Have you ever had a role to fill that was impossible? It was almost as if the person with all the qualifications didn’t exist in the market?

I think we’ve all been there. When a hiring manager is thinking through what they want in their next team member they usually will list every skill, trait, and experience that would be helpful to them and the team.

Sometimes they can be flexible on these requirements, and other times they decide that they want to hold out for this once in a lifetime candidate.

This can be a difficult situation for a recruiter to manage because hiring manager’s can be stubborn even if the market is really competitive for a certain position.

One great way to bring a data driven approach to help the hiring manager see the market condition is to us a tool that paints a clear picture for them.

Not many people know about this tool, but it is called Supply and Demand by Career Builder.

What’s great about this tool is that it shows all the candidates with a certain job title that are currently available in the market! Then you can even show them data on all the people you have already reached out to.

This is a perfect way to give objective information for them to see and understand exactly what you are up against rather than speaking to them in generalities.

This tool allows you to make yourself indispensable to your hiring managers because you are presenting real-time labor trends and industry intelligence that can more effectively guide your recruiting strategy.

This program is not free, but I highly recommend it as a way to dig into how many available candidates there are, how many other similar jobs are open, how many active job candidates for every opening and also compensation data.

There should be other tools out there or you could create one yourself. The key here is it always better to use data and clear examples rather than general terms to educate the hiring manager about the market.

What data do you use to help guide your recruiting strategy or influence hiring managers?

Go ahead and comment!