relationships with your customers. Here is an excerpt from Patrick on this topic:
"Entering the danger is powerful because it makes a bold and unequivocal statement that you care more about helping your client than about protecting your business. Whenever I’ve entered the danger with clients, they almost always stop me afterward and say something to the effect of "thank you for making us deal with that issue; we’ve been avoiding it for way too long."
Now, entering the danger does have costs. First, it is always uncomfortable. As positive as it almost always turns out to be in the end, it can be downright scary in the moment. Second, in rare cases, a client won’t appreciate the naked approach and might very well punish you, going so far as to end your relationship. But without the discomfort and possibility of backfire, there would be no danger."
As an Indianapolis staffing professional, one of my core responsibilities (and natural tendencies) is to keep current on any "danger" trends that we see in the marketplace as they relate to hiring trends and Indianpolis job opportunities. Currently,we are experiencing two rather sensitive "danger" trends as they relate to Indianapolis job openings. One on the client side, one on the candidate side. We know these issues could cause some emotional response from our constituents but from our perspective these are very real and very important to recognize so we are going to risk the danger to talk about them out loud.
For our clients – we have noticed a recent and quickly escalating trend of our best candidates securing fulltime employment faster and having more irons in the fire that are all moving quickly through the hiring process. Our fair warning is that for clients who are used to taking a long time moving through the interview and decision process, you will no longer have the luxury of those great candidates having the patience to wait for you. There are too many other interested and viable options that they can pursue and the fastest to the hiring finish line will win the loyalty of the candidate. This is a hard message to communicate to our customers who are used to having the time to mull over their hiring decisions with our candidates, but the reality is that it is part of our responsibility as a service provider to be very clear and consultative about employment trends, as we are typically the first to see them. We are doing a great disservice to our customers if we do not. Our message with new job orders these days is this: move quickly or lose your chance at the choice candidate we work hard to source and carefully select for you.
For our candidates – the trend is a scary one. The applicant flow we are seeing is showing more and more signs of having been out of the workforce for anywhere from 12-18 months, sometimes longer. The extensions in support from unemployment payments has resulted in many choosing the remain on unemployment instead of taking a lower paying position to remain in the workforce. This is a tough conundrum and one can understand the argument of keeping your stream of income coming in from unemployment funds vs changing your lifestyle to adapt to a lower income if you don’t have to. The downside to this is that our customers are standing firm on their requirement for recent and relevant work experience in order to even consider a candidate for a position. This goes for both temporary and full time positions. The relevant may not be as critical as the recent, but given the significant of changes that have taken place in the workplace over the past year or two, anyone who has not been employed may find it difficult to adjust to today’s office cultures, technology and expectations.
Our advice for our clients is to take a moment to assess your hiring processes and see how you can streamline them to ensure that you get the candidate that you want before they get away when your competitor moves faster. For our candidates – make sure that you are taking any action possible to update your resumes with recent and relevant experience – and if you have been out of the workforce for an extended period of time, see if you can apply other experiences such as part time work, self-employment experiences or volunteer work. Be sure to recognize that the workplace has changed over the past year and educate yourself on updated technology and workplace trends through research and following blogs such as The Hiring Site by Careerbuilder and Career Realism.
At That’s Good HR, it is a fine balance to please our customers and our candidates while providing important information about local workplace and employment trends. We do our very best to be honest and forthcoming with what we are seeing and hearing out there in the Indianapolis job market so we can provide a service that goes above and beyond the simple of matching of a need to a candidate. I know that we always appreciate it when our customers and candidates are honest with us and it is our goal to provide the same service to them, even when it means we have to enter the danger.
