The Best Employment Numbers of a Lifetime Creates Recruiting Challenges
“Mad Money’s” Jim Cramer made headlines recently when the 64-year-old Wall Street expert reported on the December 2019 3.5% unemployment number posted by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics saying;
“This is the best number I’ve ever seen in my life.”
CNBC’s popular stock market aficionado pointed out that the 2019 numbers are in and they can’t be contradicted. With 266,000 non-farm jobs created by the U.S. economy in November alone, the 3.5% number puts the current unemployment rate at a 50-year low.
Cramer’s bullish enthusiasm is also bolstered by a lack of inflation, and as the manager of a charitable portfolio himself, he doesn’t see any signs of “the looming recession of 2020” anticipated by those he characterizes as the “armageddonists and the negativists and the hucksters”.
Human Resource Challenges When the Hot Job Market Gets Hotter
While investors and fund managers may rejoice over the robust economy and the jobs it continues to create, human resource departments and hiring managers alike see a tight job market getting tighter. High-quality professional and technical talent is already at a premium in sectors such as construction, mining, and manufacturing where labor shortages have been notorious for most of the decade.
As a hot labor market gets hotter in 2020, onboarding, training, and pre-interview intelligence expenses for recruiting new talent can pile up quickly, especially when new candidates accept rival offers.
Hiring managers need to think outside of the box to recruit and retain top talent, and that’s where the “boomerang hiring” concept comes in.
The HR Benefits of Boomerang Hiring
The practice of “boomerang hiring” is simply that of hiring a former employee. Just like a boomerang, they’ve left and now they’re coming back.
In competitive sectors such as mining, construction, and engineering, the top talent always wants to continue a steady move up the career ladder, but organizations don’t always have the openings higher up at the time, and they’re off to greener company pastures.
But business environments are nothing if not dynamic. Situations change, and the opportunities for advancement that were lacking when your professional made a move away from the company years ago may now be available.
Employees leave jobs for a variety of reasons. Personality conflicts, picking up the slack for bad hires, or a perceived lack of advancement opportunities within the organization.
If your company is in the process of opening new career paths, the bad hire situation has been resolved, and the conflicting personalities have gone their separate ways, hiring a former employee can give you an HR boost and cut costs significantly in ways including:
- Already familiar with your company culture, the boomerang employee knows what to expect and what will be expected in terms of performance.
- Streamlined recruiting process since the screening and evaluation work has already been done for the original hire.
- Onboarding, training, and orientation time and expenses are significantly reduced by returning employees with operational experience under their belts, as compared to hiring a brand new candidate.
- A motivational sense of value is experienced by the former employee, who may perceive the “rehire” offer as a career move equal to a promotion. The result is a highly motivated team player, already primed and ready with the crucial experience needed to contribute to your company’s success.
Maintaining Professional Candidate Relationships With Resource Erectors.
Of course, maintaining relationships with the top candidates your company may need again is the key to deploying the boomerang hiring strategy, and that’s where the expert Recruitment team at Resource Erectors plays a vital role.
We place and keep in touch with thousands of the best-qualified professional and technical candidates, specializing in the demanding mining, construction, manufacturing, and engineering sectors. We’re always up to speed with the top professionals who are ready to make a strategic career move to help your company compete and succeed in today’s robust but highly competitive economy, so don’t hesitate to contact us for a free consultation.
