Looking for the Best Possible CPG Candidate? Meet Your Marketplace
More U.S. workers are satisfied with their jobs than at any time since 2005. According to the recent survey by Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 88 percent of employees said they were satisfied overall with their job. With low unemployment and high job satisfaction, the recruiter’s challenge to find the best CPG candidate should focus on the finding the best possible candidate.
What that really means is that making a successful hire requires you to:
- Understand each search’s unique recruiting marketplace, and
- Recognize that it operates independently of your desires.
Hiring managers in the consumer marketing and market research industry naturally appreciate that each discipline and level you recruit for has its own unique marketplace for talent, with its own unique conditions. Each time you conduct a search, you must look at the relevant marketplace for that particular talent.
The marketplace for each search is volatile; it is dynamic, it changes continuously. What it was yesterday may not be what it is today or will be tomorrow. Your ability to attract talent varies from one marketplace to another. The narrower the parameters of the job, the tighter the marketplace becomes and the more challenging it is to achieve your hiring objectives in that particular market.
The best possible recruiting outcome is ultimately governed by the marketplace.
The “best candidate” is your definition of the ideal candidate. The “best possible candidate” is determined by the marketplace. Occasionally, but rarely, market conditions for your specific search are sufficiently favorable that the actual “best possible candidate” and the theoretical “best candidate” almost converge.
Closing that gap, between theoretical best candidate and actual best possible candidate, takes conscious and deliberate action. Simply “holding out for better” is not a very effective strategy. It is an application of that old definition of insanity: to keep doing the same thing, over and over and over again, and expecting a different result.
How to meet the marketplace.
We are competing for talent in a marketplace that has multiple players, both “buyers” and “sellers,” who operate independently. We cannot compel candidates to act the way we want them to. If the marketplace is paying more than we would like to pay for the talent we seek, we have to either change our hiring target, or change our price point, to meet the marketplace.
It is analogous to shopping for a car. As much as we might want a top-of-the-line Mercedes, if we are only prepared to pay the price of a Hyundai, we are unlikely to obtain the Mercedes. Trying to “beat the marketplace” means trying for inherently win-lose outcomes. Hoping for the needle-in-a-haystack find, or for candidates who are willing to take a pay cut because they need or want our geography, or for whatever reason they may be willing to compromise, is not a search strategy with a high probability of success.
The recruiters at O’Connell Group communicate daily with top candidates in consumer packaged goods and other consumer-driven industries. Contact us to help you properly define the market, understand the competing players in it and assess your open position as your “product offering.” We can prepare you to better price your product to the market and communicate its features and benefits to potential customers (candidates) in the unique and highly competitive recruiting marketplace.