It used to be so easy to hire a new buyer, the competition for jobs was very fierce and you would receive a number of qualified applicants. It was as simple as putting an advertisement in the local paper, your agency’s website and on Workopolis and then sit back and watch the resumes flow in. You would have the pick of the litter from the applicants to interview and all were eager and keen to join your organization. Now there are times where we don’t get any qualified applicants applying or we are getting ones who are way overqualified! So, what has changed in the last 10-15 years?
I will pick on public enemy number one, the Covid 19 pandemic, for changing the employment landscape. Pre-2020 working from home and controlling your schedule was predominantly for sales reps only, everyone else had to come into the office Monday to Friday for 35-40 hours a week. When the pandemic hit and a number of people lost their jobs or were laid off, the job market tightened up, there were not a lot of available positions, and no one really knew what their employment future looked like. It led to a lot of very skilled and qualified people looking for employment but with government subsidies, these same people were able to take their time when picking what positions they applied for. As the economy opened up and there were a number of open spots, employers weren’t getting the number of applicants they had expected. This was especially the case for part time or lower wage jobs; people could make the same or more collecting the CERB benefit than they could working at one of these jobs.
The biggest change though was the ability to work from home some of the time or all the time. Most public agencies had never offered this type of arrangement and were struggling to find some common ground with their staff in order to get the work done with the change in the work setting. For some agencies, due to the nature of the work they do, they weren’t able to offer a work from home option or hybrid option, they had to have their employees come in. Work location became a major factor for people when applying to a position, in some cases it was more important than salary! This meant agencies had to shift in how they were going to attract applicants. No longer did a secure job with a good salary and benefits automatically look attractive. Being able to save on childcare costs by working from home and not having commuting costs were deciding factors on applying to a position.
Another shift was that a number of graduates headed into the trades instead of the office. There was more money available sooner and a lot more opportunity to work overtime. This was a major shift in the business world, no longer was an office job necessarily more coveted than a job outdoors with more physical labour.
Now that I have shared the doom and gloom, what can we do to get good candidates to apply to our positions?
- Review your workplace structure and determine if working from home is possible at your agency. Is a Hybrid model a better option? Ensure that you provide options for all applicants, including those that want to be in the office. Our tendency is always to go into something 100% when maybe we should look for something in the middle.
- Review your job descriptions and postings. Is everything that is on there still relevant? Can you change a “shall have a CPPB designation” to a “prefer to have a CPPB designation”? Is it possible to reduce the amount of previous experience required? An area I think that needs to change is how the public sector views new grads. Let’s get them into our agencies fresh from school! A lot of agencies ask for a CPPB designation which means they have to have four years of public experience minimum. We are really limiting who would qualify to apply and are missing out on some great candidates.
- Come up with ways to sell your agency. Have yoga sessions at the lunch hour, discount on a gym membership, have an outdoor patio with a garden at your office? Benefits and pensions are not always the norm, use them to sell your agency. These are all things that need to be in the job advertisement, let applicants know what they are getting outside of a paycheck.
- Look to the private sector for applicants. If you can advertise in a private sector market, you may get some great applicants who would never have thought of coming to the public side of things.
- Finally, be sure to post your Help Wanted ad on the OPBA website. Job opportunities can be posted at no cost for thirty days. You can find more information here.
These are by no means guarantees or even the best ideas to get that perfect candidate, just some ideas I have come up with. Your best resources are your colleagues, reach out via MemberConnect or anyway you are comfortable with and see what they are doing differently. The knowledge is out there, it’s just a matter of tracking it down!