Are You Being TOO Picky When Hiring?

Are you having a hard time finding skilled and reliable workers?

If so, you’re not alone. The Wall Street Journal in November reported that the “U.S. labor pool has nearly 14 million unemployed workers, yet more small businesses complain about the dearth of qualified workers.”

Many employers, the article continued, “blame” the “poor” U.S. educational system, the government for not “letting in” enough highly skilled immigrants.

But could the real reason be that employers are being too picky?

In a time of high unemployment (particularly in the Inland Empire), it’s somewhat easy for an employer to say “With so many people out of work, I can be choosy.”

But can you really? We’ve seen too many employers assume that the person with the exact qualifications, education, work ethic, personality is out there dying for a job with them.

And so they turn down – or even neglect to look at – good workers eager to work hard and learn on the job.

As a result, employers don’t fill the positions when they need to and good people remain unemployed.

Instead, we offer the following suggestion:

Rather going for the perfect, go for the “good enough.” In fact, the Wall Street Journal article suggested the following:

“There are plenty of ways to get workers up to speed without investing too much time and money, such as putting new employees on extended probationary periods and relying more on internal hires, who know the ropes better than outsiders would.”

Our advice? Hire for attitude and train for the skills that may be lacking. Be more flexible in whom you hire and realize that, even though unemployment remains high in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the “perfect” employee just doesn’t exist. Forget the perfect, embrace the “good enough.”

Let Arrow Staffing help your Inland Empire firm find those “good enough” employees (some of our workers actually are “close to” perfect, as well). Whether you need them for temporary, temp-to-hire or direct hire assignments, we can find them for you. Contact us today!

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