Recruiting Hard to Fill Positions (Strategies That Actually Work)
Every hiring manager has faced that one role that lingers open for months, draining team morale and slowing down progress. Maybe it’s a highly technical position. Maybe it’s in a remote location. Or maybe it’s just not getting bites, no matter how many platforms you post it on.
I still remember one of the toughest searches I ever led: a senior-level DevOps engineer with niche cloud security experience, specific compliance certifications, and a requirement to be in the office. But only in a city where demand far outweighed supply. After 45 days, dozens of outreach attempts, and several frustrating interviews, we finally made a hire. But not before we completely overhauled our strategy, from rewriting the job description to leveraging AI tools for passive sourcing.
That experience taught me something critical: recruiting for hard-to-fill roles requires more than just persistence. It requires precision.
These aren’t your run-of-the-mill hires. They’re the mission-critical roles with limited candidate pools, sky-high expectations, and often, very little margin for error. Filling them demands creativity, adaptability, and a strategy built on data, not guesswork.
In this guide, we’ll break down what makes a role hard to fill, how to spot the early signs, and what strategies actually move the needle. From reframing job descriptions to using AI-powered tools, you’ll walk away with a smarter, faster plan to land the right candidate, no matter how tough the search.
Because with the right strategy, even your most challenging hire doesn’t have to feel impossible.
What Makes a Position Hard to Fill?
Not all job openings attract the same level of interest or qualified applicants. Some roles remain vacant for weeks or months, resulting in lost time, productivity, and money for your company. To recruit more effectively, it’s helpful to understand why certain positions are challenging to staff. Here are the most common factors:
Skill shortages and niche expertise
When demand for a particular skill set outpaces the supply of qualified professionals, hiring becomes an uphill battle. Roles that require cutting-edge technical knowledge, such as cloud computing, machine learning, or regulatory compliance, often fall into this category. These are the positions where candidates are fielding multiple offers, and recruiters must act quickly and creatively. And in many cases, you’re not just competing with local employers, you’re up against global demand.
Location
Geographic constraints can severely limit your candidate pool. Jobs based in rural areas, locations with limited housing or amenities, or regions with high commuting demands tend to deter top talent. While remote work can help, not all companies or roles can offer that flexibility.
Even in metropolitan areas, relocation requirements can narrow your funnel. If a position demands onsite work but doesn’t include relocation support, you’re effectively eliminating every qualified candidate outside a commutable radius.
Pro tip: Offering hybrid or remote flexibility, even just a few days a week, can significantly expand your reach.
Find the perfect fit for your team.
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Uncompetitive compensation or rigid requirements
If your compensation package isn’t in line with industry standards, especially in a candidate-driven market, your job listing will be ignored. However, compensation isn’t just about salary; benefits, bonuses, flexibility, career growth, and even company culture all play a role in determining the attractiveness of your offer.
Additionally, overly rigid job descriptions can create artificial barriers. Requiring ten years of experience for a role that could be performed by someone with five or listing every “nice to have” as a “must,” may discourage otherwise capable applicants.
Key tip: Prioritize what’s truly essential, and be open to training or upskilling strong candidates.
Related: Search Average Salaries by Job Title and Location
A weak employer brand or a bad reputation
Candidates are doing their homework, and a lackluster online presence can cost you top talent. If your company doesn’t have a compelling careers page, recent Glassdoor reviews, or a clear mission statement, candidates may question what it’s like to work there.
Even worse, if your organization has a reputation for high turnover, a lack of diversity, or poor work-life balance, it will be reflected in your applicant pipeline, or lack thereof.
Quick fix: Investing in employer branding, employee testimonials, and transparent communication can make even the most challenging role more appealing.
How to Identify If a Role Will Be Hard to Fill
Sometimes, you know right away a role is going to be a challenge. Other times, you don’t realize it’s hard to fill until you’re knee-deep in a stagnant applicant pool and wondering why nothing’s moving. Spotting the red flags early can save weeks of wasted time and help you design a more targeted recruitment strategy from the start.
Analyzing market data & talent pools
Before posting a job, review the data. Tools like LinkedIn Talent Insights, EMSI, and even Google Trends can provide insight into how many professionals match your criteria and how in demand they are. If you’re hiring for a role with 500 open jobs and only 120 candidates in your region, you’re already behind the curve.
