Rough diamonds - the secret to great hiring

The shortage of procurement and commercial candidates in the construction sector has been driving up salaries since COVID. Our salary survey guides show that each of the last three years, employees have enjoyed pay rises of on average between 4.5% and 6.2%. However, few companies can afford to pay the top rates at each salary band needed to attract the finished article for the role they are filling.

Instead, many employers are looking for the rough diamonds, either ambitious young talent who are light on experience, or more experienced individuals who have somehow dropped through the gap.

So, how do you find these individuals? and what are the risks?

Ambitious Young Talent

Looking for ambitious but inexperienced talent is the easier route. There are more of these individuals and they are often open to an approach. Generally, they will be good self-publicists and active networkers, involved in industry body groups. Their LinkedIn profiles will be regularly updated, and they will have plenty of connections. They will also be known to their peers in the organisation.

There are two principle risks when targeting these sorts of candidates. The first is that they have typically climbed fast and in some cases when they come across challenges, that exposes their lack of experience they hit a ceiling and can even lose confidence. The second challenge is identifying the balance between style and substance, those who are better at self-promotion, tend to get promoted, not necessarily those who deliver.

While there may be some risks, with robust vetting and interviewing many of these ambitious youngsters continue on their accelerated trajectories.

Undervalued experience

Finding individuals who have experience but are undervalued is more challenging. A long period since an individual’s last promotion can be a good indicator that they are being overlooked but a lot of employers will have searches set up on LinkedIn targeting those individuals.

Asking contacts about which of their (former) colleagues fly under the radar can be more productive, however the most effective technique tends to hunt out pockets of talents – for example: some companies consistently pay under market rate without employees realising; salaries in some niches and geographies are consistently lower than others; and some employers consistently have more talent than they can promote creating bottlenecks. The more you hunt out these pockets and individuals, the more of an instinct you get for who to approach.

But again, there are risks. Some of these individuals don’t want more responsibility or have reached their professional plateau. Others are flawed in some aspect of the way they work or more commonly the way they interact with others. Many are loyal to a fault.

Whether you are looking for undervalued experience or ambitious young talent looking where other hiring managers aren’t looking reduces competition. Many hiring managers default to looking for talent from their nearest competitors and for the largest / most high profile companies.

As a result, competition to attract staff from those companies is intense. Try instead employers who are a little left field. Similarly, employers using LinkedIn to find new hires default to searching on the same terms. If you set your search parameters a little differently you can often identify individuals who are frustrated at the fact they are falling through the gap.

In the same way that it pays to set your search parameter differently to other employers, try to take a different approach to CVs. Instead of looking for reasons to rule candidates out, look for triggers to include them. Some candidates simply don’t know how to lay out a CV, which information they should be trying to highlight or how to make the most relevant information pop. Others don’t make the time to tailor their CV for each application. Eitherway, as a result they are more likely to be overlooked by most hiring managers.

Sorting potential

Having identified prospects, sorting the wheat from the chaff is critical. For these candidates, career path to date and job titles are less important than repeated evidence of strong performance. At interview keep probing for examples of what they achieved and how they achieved it. The key is repeatability.

Don’t be afraid to deviate from your standard interview techniques and questions. Experienced candidates who have not progressed may have been overlooked because they get intimidated by, or simply don’t perform well in, standard formal interviews, while ambitious young candidates can be more polished at interview than they are at their desk.

Undertaking the interview over lunch, a coffee or even a beer may help bring out their true potential. While a less formal setting may be advantageous, that doesn’t mean the process should be less rigorous. You are looking to identify in candidates things that other people haven’t seen, but also need to make sure you are aware of candidates’ flaws.  

Offering candidates

With salary typically constrained to some degree (otherwise why would you be searching for rough diamonds?!) it can be a challenge to motivate candidates to move. Ambitious candidates will typically be looking for opportunities for further growth and development. Similarly, previously undervalued candidates may find being listened to about what it is they want from their career interesting, but they are also likely to be more interested in loyalty, security and the environment they are joining.

Conclusion

Finding high potential, undervalued employees is challenging but possible – we manage it time and again for our clients. Before you start looking externally however, make sure you look at your own company the way you plan to look at your competitors’ employees. Who is good but simply quiet? Who has the potential to be fast tracked? If you don’t give them a chance then someone else will.