Filling Those Hard-to-Fill Vacancies



Most companies have some roles that are particularly hard to fill creating three hidden costs. Every day the role remains vacant

  • results in lost productivity;
  • puts additional workload on other team members; and
  • results in HR and the hiring managers needing to spend time recruiting for it.

Whether the position requires a rare combination of skills and experience or market demand for a skillset exceeds supply, recruitment consultants are often at an advantage over in-house teams for positions such as these.

Why using a recruitment consultant makes sense

For in-house recruitment teams, it is disproportionately time-consuming to find candidates with a scarce skillset for a one-off role. However, a recruitment consultant may see an opportunity in mapping the market and approaching a broad range of candidates as surplus candidates may well subsequently generate fees at other organisations. As a result, you will likely get a longer list of candidates to review.

Before you begin: prepare to be agile

Candidates with scarce skillsets are not only hard to find but also rarely stay on the market long so the ability to accelerate your traditional recruitment processes is critical to success. Before you start recruiting for the role ensure:

  • that budget is ring-fenced;
  • all stakeholders understand they may need to compromise on any skills and experience that are desirable as opposed to critical;
  • the job description/scope of the role is final; and
  • everyone who needs to interview the candidate understands how important it is to make themselves available at short notice.


Employers using video interviewing to avoid the logistical challenges of face-to-face interviews and/or who condense the process but minimising the number of interviews or running them back to back will see fewer candidates accept offers from competitors.

Make your candidate pool as big as possible

Impress on those involved in the hiring process that they need to be ruthless when defining which skills and experience are essential and which are discretionary or could be learned on the job. Being a little less prescriptive about the perfect candidate may enable you to consider people in different sectors and geographies beyond your, and your competitors’, core candidate pools making hiring dramatically easier.

One question you MUST be able to answer

Scarce candidates will typically be getting numerous approaches and offers. To distinguish your role you need to be able to answer clearly and concisely “Why should I be excited about working for you?”. Think about:

1) your organisation – are the vision, values, future ambition of the company clear?; and

2) the role – what is exciting about the work? the package? and the potential career progression or personal development?

If you can’t answer these questions it may be a worthwhile exercise to think about your “employer proposition” in more depth.

Clare Wight is the founder and Managing Director of Clarity Appointments, an independent recruitment specialist. She served time as a Regional Director for The Employment Agents Movement, supporting other independent recruiters.

And she remains an active member of Members Only, a recruitment leadership network promoting high ethical standards, collaboration, diversity, equity and inclusion.

She believes business owners are more fulfilled and higher-performing when they provide emotional and professional business support to other business owners, even those they deem to be competitors. She does this actively, whilst challenging and updating her skills and knowledge of the recruitment sector, enabling her to offer the very best of advice to firms looking to make their next hire.

Clare's also the founder and a contributor to a monthly digest called SME Monthly. SME Monthly is a collaboration with other experts in their field, designed to give SME business owners the tools they need to stay up to date and relevant in a broad range of skills including:


Recruitment; Human Resources; IT and Cyber Security; Finance; Well-being; Marketing

To subscribe, please use the link



Or book a chat with Clare here.

Clarity Appointments is an independent recruitment agency specialising in accountancy vacancies. Situated between St Neots and Cambridge, we work predominantly across Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, with some clients further-reaching due to work won through referrals, including London and Oxford.


loading