Ask the Hiring Boss is our ongoing advice series dedicated to all questions HR, including this edition on skilled employees. Each month, our team of hiring and staffing experts team up to answer the questions we all have but don’t know who to ask. Welcome!
Don’t forget to submit your questions — you can do that on our main Ask the Hiring Boss page.
Dear Hiring Boss,
We’ve recently created a few new roles, and I started the hiring process excited to see the sorts of candidates we’d get. It’s now been a few weeks, and the candidates we’ve interviewed lack the skills we’re seeking. We work in a highly competitive market, and budgets are such that we can’t offer the glamorous salaries that might attract highly skilled employees. Still, I think these roles are amazing opportunities for anyone in the industry. What can I do?
– A Rejected (and Dejected) Hiring Manager
Dear Rejected (But Not For Long!),
Cheer up! You’ve got a real opportunity here, especially with those less experienced candidates. It’s time to consider apprenticeship opportunities! Yep, you can train those applicants to become the skilled employees you desire.
What I mean by that: Consider using a “get your foot in the door” model with job seekers. Offer on-site training programs to anyone new to your industry and get them up-skilled using your own techniques in the business. In my experience, employees who are learning and who have mobility from an apprenticeship into a full-time paid role tend to stay longer and are more engaged with their employers.
Bonus: You get the candidates you want to be working with because you train them to your standards.
Best of luck!
We’ll be back soon with our next installment. Don’t forget to submit your own question, or read our other previous answers in our Ask the Hiring Boss series!
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