The employer’s market is well and truly over in Ireland.

In fact, research studies indicate that Ireland's unemployment rate is profoundly low, currently sitting at 6.1% - the lowest jobless rate since 2008.

In the highly competitive bio-pharma market, hiring and retaining great talent is perhaps the greatest challenge businesses face. But it also presents a great opportunity, if you can secure the talent to take your corporation to the next level.

As the balance of power continues to shift towards employees, the resources required to regularly recruit experienced talent are wearing thin for employers. It’s a cycle that is unsustainable in a bio-pharma industry that shows no signs of slowing down.

Smart employers are recognising this power shift, and are investing more money in employee development. Rather than running the hamster wheel of new hiring all the time.

How The Hiring Process Used to Work

In the past, employers maintained the ability to be extremely picky with talent acquisition. There was more quality talent on the market than there were jobs available, largely thanks to the recession in Ireland.

Hiring processes, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, were lengthy. They included stringent criteria that each candidate had to meet to even be considered for employment. It made sense at the time, because employers had to narrow down what was a large pool of applicants in order to find the best talent.

As the economy began to recover, so did the balance of power in the job market. Soon, employers would be left struggling to find good talent because they were using overly complex hiring processes for smaller pools of candidates. They needed to adapt.

How Employers Should Respond to This Shift in Power

By recognising the role that factors, such as low unemployment rates, play in significantly shifting the economic environment, employers who are serious about pushing their organisations forward need to devise strategies that will help them optimise and expedite their hiring processes.

One of the best ways for employers to ensure that they are bringing the best people on board is by utilising temporary recruitment services. By working with a recruitment firm such as Flexsource, employers can attain assistance from trained specialists who know how to identify the individuals who will have the ideal attitude for the position in question.

A big benefit of using temporary recruitment services is that doing so empowers employers to build relationships with new hires and subsequently analyse their performance within the work setting - prior to making a final hiring decision.

This process is a much more accurate predictor of how well a new hire will perform than the traditional interview. Plus, this hiring approach enables the employer to decide whether the temporary worker will be an ideal permanent hire based on the ongoing observation of his or her performance on the job.

Without the help of an agency, this flexible working arrangement is near-on impossible in a market that is favouring employees.

How to Develop Temporary Talent Into Permanent Staff

Once you have a temporary staff member up and running within your business, it's important to set the individual up for success. Luckily, there are multiple strategies that employers can use to make this happen.

One is providing temps with ongoing, interactive training opportunities that expand their knowledge and skill set. The end result here is typically more confident interactions with customers and employees in addition to the ability to complete daily assignments with few errors and notable speed.

In addition to offering your temps a wide range of highly specific training opportunities, consider the value of using employee evaluations so that you will have an objective medium through which to gauge their strengths, weaknesses, and progress.

Of course, working with a staffing agency can expedite much of this learning curve and training, because the agency has already done a large portion of this analysis for you.

Conclusion

Employers, who are serious about optimising their talent acquisition and development process, should know that shifts in the job market can and will impact the way they recruit new talent.

Review the information found above to ensure that you can find people with the capacity to excel within your company and subsequently provide them with the tools and resources which will enable them to do so.

 

Are you in-market for an Innovative Recruitment Partner?

Linda Hickey - Service Delivery Manager at Flexsource Recruitment.

CONTACT LINDA today or see our staffing services.