Congratulations on making it through another year and holiday season! It’s that time of year again to start planning out and making your 2024 hires. Good news is that the job market has shifted a bit more in favor of hiring firms in terms of candidate supply and movement versus the last few years. Yay, finally!

We can look to the government data released this month to see that based on  The December jobs report the number of jobs added was better than expected which would seem contradictory, but that could have spiked some due to holiday/seasonal hiring. The more interesting and more applicable Job Openings and Labor Turnover report showed that November job listings fell to a 32 month low down from a high in March 2022. Simply put, higher interest rates are causing fewer firms to hire. Fewer hiring firms translates to potentially more candidates for your opening so you may want to consider trying to take advantage and capture some human capital alpha that has been harder to come by for your firm now like many firms did in 2020. 

Hiring people is still difficult though, and sometimes can be very frustrating for organizations. Here are some tips for you to try an avoid some of the frustrations when going through the hiring process. 

Headache #1 - ‘Candidates applying want virtual and my role is not virtual’

Potential headache hack - If the candidate wants a virtual job and it’s not what you’re offering, that’s fine, but save yourself the time and headache by making that crystal clear upfront. State explicitly in the job posting where you desire this person to be. You might consider even putting at the top something like this: ‘this is not a virtual role, we are seeking candidates only within a 1 hour commute from our office in Anytown, USA.’ 

Sometimes candidates see hybrid and think it is virtual. Sometimes candidates are so desperate for remote work, that they want to try and get you on the phone to see if you will reconsider and hire them virtually too. It is worth noting that a trend we are seeing develop is some fully virtual firms now trying to find local or at least regional people so they can say “we still will not have a physical office, but want them to be here for happy hours, team camaraderie, culture building events, etc.”

Headache #2 - ‘People apply and then ghost us’

Potential headache hack - Make it a little harder to apply for the job. The major job boards “1 click apply” is notorious for contributing to this. Job seekers can apply to hundreds of jobs with very little to no effort.  On the flip side, you dont want to make it too cumbersome that no one applies. Consider setting it up so the candidates have to follow a set of directions or exercises or answer a short questionnaire for the applications to come through to you. Some candidates will binge apply knowing it is a numbers game for them - the more apps they put in the higher likelihood they will get an interview and this can be a huge time waster for you. 

We hope these were a helpful guide and/or refresh on ensuring your hiring is the most efficient and as effective as possible.  Stay tuned next month for more tips in part 2. 

Feel free to contact us at blog@newplannerrecruiting.com if you have any questions and/or would like to hear more about how we have alleviated a lot of the headaches over the last 15 years that plague financial planning firms when hiring.