It’s a jobseeker’s market right now, and businesses in all verticals are struggling to hire the talent they need. For HR teams and recruiters, the challenge is real and millions of positions are going unfilled.
The “great resignation” is playing a part in making life harder for recruiters. The US saw almost 4 million voluntary redundancies in April 2021, and another 3.9 million in June. According to surveys from the second half of 2021, 32% of employers are experiencing labor shortages, and Deloitte predicts 2.1 million skilled jobs remaining empty in the manufacturing industry alone by 2030, painting a clear picture of labor shortage.
There’s also a talent shortage. The pandemic accelerated digital transformation, driving up demand for digital talent like software engineers, data scientists, etc., but many new workers coming up the ladder to meet this need were stalled in the middle of their education and/or valuable early experience by the pandemic itself.
At the same time, DE&I issues are receiving increasing public attention and HR teams are having to address them with even greater care. Candidates and new hires need to meet diversity requirements as well as possessing all the necessary skills and experience, making the hiring process more complex.
As a result, recruiters are stuck between several rocks and a hard place. They need to find exactly the right talent to fill more jobs, just at a time when the number of jobseekers is dwindling and the process is getting more complicated.
It’s time to draw on a new resource: the people who almost get the job.
Silver medalists aren’t just runners up
We’re talking about all the people who almost got the job, but missed out in the end. These are people whose CV stood out among the hundreds that arrived at the recruiter’s desk; who passed a small test task, their first and second interviews, and made it onto a shortlist of 4, but in the end, they weren’t the one person who got the job. Or they made it to the final 20 out of thousands of applicants for 7 positions, but they weren’t one of the lucky 7.
These silver medalists could be a lifesaver for stressed HR teams. You already know that they are qualified, personable, interview well, and have the skills and experience that are relevant to the position and industry.
In the end, only one of them could be hired, but all of them met your requirements. Keeping their details in your ATS means you don’t need to start from scratch to qualify new applicants in the future.
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Access a wider talent pool
Mining your own ATS for previous top candidates who missed out on the job helps you fill positions more quickly and save time, money, and effort. But you can go one better and tap into other enterprises’ candidate pools.
A company that realized the potential of sharing talent is Joonko, offering an anonymized multi-company silver medalist pool that connects directly to your ATS. Joonko allows organizations to share their previous top applicants, offering a shortcut to pre-vetted, pre-approved talent with the skills and experience you need.
This way, enterprises fill positions faster, hiring managers find appropriate talent more easily, and jobseekers arrive at their next position sooner, making it a win-win-win situation. Additionally, Joonko’s candidate pool is entirely made up of candidates from underrepresented sectors, helping you address DE&I at the same time.
In a recent interview Ilit Raz, Joonko’s co-founder and CEO said, “Traditionally there hasn’t been a connection between silver medalists and diversity recruiting… Our view is that pairing these two concepts together makes a powerful combination. Joonko partners choose us because of the opportunity to better retain silver medalists and share underrepresented talent together.”
Silver medalists save you time
Sifting through hundreds of applications is a time-consuming and tedious practice. Some companies apply artificial intelligence (AI) to relieve employees of the burden, but AI tools can pick up highly unethical patterns even in carefully monitored situations.
Storing silver medalists in your ATS means you don’t need to repeat the same work when you’ve already filtered out candidates and reached a shortlist. It can also help you next week when you need to fill a maternity leave position, hire someone for some short-term temporary work, or work with a freelancer: just check your saved candidates to see if there’s someone suitable for the job waiting in the wings.
Skipping the pre-vetting line saves you money
Saving time on the hiring process also saves you money. Shortcutting to pre-vetted candidates can save you the cost of advertising your new position, and allows your HR team to spend their work hours on other tasks instead of filtering tons of CVs.
Additionally, you won’t need to wait for people to see your ads, apply, and move through the vetting process, so empty positions will be filled more quickly, helping the company stay more productive and revenues rise.
“Culture fit” can be tricky
Culture is increasingly important for both jobseekers and employers. As well as looking for qualified, personable candidates who meet DE&I needs, HR teams are also searching for people who fit the corporate culture, and jobseekers take culture seriously when deciding to accept or reject a job offer.
As a result, highly qualified applicants might have missed out on a position in a company similar to yours just because they don’t fit the culture, but culture is subjective. Maybe they are a great fit for your culture!
“Qualified” can be in the eye of the beholder
Different hiring managers have different definitions of what counts as “qualified.” Maybe the hiring manager in company X felt that this candidate was over-qualified, but your hiring manager takes a different view and welcomes this candidate.
Equally, your “under-qualified” candidate could be just right for a similar but slightly more junior role in company Z. Checking up on other companies’ silver medalists could produce the perfect fit for your empty role.
Silver medalists are worth keeping hold of
The people who “almost got the job” are a valuable resource which can save you time, money, and hassle in filling the next open position. By mining your ATS for silver medalists, and even better, tapping into the silver medalist files of other similar companies, you can boost productivity and ensure you have the skills you need to grow your bottom line.
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