5 unconventional hiring hacks to learn from these Malaysian companies

Photo credit: COD Newsroom.

The talent shortage is increasing. According to the 2017 Hays Salary Guide, 96 percent of employers in Asia reported this to be a pressing issue. However, the demand for talent is still growing. A sales report states that 42 percent of employers are planning to increase their headcount in the coming 12 months.

Now, let’s look at another set of facts: the methods used to attract talent and fill these positions.

According to the LinkedIn Global Recruitment Report, 70 percent of recruitment budgets go to traditional tactics, spent on job boards, staffing agencies, and recruitment tools.  LinkedIn also reports that talent specialists increasingly wish they could allocate a chunk of that budget toward employer branding.

So, here are five lessons from Malaysian companies that are already pioneering unconventional recruitment tactics and are successfully capturing the attention of Gen Y talent.

Go places where no one else is looking

You’ve searched high and low in your market but have failed to find the right candidates. It’s time to look outside of the box. Fave, a platform offering deals and discounts, took this suggestion quite literally.

“We were short of engineers and decided to look for them outside of Malaysia,” shared  Fave Group’s head of people, Audra Pakalnyte. “We hopped on a plane to India and spent three days getting to know and assessing candidates that have applied to our positions online.”

The recruitment team opted to use the credibility of Sequoia Capital, a Fave investor, to attract initial applications.

Pakalnyte emphasized the importance of getting to know your candidates face to face apart from meeting them at interviews. Each day in India, the team got to know the candidates, having lunch together, chatting, and questioning the candidates on how they would solve their team’s challenges.

The bold move resulted in three new hires that came back with them to Malaysia. On top of that, the company also started building a brand in a new market. The Malaysian startup is still receiving applications from friends of the candidates they hired or met that day.

When you can’t find needed skills, teach them

Piktochart didn’t get any luck looking for full-time front-end Java and Ruby developers though regular job portals. At the same time, they kept receiving internship applications from fresh graduates, who simply could not qualify for a full-time position. They decided to address this gap.

The company opened six vacancies. These were full-time positions with competitive compensation and all the benefits that other employees enjoyed. Anyone accepted for one of these positions would go through a six-month training with company mentors. They would have to attend classes, complete tests, and get their assignments reviewed by their mentors.

“Educating your own developers takes time,” Piktochart’s HR officer, Shen, said. “However, we consider this as a successful project. After six months, two out of three developers have successfully graduated from the Pikto Academy and joined the team.”

The effort generated buzz, increased employer brand recognition, and resulted in more applications.

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