Good candidates have never been easy to find. What’s changed is why.
There was a time, when I started in executive recruitment, that a well-placed advert in the national or local newspaper (yes, it’s that long ago!) would produce a solid field of candidates for most vacancies.
That stopped being true some years ago. The best people are rarely searching. They’re busy, doing well where they are, and being reasonably well looked after by their current employer, so any move has to be worth the risk.
More recently, something else has shifted. LinkedIn used to be the easy win: a direct, well-targeted approach that cut through the noise of job boards would get attention. It still can, but good people are tired of it. The volume of recruiter messages landing in a strong candidate’s inbox now means even a well-written approach competes for attention it wouldn’t have had to fight for five years ago.
I’m seeing this play out right now. I’m currently searching for a senior Quantity Surveyor, and both routes are producing far fewer responses than I’d expect: the advertising is quiet, and direct approaches, whether through email, phone, or LinkedIn are getting little reply.
So, I just searched LinkedIn jobs and it shows more than 100 advertised QS roles within 50 miles radius of this one. That’s not a talent shortage in the traditional sense. It’s genuine candidate choice, at a scale that changes how hard you – as an employer or hiring manager – have to work to stand out.
What still matters, and what’s changed:
Employer brand. You don’t need to be a household name to attract strong candidates. Plenty of people join small or unknown businesses for the opportunity, the flexibility, or because the company has a genuine reputation for developing people. But your reputation as an employer, good or bad, precedes you now more than it used to. Candidates research before they’ll even respond.
The application process itself. Job descriptions, advertising and correspondence should be clear and easy to act on, not a filter that weeds out good people before they’ve applied. A candidate looking at a role from their phone, without a CV to hand, needs a recruitment process that doesn’t punish them for that.
Where you actually find people. Word of mouth, targeted approaches and direct outreach still outperform job boards for the roles that matter most. But as above, the approach itself needs to work harder than it used to. A generic message gets deleted along with the fifty others like it that week.
Salary and what sits around it. Paying the going rate mostly attracts people a step below where you’re trying to hire. If you can’t compete on salary, look elsewhere for what makes the role genuinely attractive: flexibility, development, the calibre of the team they’d join and so on. These aren’t consolation prizes.
Interviewing. I’ve seen strong candidates lose interest entirely after a badly run interview or selection process. AI interviews, poor preparation, long delays before interview stages, ridiculous interview questions etc. The balance of power has shifted: candidates are often sometimes prepared for the conversation than the person interviewing them. A bad interview doesn’t just put people off, it leads to the wrong hire, when a well-rehearsed, but average, candidate outperforms someone stronger who was never given a fair hearing.
If you offer a genuinely good role and get these basics right, you still have a real chance of attracting strong candidates. But “get the basics right” is a higher bar than it was even a few years ago, and it keeps moving.
Written by John Hamilton
John is Managing Director of bfpeople. He is an experienced recruiter, qualified to use a wide range of occupational psychometrics, and a trained executive coach and mentor.
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