Market data can also show you where your ideal candidates live, what industries they’re currently working in, and what salary ranges are trending. The earlier you gather this intel, the better you can shape your outreach and adjust expectations.
Pro tip: Benchmark your role against current demand. If you’re in a high-competition field, consider using proactive outreach and offering enhanced benefits to stay competitive.
Benchmarking job post performance
If your job post has been live for 7+ days and you’re seeing:
- Low application volume
- Poor match quality
- High drop-off rates in your ATS…
That’s a signal you may be targeting too narrowly or not offering what the market wants. Use these performance metrics to iterate quickly. Sometimes, minor tweaks to the job title, salary transparency, or the opening paragraph of your description can make a significant difference.
SEO tip: Monitor which keywords job seekers are searching. Align your post with those terms to improve visibility on job boards and Google.
Historical hiring trends in your company
Your recruiting metrics are a goldmine. Which roles have consistently taken the longest to fill? Which departments report the highest turnover or offer rejection rates?
If you’ve posted the same role three times in two years, it’s time to treat it as a hard-to-fill position and build a proactive strategy, rather than recycling the same template and hoping for different results.
Example: If your company struggles to hire experienced software developers but thrives at hiring junior talent, consider building a mentorship program to promote from within rather than constantly searching externally.
Proven Strategies for Recruiting Hard-to-Fill Positions
Once you’ve identified a role as hard to fill, the worst thing you can do is stick to business as usual. These positions require a different level of creativity, speed, and precision. Below are the proven strategies we’ve used repeatedly to fill even the most elusive roles, without burning out our team or exceeding our budget.
1. Rewrite and reframe the job description
A generic job description won’t cut it when you’re hiring for a specialized or competitive role. Candidates in high demand aren’t just looking for another job; they’re looking for purpose, impact, and alignment with their values.
How to reframe:
- Lead with the why: the mission, the challenges, and the impact of the role.
- Focus on outcomes over bullet lists of duties.
- Use inclusive, engaging language that resonates with your target audience.
Example: “You’ll help design cloud infrastructure that supports life-saving medical research” is more compelling than “Manage AWS server environments.”
Related: How to Write a Job Description
2. Expand your sourcing channels
Posting on job boards alone won’t surface the kind of talent you’re after. You need to go where your candidates already are, even if they’re not actively job hunting.
Try these sourcing tactics:
- Industry-specific job boards and professional associations
- LinkedIn boolean searches and custom outreach
- Communities like GitHub (for developers), Slack groups, Reddit, or even Discord
Related: Innovative Sourcing Techniques for Recruiters
3. Leverage employee referrals and internal talent
Sometimes the perfect candidate is already on your team; you just haven’t asked the right person. Employee referrals tend to close faster, stay longer, and integrate more effectively culturally.
Ways to tap into this resource:
- Offer referral bonuses with tiered incentives (e.g., bigger bonuses for hard-to-fill roles)
- Promote opportunities internally and track career mobility
- Encourage department leads to refer people from their own networks
Bonus tip: Include talking points or short blurbs employees can copy/paste when sharing openings on their social media.
4. Hire for potential, not just perfection
When roles are tough to fill, perfection is the enemy of progress. Instead of holding out for the unicorn with every “must-have” skill, focus on transferable skills and trainable aptitude.
What to do:
- Identify core, non-negotiable capabilities
- Loosen up on nice-to-haves
- Build a plan for upskilling once the person is hired
Example: A candidate who doesn’t know your CRM but has a proven track record of quickly learning new platforms is still a win.
Related: The Top Reasons You Should Hire for Potential, Not Experience
5. Offer creative compensation and benefits
If your salary band isn’t market-leading, make the rest of your offer package irresistible. Candidates care deeply about flexibility, well-being, and work-life balance.
Options to consider:
- Signing bonuses or relocation stipends
- Remote work or flexible hours
- Career development stipends, wellness benefits, equity, or extra PTO
Insight: A client once filled a rural nurse practitioner role in under two weeks by offering a 3-day workweek and paid housing for the first six months.
Related: Attract Top Candidates With These In-Demand Perks and Benefits
6. Use AI and automation to your advantage
AI is no longer a buzzword; it’s a recruiter’s secret weapon. The right tools can help you find passive talent, personalize outreach, and dramatically reduce time-to-fill.
