With falling unemployment, jobs going unfilled for months

Low unemployment may be good news for workers, but it’s got employers scrambling. With regional unemployment now at 4.5 percent — and hovering just about 2 percent for college grads — positions are often going unfilled for three to four months, says Andrew Sassaman, branch manager of Robert Half in Pittsburgh.

“I think some employers have not realized how challenging the employment market is right now,” he said. “Companies are not acting fast enough and they’re not making enough concessions as they go through the hiring process.”

Robert Half, a specialized professional staffing agency with more than 325 locations nationwide, recently asked more than 2,200 chief financial officers to describe what it’s like to find skilled candidates: 20 percent said it was “very challenging” and another 45 percent has found it “somewhat challenging.”

About half said they’d expanded their applicant searches geographically and now consider recent college graduates for positions that historically weren’t open to them.

Too many others, though, may still be relying on strategies forged during the 2008 recession, when every opening brought multiple qualified, or even over-qualified, candidates clamoring to be considered while many just prayed they could hold onto the job they had. Not anymore. “It’s not just the senior vp level either,” Mr. Sassaman said. “Customer service positions are taking a month to fill.” Now an applicant with a strong skill set and marketable skills “is going to have three to four offers at a time.”

Just as applicants have to find ways to set themselves apart in a tight job market, employers need to do the same when positions are more plentiful than qualified candidates.

Offering more money, better benefits and more time off are tried-and-true lures.

Mr. Sassaman suggests employers need to go beyond that and be more flexible by, for example, offering the opportunity to work remotely instead of in an office cubicle. He also suggests using a recruiter to locate strong candidates who aren’t actively looking for a new job.

“You need to revamp your whole hiring process. You need to change what you’re doing.”

The recession critically wounded the job market for years. Mr. Sassaman is not predicting similar longevity for the low unemployment numbers being seen now.

Still, “I see no reason this would end any time in 2018 and probably into 2019,” he offered. “I hope it’s a really long time. It’s great for business at Robert Half.”