Look – I get it, you’re busy, he’s busy, she’s busy – heck even I’m busy.  Hiring qualified candidates in our field has become more difficult recently and it’s not difficult to find out why – EVERYBODY is hiring right now!  I am literally getting calls and emails from both current and old clients on a daily basis wanting specific candidates as soon as yesterday and they are willing to pay for them, and unfortunately for most of us, not everybody can throw the $$$ around.

Now, the traditional thing to do for employers is to get the job openings up on Monster and CareerBuilder and let the resumes trickle through.  I’ll be the first to admit, for certain roles, I do this as well – but I’m not seeing very many good candidates and I can’t imagine the majority of you are either.  Right now the job boards are diluted – way too many openings and not enough qualified candidates have almost rendered the boards ineffective.

How does one solve this problem?  What you need to do is make sure you are utilizing all of your resources.  There are more avenues to finding qualified candidates than Monster and CareerBuilder.  How many of you have tried actively recruiting on LinkedIn?  How many of you are utilizing Facebook, Twitter and even Craigslist?  How many of you have a good pulse of your industry i.e. has anybody laid off recently?  Who’s closing their doors?

These resources take time and effort because you are not going to make 3 calls or put up just one posting to find the right candidates.  These options will require more thought, research and proactive activity, so don’t let yourself make the excuse that you don’t have the “time.”

The good – Not a lot of people utilizes these options, so the individuals you find on these sites probably haven’t been contacted by 3 other companies and 5 other recruiters.  That’s the bad with the boards – everybody is talking to several people and you always find yourself competing with another recruiter/company for the candidate.

What I’m saying is that if you want to continue to use the traditional efforts of hiring solutions, you will continue to compete, settle for the low hanging fruit, and find yourself replacing the same positions over and over again.  Try something different, put a little time into it and I think you’ll find the payoff to be worth your while.

We want to hear from you! What creative recruiting methods have you tried when looking to fill a position? Is posting openings to the job boards working for your company? Have you tried using a recruiter to help?