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Hiring Unconventional Talent to Boost Business Growth
How many checkboxes does the candidate tick to become your employee?
It’s easy to get caught up in the hiring frenzy and overlook unique individuals you never even considered for a position.
But in the new world, recruiters need to change their approach to recruiting, training and retaining candidates. It’s non-negotiable if you wish to combat resource shortage in a limited talent pool.
In this article, we will look at some unique candidates often ignored by hiring managers but can add significant value to your business.
Table of Contents
What is Unconventional Talent?
Unconventional candidates are those who don’t fit into the set norm, and recruiters often overlook their profiles while shortlisting candidates.
For instance, these are common examples of profiles often getting rejected: a candidate applying for a technical role might not have relevant education but might be a skilled coder or a person with a few months gap in their career.
At first glance, they might appear unfit for the role, but if given a fair chance, you can unearth a lot of potential from them.
Why Should You Invest in Unconventional Talent?
1. Broadens the Prospect’s List
The talent pool in the market is already running dry. Amidst this, if you continue to look for similar people in the same places, you are bound to exhaust your options.
Putting in a little more effort and faith can boost your candidate sourcing significantly. It will let you make a better decision instead of compromising with limited prospects.
2. Encourages Diversity
People bring in a fresh perspective, especially if they come from different spheres of life. That’s why it’s crucial to maintain diversity in mind by onboarding unique candidates to the team.
And if your job description doesn’t have a lengthy checklist, it will allow more candidates to reach you confidently and apply.
3. Breaks the Stereotypes
When you move on from conventional hiring, you will find unique talent that often goes unnoticed in the industry. Be it a new mom with gap years or someone pivoting their career.
Giving a fair chance to every candidate, irrespective of where they come from, improves your company culture and candidate experience.
How to Hire Unique Talent?
1. Leverage Skills of Freelancers
Hiring freelancers offer you flexibility at a reasonable cost. Freelancers are known for their specialized skills and depending on the amount of work, you can hire a part-time or a full-time freelancer.
Since you will pay the candidate on an hourly or project basis, it saves you the additional cost of salaries, benefits, and insurance.
Apart from that, the most significant and underrated benefit of hiring freelancers is the soft skills they bring to the table. Freelancer has an entrepreneurial mindset, allowing them to contribute more meaningfully to your business strategies.
They are selling their own skills, which means they need to be at the top of their game to stay relevant. So, if you hire a freelancer, you can expect the latest industry knowledge and hands-on experience with tools.
2. Welcome People Who are Pivoting Careers
Would you place your bet on someone who is starting out on a new career journey?
Professionals who are switching careers often face a hard time convincing people that they are serious about their decision and deserve a chance. It’s because of a common apprehension that they will require rigorous training and hand-holding in the initial days.
At first, it sounds risky, but there are more benefits to it than downsides.
Their approach to work will be much more sincere, with a genuine passion for learning and growing. They are usually self-motivated as they’ve taken the bold decision to learn something new. People from different backgrounds can bring new perspectives and new ideas to the table.
Investing in training them will give you huge returns in the long run when they start applying their knowledge to work.
3. Restock the Talent Which is Back in Market
Life is not a linear graph for most people. Sometimes, they have to realign their priorities, which might mean their careers take a backseat.
But what happens when they are back at work?
With reorientation and training, you can utilize their existing skills and experience to a great extent.
For example, returning mothers or army veterans can be assets to your business.
You can bank on their soft skills, strong work ethic, and ability to multi-task in a demanding situation.
4. Trust the Individual Contributors
Suppose you stumble upon a resume of a candidate with ten years of experience. Never before has that candidate managed a team, and neither wishes to do it now.
Will you ignore them or give them a chance at the job?
Some people might be highly skilled at their work but may not be great at leading teams. Or they feel their contribution will be much more in an individual capacity.
It doesn’t mean they are any less suitable for the role. It simply means they wish to apply themselves at a place where they can give better results. You can always consider such candidates for the hands-on job as they will provide more output even with fewer resources.
5. Explore Cross Country Talent
People in developing countries don’t have as many job opportunities as in developed countries. And hence, there is a huge freelance talent in those countries. With the penetration of the internet in all corners of the world, they have picked up tech skills really fast and are quite efficient in getting things done.
Hiring offshore talent lets you bring expertise from across the world to serve your customers better. It’s also the surefire way to tap into the psyche of the global customer market and what you need to do to attract them..
Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Bangladesh, and India are just a few Asian countries you can turn to for professional coders who won’t be heavy on your pockets.
How to Move on From Traditional Hiring Practices?
1. Train For Unbiased Hiring
Unknowingly, recruiters fall prey to biases and assumptions. It can compromise the quality of hire, often affecting the hire of unconventional talent.
Training your recruitment team on how to reduce biases can bring positive changes to your hiring culture.
2. Prepare For Challenges
Hiring unconventional talent might be a challenging ride. So, to derive the maximum value from it, note the possible obstacles and how you can overcome them.
For example, plan to optimize remote communication for a smoother collaboration if you are recruiting offshore talent.
3. Write Inclusive Job Descriptions
Your job descriptions are the first interaction of a candidate with your company. If you want all suitable prospects to apply, review the job descriptions and edit them accordingly.
Avoid using jargon or sharing a checklist for a candidate. Focus on the high-level skills that attract serious and passionate people willing to learn along with work.
How to Move on From Traditional Hiring Practices?
While talking about unconventional and upcoming talent markets, nothing can beat the freelancing industry. With over 1.2 billion freelancers worldwide, it’s a skilled pool you can’t miss for fast-tracking your growth.
Backing on a reliable platform like ellow is the safest bet to tap into the talented pool of tech freelancers. It understands the value of unconventional talent. That’s why it implements machine and human screening to deliver the best candidates for the required skill.
ellow brings the global talent market to you that’s already screened and vetted so that finding a match doesn’t feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. Ready to scale your team? Talk to ellow today.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Unconventional talent helps you create a diverse workforce with people from various backgrounds. As per McKinsey, organisations with a diverse workforce make higher profits than their counterparts do.
Unconventional talents are those potential candidates in the talent pool who don’t meet the set norms. They are not regular candidates that organizations seek out. They include, but are not limited to, veterans, returning mothers, war victims, college dropouts, candidates with different job experiences and backgrounds, etc.
Ellow has a pool of talented and vetted freelance software developers who are not distinguished based on their job experiences and backgrounds.
Sariga Gopalan
