Winning Recruiting in Talent-Scarce Markets

Ask any energy or industrial exec what's keeping them up at night, and you'd probably be surprised at how often staffing comes up. The roles you need most are now rarer than unicorns, and most companies are still doubling down on the same tired recruiting playbooks that were written for a talent pool that's vanished.

A staggering shortage.

If you're looking for an example of just how much things have changed, look no further than HSE and safety manager roles. Veterans are retiring faster than replacements can be trained, and the credentials can take years to earn. McKinsey estimates that by 2032, for every new position opened in critical trade roles, more than 20 other hires will be replacing people walking out the door.

Part of the issue is the enormous demand, and that problem won't get better soon. Deloitte has projected that 1.9 million open manufacturing jobs will go unfilled over the next decade, and that prediction is on course to become a reality if the current talent shortage doesn’t turn around. Using our safety leadership example again, fields like AI data center construction, semiconductor fabrication, EV manufacturing, and grid modernization are all drawing from the same limited talent pool at the same time. Each of those projects needs safety leadership, and more volume like that is coming soon.

Raising pay only shuffles talent back and forth, from one company to another. If you win a bidding war, you've moved the bar even higher for your competitors and set yourself up to pay even more next time.

Who’s even looking?

Traditional recruiting is founded on the simple hope that once you post a job, the right people will show up, but the people you're targeting aren't even looking on job boards anymore.

Roughly 70% of the workforce is made up of passive candidates who are already employed and performing well, while only about 25-30% are actively searching at any given time. When you post a role, you're competing for that significantly smaller slice.

That's unacceptable inefficiency. If you're looking for our example of a credentialed HSE manager, your active pool might be five people. So how do you reach that other 70%?

Recruiting needs marketing, too.

In talent-scarce markets, recruiting is a marketing game.

Think of it like demand generation. Your best prospects aren't in-market today, but you know they'll be in-market eventually, and when that happens, you want them to already know who you are and want to work for you. To reach that level of awareness, you need to cultivate the right presence long in advance. Still, too many companies overlook the importance of their employer brand.

A highly skilled professional considering a move wants to know everything they're walking into. What's leadership like? How will they be treated? How can they grow? Of course, you already know all the answers, but if they don't, they won't wait until the interview to find out.

Writing the right narrative is something you can tangibly achieve. Your company's leaders can post more on LinkedIn. Speaking of LinkedIn, your company page should be posting content that establishes your brand as a thought leader. Tailor your website's careers page around finding seasoned professionals. The more effort you put into advertising your desirability as a workplace, the more interest you'll receive.

The right tools for the right recruits.

Once you see recruiting as a marketing challenge, you'll start realizing you already have all the tools you need.

For instance, targeted outreach to specific professionals works the same way ABM works for accounts, and nurture sequences will keep your candidates warm while you wait for them to apply.
Measurement matters too. Pay attention to which channels are delivering hires by bringing the same CRM and attribution discipline you use for sales, and you'll quickly see what's working.

And, like many campaigns, sometimes you need to cast a wider net. Different industries can produce entirely transferable skill sets, and your internal pipelines should be able to turn experienced personnel into the leadership you need over time. It's also important to note that many industries, including energy and industrial, have historically underrecruited entire demographics, which means there's available talent that your usual sourcing might have never reached.

Again, all of this takes time, so it won't fill your current opening immediately, but it'll make everything easier a year or two down the road.

At HexaGroup, we help energy and industrial firms bring demand generation discipline to the talent crunch. If recruiting is your biggest growth bottleneck, let's engineer a pipeline that delivers.