Finding the right person for a specialist role has never been as simple as posting a job and waiting for applications.
As organisations become more focused on skills, technology continues to reshape roles and competition for experienced professionals remains high; specialist hiring is becoming an increasingly important challenge for businesses.
Our recent research with The Talent Labs, based on responses from 137 Talent Acquisition professionals and leaders, found that 32% identified specialist and hard-to-fill roles as the main reason they engage recruitment agencies.
But what makes these roles so difficult to fill, and what can organisations do differently?
Specialist doesn’t always mean senior
When we talk about specialist hiring, it’s easy to think only about senior or highly technical positions.
In reality, a role can be difficult to fill at any level.
A position might require a very specific combination of technical and creative skills. It could involve experience with a particular platform, sector or type of project. Or perhaps the number of people with the right combination of skills is simply very small.
The challenge isn’t always a lack of candidates – It’s a lack of the right candidates.
And that changes the approach needed to find them – The right candidates aren’t always looking.
One of the biggest challenges with specialist recruitment is that the people businesses want to hire aren’t necessarily searching for their next role.
- They may already be employed, happy where they are, or simply not looking at job boards.
- This makes traditional recruitment approaches less effective.
- A job advertisement can only reach the people who see it. For harder-to-fill roles, organisations often need to go further by identifying potential candidates, understanding what motivates them and engaging them with the opportunity.
This is where access to hard-to-reach talent becomes particularly valuable.
Our research found that 28% of respondents identified access to hard-to-reach talent as one of the greatest areas of value provided by recruitment agencies.
Market knowledge matters
Specialist hiring isn’t just about finding people. It’s also about understanding the market you’re hiring into.
- What are candidates earning?
- How competitive is the market?
- Which skills are in demand?
- Where are the strongest pools of candidates?
- Are your expectations realistic for the salary you’re offering?
And if you’re struggling to attract the right people, is the problem the availability of candidates, the role itself, the salary, the location or something else?
These questions can be difficult to answer without current market insight.
In the research, 21% of respondents identified market insight and salary intelligence as a key area of agency value.
For organisations hiring specialist roles, that intelligence can help shape the recruitment strategy before the search even begins.
Quality matters more than quantity
When a role is difficult to fill, sending more CVs isn’t necessarily the answer.
In fact, a large number of poorly matched applications can create more work for an already busy hiring team.
A smaller shortlist of people who genuinely meet the brief can be far more valuable.
20% of respondents in our research identified high-quality shortlists as one of the greatest areas of agency value.
For businesses, that means being clear about what is genuinely essential for the role and working with recruitment partners who understand the difference between a candidate who could do the job and one who is genuinely suited to it.
So, what can businesses do differently?
There isn’t one solution to specialist hiring, but there are several areas organisations can consider.
- Define the skills, not just the job title
Job titles don’t always tell you enough about the person you actually need.
Look beyond the title and identify the skills, experience and capabilities that are genuinely essential. This can help widen the search without compromising on what matters. - Understand your market
Before starting a search, understand the availability of the skills you’re looking for.
If the candidate pool is small or highly competitive, you may need to reconsider the salary, location, flexibility or experience requirements - Look beyond active candidates
For specialist roles, some of the strongest candidates may never see your vacancy.
Consider how you can reach people who aren’t actively looking but might be open to the right opportunity. - Review your employer proposition
Specialist candidates can have plenty of options.
If you’re asking someone who isn’t actively looking to consider a move, you need to be able to explain why they should choose you.
That means thinking about more than salary. Culture, flexibility, career development, the work itself and the wider employee proposition can all influence whether someone is willing to make a move. - Know when external expertise could help
Internal Talent teams have never had more tools available to them, and many organisations are successfully managing the majority of their recruitment directly.
That doesn’t mean every role needs to be handled in the same way.
For particularly specialist, urgent or difficult-to-fill positions, external expertise can complement internal capability by providing market knowledge, access to hard-to-reach candidates and additional capacity where it’s needed.
The question isn’t necessarily whether you should use a recruitment agency.
It’s where an external specialist can add value that you can’t easily replicate internally.
The future of specialist hiring
Our research suggests that organisations are becoming more selective about how they use recruitment agencies.
That’s not necessarily a sign that external recruitment is becoming less important. Instead, it points towards a more focused approach, where specialist expertise is used when it can make the greatest difference.
For businesses, this means being clear about where external support can complement internal recruitment capability, and for recruitment partners, it means bringing more to the table than candidate volume.
Expertise. Market intelligence. Access. And a genuine understanding of the hiring challenge.
At Devonshire, we’ve spent 40 years specialising in Creative, Presentations, Marketing, Digital and Content recruitment. We work across permanent, freelance and contract hiring, helping organisations find the right people across some of the most specialist areas of the market.
Because the Right Hire Changes Everything.
Want to explore the research?
Our research with The Talent Labs looks in more detail at how organisations are using recruitment agencies, where they continue to add value and how these relationships could evolve.
Read the full report HERE
Want to continue the conversation?
We’re also exploring these themes at our live virtual roundtable:
The Future of Hiring: What’s Changed and What Comes Next?
16 September 11:00 – 12:00
We’ll be discussing Roles of the Future, RPO Models and how to bypass hiring freezes, alongside a guest speaker, live polls, Q&As and even a key takeaway at the end.