Tools to explore:
- HireEZ or SeekOut for sourcing hard-to-reach candidates
- Fetcher for automated outreach sequences
- AI resume screeners that rank candidates based on past hiring success
Pro tip: Use AI to prioritize candidate fit, but still rely on a human connection to close the deal. People want to feel valued, not processed.
Related: Trending Recruiting Technology: Must-Have Tools
Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring for Hard-to-Fill Roles
When you’re dealing with a role that’s already difficult to fill, even minor missteps can add weeks or months to your hiring timeline. These common pitfalls are surprisingly easy to fall into, but can seriously derail your search if you’re not careful. Here’s how to avoid them.
1. Relying solely on job boards
Job boards like Indeed or LinkedIn are great for casting a wide net, but for hard-to-fill positions, they rarely bring in the high-caliber, niche talent you need. Most of the best-fit candidates won’t be actively job searching, and even if they are, they might not be browsing traditional listings.
How to fix it: Use job boards as just one part of a broader, multi-channel strategy. Combine them with outbound sourcing, employee referrals, and targeted outreach via LinkedIn, Slack groups, or professional forums. The more intentional you are about where and how you promote the role, the better your chances of surfacing the right candidates.
2. Ignoring passive candidates
Passive candidates, those who aren’t actively applying for jobs, often make the strongest hires. They’re employed, engaged, and in many cases, open to new opportunities if the right one comes along. The mistake? Waiting for them to come to you.
How to fix it: Don’t wait. Build a list of target profiles and reach out directly. Utilize tools like SeekOut, HireEZ, or LinkedIn Recruiter to identify qualified candidates and tailor your outreach to what matters to them (e.g., flexibility, career growth, mission alignment). When it comes to passive talent, personalization is what moves the needle.
Related: Attracting Passive Candidates: Ways to Secure Top Talent
3. Creating unrealistic job requirements
One of the fastest ways to make a role impossible to fill is by creating a job description that reads like a wish list. Stacking your posting with niche skills, years of experience, and must-have tools can scare away excellent candidates who could succeed with a little support or training.
How to fix it: Get aligned internally on what’s truly non-negotiable versus what can be taught. Remove filler language like “rockstar” or “guru,” and aim for clarity over flashiness. You’ll widen your talent pool and potentially find hidden gems you would’ve otherwise missed.
4. Moving too slowly
Speed is critical, especially in a competitive talent market. When interviews span multiple weeks and decisions get stuck in approval loops, top candidates often lose interest or accept offers elsewhere.
How to fix it: Streamline your process wherever possible. Pre-schedule interviews, align stakeholders in advance, and maintain open communication. Consider implementing a 48–72 hour decision window after final interviews to keep your top picks engaged and confident in your timeline.
Related: Hiring Hacks to Accelerate Your Recruitment Process
5. Overlooking employer branding
In a world where candidates Google everything, your employer brand is part of your recruiting strategy. If your company lacks visibility online or has poor reviews, you’ll lose great candidates before they even hit “Apply.” Worse, they may never consider your company again.
Fix it: Proactively build your employer brand. Keep your careers page updated with real employee testimonials and team spotlights. Respond to Glassdoor reviews (yes—even the negative ones). Utilize social media to showcase your culture, values, and behind-the-scenes moments that make your workplace unique.
When to Partner With a Staffing Agency
Hard-to-fill roles can stretch your team thin, especially when you’re struggling to source, screen, and still come up short. That’s when a staffing agency becomes more than a vendor; they become your competitive edge.
If your team is spending more time searching than interviewing, or if the role has been open for weeks with little traction, it’s time to call in reinforcements. Agencies bring specialized tools, deep talent networks, and the bandwidth to move quickly. Many can tap into pre-vetted candidate pools or fill roles in days, not weeks.
They’re especially valuable when:
- The role is niche or requires specialized expertise
- Your job postings attract the wrong applicants
- You need to move fast to avoid project delays
- You’re struggling with turnover or past hiring misfires
Just make sure you choose the right partner. The best agencies act like an extension of your internal team. They understand your industry, align with your hiring goals, and provide qualified candidates, not just resumes.
Need help with a tough role? At 4 Corner Resources, we help companies fill their most difficult positions with speed, precision, and a human touch.
Talk to a recruiter today and let’s find your next great hire.
