What exactly is a “candidate short market?”
Over the last 10 years, Australia has experienced what we would term a candidate short market, which has been particularly noticeable in the last two years.
A candidate short market is when the quality and quantity of high performers are in extremely short supply. This means for forward-thinking businesses, the need to retain their high-performing talent.
During these markets, high-performing candidates have an array of choices for good positions, clients have a very competitive market with fewer options, and recruitment companies need to balance the two, educating both as to the current trends.
As a prospective employer, make sure you market what really makes your business worth working for, what makes you unique, and what can you offer to these high-performing candidates in terms of career growth and development opportunities. In other words, really highlight the benefits of your company. Ask yourselves how are your current high-performing staff members engaged at work and can we extend this to new staff.
In this market, it is difficult to find a candidate who meets 75% of the selection criteria, let alone 100%, so you need to be flexible with who you can work and find training opportunities – training provides an extra responsibility for current staff members. For those high-performing candidates, who do meet a large portion of the criteria, you may need to provide flexible hours/days if need be or work-from-home opportunities – you know they can do it.
ing from this model, keeping staff and utilizing the excellent procedures they already have in place, to make training and transition much easier.
