We’ve all heard the age-old saying: "The best defense is a good offense." This adage is applied to many fields of competition including, but not limited to, business, sports, law, and military combat over the centuries.

Sourcing viable candidates with the appropriate experience and in a timely manner — certainly for specialty roles — continues to be the #1 challenge for every company in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction space. In any industry, it's easy to be caught in a ‘Reactive Strategy.' In the complex AEC industry, time truly is money and not being proactive can lead to missed opportunity, your team being overworked and burnt out and in worst cases, having to turn-down lucrative projects. No, no….and please no.

In this study, we’ll look at 4 heavy hitting ways to reduce the pain points you are facing with Interview Volume and connecting with Viable Prospects:

1. Research your Competition
2. Examine Talent Pool Data - Know all the Candidates
3. Launch Social Media Strategies
4. Get Creative with Job Postings

Before we jump in, let’s address an alarming reality with the candidates you are trying to attract. 74% of the technical talent in the AEC industry are being contacted by recruiters (both internal & external) at a minimum of 6 times per month! It gets worse — 15% of the employer pool is winning roughly 50% of the talent pool. Yes, you heard that correctly and yes it’s important that everything you are doing from a recruiting standpoint derives from this understanding. So let’s hop in to the secret sauce of the top 15% employer pool and find out what they are doing.‍

1. Research Your Competition‍

Competition isn’t necessarily a bad thing...it may be an opportunity to stand out in the crowd. It doesn’t hurt to do a thorough analysis of competing firms and their industry related roles and how they contrast with what you’re hiring for/currently offering.

Action: Create a spreadsheet and start logging all of the competing positions and details you can find. Once accomplished, ask yourself and your hiring team if there is a way to differentiate your firm and what you are offering to create something compelling to prospective candidates. You’ll be surprised what you can discover and sometimes realize that you aren’t doing anything to stand out (*hint - it does not always have to do with the position itself...focus on unique clients you work with, your culture, the office environment or hybrid working options, etc). This is a nice warm up.‍

2. Examine Talent Pool Data - Know all the Candidates‍

Ok, not gonna lie, this one is tough to accomplish — but will undoubtedly give you a competitive edge and increase results significantly. Perfect this and you’ll change the game for your company.

Think about this for a second: What makes the best companies in the world dangerous? The answer is Data. Think Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook. What is the one secret ingredient they all have that makes them powerful and continue to scale not just in their offerings, but winning talent? Data.

Now let’s apply this concept to your ‘Talent Pools' for open reqs. If you knew all of the candidates that existed for each position you were recruiting for, matched to your specific job criteria, geography, who they currently work for, etc — and that populated into an aggregate number of candidates — Would that impact how you approached each recruiting effort? For example, what if research only led you to 10 candidates that fit the technical and geographic needs you had after investigating — and what if 7 of those 10 have been with their current employer 8+ years? Would you rely on a job posting to try and fill that position knowing this data in advance? Or would you pivot your strategy and deploy a proactive pursuit for the ‘Pool' of 10 candidates your research discovered?

Conversely, what if your research discovered that a certain position aggregated a ‘Talent Pool' of 200 prospects? Would you hire a headhunter and spend $20K+ to hire one of those prospects? Or would it make more sense financially to launch a job-posting for that position in lieu of hiring a recruiter? As you can see, knowing the data in advance is extremely helpful and can save you time, money and avoid empty results. Know your ‘Talent Pool' data before launching each effort.

So how can you get this information? The short answer is it’s not easy — but it’s achievable with deep investigation and dedicated time spent. Even if you cannot uncover the entire ‘Talent Pool' for each job opening, uncovering as many prospects as possible will empower you and drive better results. A few sources to seek this information are LinkedIn, internal employees, project RFP’s, searching competitor websites, licensing boards, affiliations, and google searches.

These are just a few places to source, but please note that not all sources have accurate data and will uncover all candidates or updated information — seek to find as many resources as possible and don’t rely on just one! Lastly, QA/QC the data to ensure it’s up-to-date and accurate.

