Niche Talent Acquisition 101: How to Find Candidates for Niche Roles

Finding the right employees for the job is key to creating a successful business, but when you need to look for talents with a unique blend of skills and experience, you’ll need to reassess your recruitment niche roles recruitment strategy.

As more and more companies find new ways to innovate their business to maintain a competitive edge, the answer to differentiating oneself from the market lies in getting specific demands right. This is where niche professionals come in with their particular set of skills that they can leverage for your business.

However, filling up niche roles isn’t as easy as hiring for general vacancies. There’s more to this hiring process than what meets the eye. In this article, we’ll explore niche talent acquisition, and we also give you a brief how-to guide on hiring for these types of positions.

What Does “Niche Role” Mean?

Niche roles are highly specialized professions who have the skills, experience, and qualifications to resolve complex problems They’re part of a unique group of subject matter experts whose expertise in certain topics makes them well sought out.

These types of roles are defined by three values:

• Specialization because these types of professionals have the combination of skills and knowledge that’s not widely applicable in other areas. This can involve a unique blend of industry-specific understanding, technical expertise, and specialized qualifications.
• Specific need means that niche roles address a particular problem or function within a larger field. In some cases, these professionals come in to bridge the gap that broader roles can’t handle effectively.
• Limited availability because niche roles are less common than general positions, there are fewer job openings for these professionals and even fewer specialists.

An example of a niche job would be a Sustainability Marketing Specialist. Compared to a regular marketing specialist, a sustainability marketing specialist focuses on creating marketing initiatives that promote a company’s eco-friendly practices and social responsibility.

What is Niche Talent Acquisition?

The process of niche talent acquisition is difficult. It requires identifying, attracting, and hiring professionals with a highly specialized combination of skills and expertise in a certain industry. While traditional recruitment methods can acquire generalist skills across sectors, you’ll need to get more creative to attract niche talents.

Recruiting niche talents may be a lot of work, but they can also give your company a competitive edge by helping your company excel in certain areas that can strengthen your position in the market. This small change can turn into a better bottom line over time.

How to Acquire Niche Talent

Acquiring niche talents means taking pages from recruitment marketing to create a holistic experience for candidates. To find the top talents, you’ll need to work on your entire brand.

Niche talent acquisition is difficult because not everyone is suited for this role. You’ll need to filter through more candidates because you need to see if they have the combination of skills and experience to accomplish the job.

So, not only does your recruitment team need to step up their game by learning what to look for, but they also need to know where to look. Needless to say, this will mean that you’ll need to sink in more resources to find the right talents for the job.  Especially because the candidate pool for these specialists is much smaller, which means you’ll need to employ targeted strategies.

In this section, we’ve made a quick how-to guide to help you jumpstart your recruitment process.

Understand Niche Role Requirements

The first thing you need to do to start your niche recruitment process is to understand the role. You can look through job boards or ask questions from professionals performing the same task.

Here are some questions you may want to find the answers to:

• What skills should the candidate possess?
• What is the salary range for this position?
• What are the perks and benefits associated with this role?
• What makes this job special?
• What is the purpose of this role?
• What are the responsibilities of this role?
• How much relevant experience is required for this role?
• What are the short- and long-term goals in this role?
• What challenges will the candidate face in this role?

Create a Clear Job Description

Once you’ve answered all the questions above, you’ll need to make a clear job description for the role you’re recruiting for. Having a clear and compelling job description will help you find the right people for the job, and it can also function as an effective filtering tool for applicants.

Craft an Organized Hiring Process

Aside from crafting a clear job description, you want to make sure that you have a hiring process that’s organized so that applicants can have an easy time applying for your company. Put your best foot forward and integrate tools like an applicant tracking software into your process to help your recruitment experts keep track of candidate progress in your hiring process.

Use Various Hiring Methods

Finding the right candidates for the job can be difficult if you’re not reaching the right market. Niche candidates are much harder to find so, to speed up the hiring process, we recommend using various hiring methods.

Niche Job Boards

Using niche job boards makes it easy to reach your target market – if you’re using the right keywords and you’ve made the right job description. Utilizing these types of job boards can also help direct the right professionals to your company, which can yield better results than general job boards.

Networking Events

If there are any networking events for this type of job, you may want to clear your schedule and attend these types of events. These events may just help you find a lead for the vacancy you’re trying to fill.

Employee Referrals

One way to speed up finding new hires for your company is through employee referrals. Employee referrals provide you with the opportunity to tap your employees’ network and often, this type of referral can be beneficial for your company because there’s already a level of trust and knowledge about the new candidate.

Social Media

Using social media in your strategy is another way to increase your reach. Using the right keywords and with the help of algorithms, you may just find the right candidate for the job. This channel can even help you connect with passive talents.

Niche Role Agencies

If you’re still having a hard time finding candidates for niche roles, you can partner with an agency to help you find the candidates you need. While this may come with a certain fee, it can automate recruitment for this specific job.

With the network that these agencies have, they may even engage passive candidates to apply for the job.

Champion Your Brand

To attract candidates to your job openings, make sure that you have a strong employer brand profile. A good brand can entice candidates to choose your organization because you show them what your company stands for, what it’s like to be a part of your team, and the impact of the work that you do.

Listen to Candidates

Finally, you should also listen to the candidates you interview and get feedback on your niche hiring process. Niche recruitment can be a lot of trial and error but opening yourself to feedback can help you create a solid strategy in a shorter time frame.

If possible, try to implement the feedback you receive in real time, even if it means revising and reposting your job vacancies.

Filling Niche Roles Much Faster with Skillfuel

We hope that you’ve learned how to jumpstart your niche role recruitment process. It’s clear that this task is not an easy one but with the right recruitment management system, you can develop an effective approach to recruitment without compromising your efficiency.

If you’re looking for a company that can provide you with the recruitment software you need to help you fill niche roles, you can rely on us at Skillfuel to provide you with the technology you need.