One of your central responsibilities as a recruiting professional is filling vacant positions as quickly as possible, especially if those positions are urgent or vital for your organization. But occasionally, you may be stuck with vacant positions for longer than you'd like.
What can you do from a strategic standpoint to manage excessive vacant positions?
Think Long Term as Much as Possible
For starters, you should optimize for the long term whenever possible. When there are vacant positions in need of being filled, it's tempting to fill them as quickly as possible, even if it means making compromises about the quality of your candidates.
However, if you select a candidate who isn't a great fit for your culture or who doesn't have the qualifications necessary to be successful in that role, all you'll end up doing is boosting your attrition rate, while simultaneously returning to the same problem.
It's much better to take a measured, thorough approach, even if it means allowing your vacancies to persist a little while longer. It's ultimately the best move for the business in the long term.
Obviously, there are situations where such long-term planning isn't possible or feasible, but these are typically the exception, and as we'll see, there are ways to compensate for this.
Consider Temporary Help
One of the best ameliorative measures available to you is to seek temporary help. This is especially important for high-profile positions that have a significant impact on your business performance.
For example, you can enlist the services of a fractional CMO. A fractional CMO is an experienced marketing professional with all the qualifications necessary to become a full-time, traditional CMO. However, they're available on a part time and contractual basis, so you can utilize them for as long as your CMO position remains open. Depending on the candidate, and your needs, you may even be able to hire a fractional CMO as part of a transition plan to make them a full-time CMO.
In any case, temporary help can smooth over the gaps created by your vacancies without forcing you to hire prematurely.
Be Proactive in Planning and Budgeting
Always be extremely proactive in your planning and budgeting. You need to be able to forecast the impact of your vacant positions, as well as the costs associated with recruiting, hiring, and onboarding.
Create a System of Prioritization
If you have multiple vacancies open, make sure you have a system of prioritization in place. This system should be customized for your unique business and situation, but many recruiters focus on a mix of urgency and importance.
The importance of a role relates to how much it impacts the business. Executive suite positions and leadership positions, for example, can have a disproportionate impact on business performance. The urgency of a rule relates to how imminently it is needed. Not all leadership positions are existentially important in the short term, and there are some relatively unimportant roles that have more imminent pressure on them.
Streamline the Recruiting and Hiring Process
You can also expedite filling vacancies with qualified candidates by streamlining the recruiting and hiring process:
- Recruit using multiple channels. There are countless channels you can use for recruiting. You can find candidates through employee referrals, networking events, social media, and much, much more. If you focus on one channel disproportionately, you'll be missing out on candidates and advantages associated with those other channels. Accordingly, you should integrate as many channels as possible into your search.
- Be highly specific in your search. When looking for qualified candidates, be as specific in your search as possible. There's no reason to lower your minimum standard simply to fill a vacancy in the short term. Narrow down your list to only people who are reasonable candidates if you want to avoid wasting time.
- Focus on your most urgent needs. Generally, it's best to focus on your most urgent needs as your highest priorities. Sometimes, this means forgoing a search for a materially important candidate in favor of one who is more imminently necessary to help the business thrive. This is where your prioritization system becomes especially important.
- Appeal to your most promising candidates. Make your business as attractive as possible to candidates who are excellent fits for your open positions. This means better optimizing your online presence, making a great first impression, and showing the candidate the best aspects of your organization.
- Be thorough in your onboarding. The hiring and onboarding processes are vital for integrating candidates successfully. Make sure you have a consistent system in place here.
Reduce the Impact of Vacancies
There are also strategies you can implement to reduce the impact of vacancies:
- Cross train. Cross training is valuable for many reasons, and it can alleviate the burden of vacancies by allowing other people to temporarily fill in. Ideally, you'll implement and encourage cross training long before these vacancies even emerge.
- Reallocate resources. In some contexts, it makes sense to reallocate resources. Transferring people from one department to another or increasing allowable resource spending can help a department that's struggling because of an extended vacancy.
- Automate. Today's automation technology is more powerful and more versatile than ever before. In some situations, you may be able to automate certain aspects of work associated with the vacant position, or even automate your recruiting process.
- Improve retention. If you focus on retention, the vacancy problem should at least stop growing. There are many ways to boost retention, including offering new incentives, new training opportunities, and extra perks.
- Don’t neglect morale. Finally, don't neglect the morale of your current employees who are likely feeling the pain of these vacancies. If you're not careful, you could end up losing them, too.
Vacancies aren't good, and having multiple extended vacancies can be highly disruptive for your organization. However, they're sometimes unavoidable. With proper strategies and planning, you can mitigate the impact of these vacancies – and ultimately better support your business in the long term.