Action: Create a spreadsheet with 5 fields — candidate name, current employer, years at current employer, biggest strength, rank in groups of 1-2-3 (1 - being your top prospects, 2 - being secondary prospects, 3 - being fits but not priority). Note, you can't always land your number one prospects, so your second and third rankings may become important. Aggregate your total ‘Pool' of candidates for that position, examine the results as a hiring team and deploy your specific strategy based on the data set. Now ask yourself the question, is there a large enough prospect pool where a job posting will suffice? Or, do you need to launch a more proactive strategy to reach candidates directly? Internal referrals? Or do you need to engage an outside recruiter because the talent pool is finite and needs to be a courtship approach? Bottom-line, let the 'Talent Pool' guide you to be precise in your efforts. Don't fall victim to the "fire drill" mentality that most hiring teams get caught up in.

‍If you have an AECIQ plan, use the ‘Talent Pipeline' builder to uncover 98% of all candidate pools specific to your criteria across the U.S. and Canada.‍

3. Launch Social Media Strategies‍

No matter the industry or business, the world we live in is rooted in social media. Most professionals have some sort of social media - whether Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit, Quora, etc. It's important to acknowledge the changing demographics in our industry; Millennials and GenZ now make up a significant portion of your 'Talent Pools' for certain positions; they also hold leadership roles within firms. These people grew up in the social media era and they are comfortable communicating through these platforms. Virtually everyone has some kind of online profile and there are so many platforms around that go beyond our every day uses as conversation spaces. These can be places to engage in one-on-one conversations with viable prospects. Furthermore, leverage your internal employees and incentivize them to share, engage and actively play a part in recruiting for your firm. It doesn’t always have to be the Recruiting Manager, TA professional or Hiring Managers role to actively recruit. The top 15% of employers winning the war on talent have employees actively recruiting and connecting the firm on open reqs.

Consideration: Create a framework to engage employees for help - and have guidelines and incentives in place so it actually works. When engaging on social platforms, find ways to ask meaningful questions to prospects and encourage engagement. Finally, remember you are playing the long game, so be patient and keep refining your strategy. The average person spends 2 hours and 27 minutes, per day on social platforms. Be there!‍

4. Get Creative with Job Postings‍

Take off your ‘work hat’ and review the job postings you currently have listed. Now, try to read them from a candidate's perspective and ask yourself these questions:

• Does it read as a run of the mill job posting? Is there anything in the posting that separates your firm from competing firms for a similar role?
• Does it offer passive candidates something substantially unique and exciting?
• Are you using encouraging language?
• Are your compensation and benefits details thorough and enticing? If you're not promoting these details, are you highlighting your culture or, is anything compelling standing out?
  

There is no wrong in experimenting with new forms of job postings. Being open and mindful to experimenting with your traditional cookie-cutter posting language may have the ability to yield excellent results.

Consideration: What is a job posting designed for? To get an initial conversation. So everything you highlight in the job posting should be designed to capture the attention of the prospects you are seeking. Be creative, play with it, see what works — when you find the key ingredient — it's time to double down!

Remember, quality candidates are approached at a minimum of 6 times per month about other positions. Any way you can stand out is an advantage over competing firms approaching the same candidates. After all, any great hire starts with step one — getting an audience.

We seek data to make life, financial and business decisions every day, why not use the same principles for your Recruiting Strategy? Investing in a new hire is both time consuming and expensive, why not do it right the first time in a data driven informed manner? Boost your efficiency, team morale, momentum, and your bottom line by deploying an "offensive" approach by following these four strategies.

If you would like to ask AECIQ more specific tips on the article above, feel free to reach out to start a conversation with us here.‍

AECIQ tech-enabled recruiting platform accelerates company recruiting and passive interview flow by 50% — while getting your hiring team in front of passive prospects as fast as one week. Guaranteeing interviews and charging you zero fees when you make hires. We want you to make as many hires as possible — and we are here to make that happen consistently with you.

Over 650+ AEC firms use AECIQ to save hundreds of hours of time and gain deeper access to Talent Pools — automating their search process and connecting with passive candidates on a daily basis. Accelerate the recruiting process and focus on landing hires that fit in your company culture, and are in it for the long haul.