How to Turn Unfillable Jobs into Fillable Jobs

Have you ever worked on an extremely hard-to-fill job?  I mean a “Purple Squirrel” or “Unicorn Search.” Stupid question, right?

The most successful 2-3% of search firms are not masters at hunting down oddly colored squirrels or horned horses. They’re masters at getting their clients to modify specs, pay, or both so that the jobs become fillable!

How do they do this? Like most recruitment industry best practices, it combines art and science. Here’s an overview of the principles and steps involved to help your clients to fix the fill ability issues that they caused:

1. They work with committed clients who pay them an upfront retainer. Clients who pay you retainers view you as a trusted advisor whose opinion matters to them.

2. They gather data on the number of candidates they reached out to, the number who responded, and the specific reasons they weren’t interested in the position.

3. When they’ve invested “sufficient time” and recruiting activity and lack quality submittals, they know that they’ve accumulated valid, objective data. Now they can understand the specific issues getting in the way of filling the position.

4. They have a meeting with the client to share this data in an organized, clear, and concise format. Now the client has objective information rather than opinions and emotions. This allows the client to understand the specific modifications they need to make to fill the position.

If you’re unable to fill a position that you have the knowledge, skills, and resources to fill and you’ve made a legitimate effort to source and recruit, it’s because of one or more of the following reasons:

1. There’s a shortage of people who meet the requirements. This means that the client needs to change the requirements if they wish to fill the job.
2. The client isn’t paying competitively for what they require. This means that the client needs to increase pay or decrease the requirements to fill the job.
3.  Some aspects of the job or company/people turn off people who meet the requirements.  This means that the client needs to address the issues turning off candidates to fill the position.

When you return to the client (step 4), you should separate the data you’ve accumulated from the people involved to avoid making it personal. For example, the hiring manager comes across as an A-hole to the candidates. You would let them know what you are hearing from the candidates and how it impacts their level of interest.

Avoid using accusatory or judgmental language to minimize the risk of defensiveness and anger towards you. Focus on the problem that’s causing you not to fill the position while avoiding judgments about the company and people involved. When your client believes that you are there to help them fill the job, not to criticize the company or the people, you maximize the odds that your client will be open to the data and choose to take corrective action that results in you filling the position!

Why this matters

The ability to grow and scale your recruiting firm directly relates to how consistently you make successful placements with your clients. The first step in mastering this recruiting industry best practice is avoiding taking in job orders you know you're unlikely to fill. However, regardless of how well you do in job order selection, you will have some jobs that are extremely difficult to fill. When this occurs, it's critically important to have an effective, repeatable process to professionally address the realities of these unfillable positions. Your goal is to build and maintain client relations and succeed in filling most of these difficult roles.

What you don't want to do when you discover that you're dealing with a "purple squirrel" is to immediately extricate yourself from the search or blame the client. The above advice provides the tools you need to come out smelling like a rose in many of these challenging situations. This is what the top search firms do that most others don't.