By Kevin Roth

“We have interviewed a ton of people, but each candidate seems to be missing at least one piece of what we need. Is this just the way the market is right now?”

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it sounds like this has more to do with your hiring strategy as opposed to the job market.

Forget the Where’s Waldo strategy of having to find the one exact perfect person.

In order to have any success adding talent right now, you have to be willing to hire for what the candidate CAN become vs who they are at this exact point in time.

I’m not talking about a candidate who has a terrible attitude or someone who would clearly never do well with your team.

I’m more so referring to the learnable skills that someone might be lacking, but can clearly pick up with a bit of training and mentorship (I.e. a particular software program or a specific functional process).

You may feel like you don’t have the time or bandwidth to train someone on these things, but what about the extra time you and your team are spending filling this void while you spend months searching for the right person? I think the 1-2 weeks of extra training would outweigh the months of added stress and workload.