Hiring a candidate who doesn’t fit
the profile might be your best choice

Describing the perfect or ideal candidate in the job description is much easier than actually finding, interviewing and hiring said candidate! Adjusting the candidate profile or loosening the required skill set may have the desired effect: the perfect candidate might apply for the job!

Find out what's available on the market

Manage your expectations with the realities of the candidate market. In a specialised field, there won't be a massive pool of potential candidates to choose from compared to, e.g. finding a new marketing manager. It then gets a tad more complicated when you start adding the hard skills the candidate must have!

There are a lot of great tools that can help you scan the candidate market. One of them is LinkedIn, where you can get an excellent overview with the right boolean string searches. Getting a decent overview of the current candidate climate will help you adjust your expectation while also making it easier for you to accept that you must change the job description if your search ends in a stalemate.

Remove the nice to have skills

Having a long list of "nice to have" skills might scare off potential candidates. To outsiders, these skills may seem to be important in the selection process even though they're merely bonus skills. If some of the skills are more important than others, then consider including them as necessary skills instead.

We suggest you make a list of "nice to have" skills that you use internally in the reviewing process instead of having them in the official job brief. In the end, you must make sure that only the necessary core skills are listed while maintaining a good number of skills. Removing them from the bonus skills shouldn't increase the number of essential hard skills.

What's most important is that you have 3-5 absolute musts that candidates are evaluated on, so you have a baseline for review while not scaring off potentially awesome candidates because you cluttered the job description with dozens of skills. Read more about making a great job ad to attract the best candidates!

Re-evaluate or change the job description

Do you have a tough time finding candidates for the job? Consider changing the job tasks or evaluate the full job description. If you don't receive satisfactory applicants or your hiring managers can't find any candidate who fit the job description, it might be time to evaluate the job description. Take a look at which necessary skills can be trimmed to attract the right candidates and include your team in the process. Maybe you have to consider including the salary range in the ad if you're recruiting for a specialised field or you have to go back to the drawing board and reread the job ad to optimise it and make the job sound more attractive.

Sometimes, the most straightforward changes can have the most positive impact even though you feel you're compromising on specific aspects of the required skill set you're looking after. However, it might just pay off in the end - you'll never know who'll apply for the job if you don't try!

Test the hard skills!

Javascript, C#, SQL and HTML. Developers list a lot of hard skills in their CVs, and it can be quite a challenge evaluating their skills on paper. We suggest you live-test their skills during the job interview to better gauge how good they are at solving problems or tasks that they will face in the job. You can also develop a case that the candidate must solve and then present the results and the data during the job interview.

The benefits of a live test or case solving are many because you see the candidate in action. You see how good they are at solving the tasks and hand, and you witness how they respond to pressure. It might turn out that the candidate you thought was the weakest in the field is the best fit for you!

Use your social network or employees

It's becoming more common to find new hires thanks to social or work network recommendations. In most cases, someone you know has a connection whose skill set almost matches the job description. As a manager, you most likely have a broad network of like-minded professionals that you can contact. In some cases, you might get a referral to a great candidate, and other times, different opportunities will show themselves to you - a freelancer, outsourcing or a different job profile.

Someone in your team might know a great potential candidate who hasn't updated the LinkedIn profile in ages or who isn't actively looking for a new job. Ask around in the organisation before you initiate a job advertising campaign. Chances are someone knows somebody who fits the bill. Other times you might realise that you already have the right candidate within your organisation! Using your network might save you valuable time and money!

Straying from the original path and thinking outside the box may result in finding the perfect candidate that you wouldn't have found otherwise. By loosening the requirements and being open to different profiles within the general requirements, you are much more likely to find a flawed candidate that you can develop into the perfect employee.