.

This makes it the perfect recruitment solution for anyone short on time or recruiting for the first time.

But don’t just take our word for it. Our client DR. DOG used JOIN for precisely this reason, to recruit without an HR department, and received over 200 applications for just one position! So as you can see, this is a hiring solution that works!

4. Not sure where to start

The hiring process is a lengthy, challenging path with a lot of twists and turns along the way. So, it’s no surprise that clients don’t know where to start is one of the standard recruitment problems we hear.

The big problem is that plenty of existing hiring tools are made for those who already know the process, and are familiar with the world of recruitment. In short, smaller businesses, start-ups, and those recruiting for the first time are left behind.

The recruitment solution

The solution to this is a tool that makes things simple. Signing up and having your first job advertisement live takes around 5 minutes with JOIN, so there are no extra steps or unnecessary fluff to confuse things!

Our clients at Shyfter began using JOIN when they made growing their team a focus. Before using our simple, efficient hiring solution, their recruitment process took much more time. Once they’d switched to JOIN, they found they had shaved 4 hours a week off of focusing on recruitment!

So, using the right recruitment tool means focusing only on the essential recruitment actions. The tool will take care of the rest!

5. No collaboration

Collaboration is key in nearly all aspects of business, and recruitment is no exception.

Despite this, we found from talking to clients that this was a common problem area. There are plenty of pitfalls, from having one tool for multiple members of the hiring process to having too many stakeholders and not enough time.

The recruitment solution

Alongside working on a process, a great way to improve collaboration is to start working with a tool that supports it!

JOIN allows you to attach notes to candidate files for your teammates to read and gives you the option to customise your candidate pipeline to ensure it matches your team’s processes. Plus, as our happy client Avocargo discovered, your team can all use one login to access the ATS and work together on expanding!

Seamless collaboration on this level saves hours of back-and-forth with teammates and means everyone has a real-time overview of where your processes are up to.

Further ways to improve your recruitment

As you can see, a recruitment tool is the perfect hiring and recruiting solution. But, don’t stop there. Once you start overcoming these hiring challenges, be sure to analyse your process for other blockers and bottlenecks, and you’ll be able to see where else you’re losing time. After all, recruitment is constantly changing.

Check out our hiring process blog articles for more information on the hiring process.