More
Career Advice
HR Insights
Evan Cave
02 December 2025
Hard-to-fill supply chain roles remain unfilled for months because traditional recruiting tactics no longer reach qualified candidates. Job boards, LinkedIn posts, and recycled job descriptions attract active applicants, but the best supply chain professionals are often passive, fully employed, and not browsing openings.
These unfilled positions create real operational impact. An open demand planning role delays inventory decisions. A vacancy in procurement forces teams into reactive purchasing. Missing logistics talent slows distribution and increases costs. The longer these roles stay open, the more the organization feels it downstream. These challenges compound when hiring managers lack the processes and alignment needed to move quickly and decisively on qualified candidates.
The challenge becomes even harder with niche requirements: ERP-specific planning experience, procurement backgrounds in regulated industries, logistics expertise in international freight, or operations managers with Lean Six Sigma credentials. According to SHRM’s 2025 Talent Trends, 69% of employers struggle to recruit qualified candidates, especially for specialized technical and supply chain positions.
Filling these roles requires a different approach — one that moves beyond job boards and reaches candidates where they actually spend their time. To understand what works, we interviewed CEOs, founders, and hiring leaders who successfully filled roles that traditional methods failed to close. Their insights reveal a clear pattern: effective recruiting for hard-to-fill positions relies on targeted outreach, non-traditional engagement strategies, and value propositions that competitors overlook.
Below are nine proven strategies from leaders who filled hard-to-recruit roles using methods that actually work.
Rather than pushing out job postings after job posting to various boards, we reached out directly to contributors in the niche OS mapping and EV infrastructure communities - the folks who are solving the issues we need to solve for. Instead of discussions that felt more like hiring, those conversations seemed closer to partnerships, and the candidates who were on board were motivated by impact as much as by compensation or title.
The second approach was offering project-based trial work instead of full-time offers immediately. It provided another mutual, low-stress way of verifying the skill, communication profile, and real-world problem-solving abilities. And incredibly, it also filled up our pipeline: high-caliber candidates who weren't actually looking for work said yes to a small project. Winning in specialized roles is about expanding where and how you search for them.
Rob Dillan, Founder, EVhype.com
We had a senior WordPress developer role open for four months with zero quality applications. I realised we were fishing in an empty pond, so I targeted a completely different group: frontend developers working at SaaS companies who were bored building the same dashboard components repeatedly.
I wrote a LinkedIn post showing three of our weirdest client requests from that month, the kind of creative problem-solving those developers never got to do in product work. Within a week, I had 12 conversations with people who weren't actively job hunting but were starving for variety. Hired someone within three weeks who never would have searched for agency jobs.
The lesson was stop recruiting where everyone else is looking. Find people who have the skills but hate their current context.
Nirmal Gyanwali, Founder & CMO, WP Creative
An effective strategy to recruit for hard-to-fill positions in the CRO industry is to focus on building a strong talent pipeline well before roles need to be filled. This involves regularly networking within industry-specific communities, participating in relevant conferences, and maintaining active connections with experienced professionals. Additionally, creating partnerships with universities offering programs in clinical research can help to identify and nurture emerging talent. Highlighting your organization's unique value proposition — such as flexible working arrangements, opportunities for growth, or a strong commitment to impactful research — can also make your roles more attractive.
Leveraging targeted social media campaigns and tapping into referral networks within your organization often leads to more qualified candidates. By being proactive and strategic about talent acquisition, you can significantly reduce the time and effort required to fill high-demand positions. Focusing on quality engagements and relationship-building with potential candidates ensures sustained access to top talent.
Valentin Radu, CEO & Founder, Blogger, Speaker, Podcaster, Omniconvert
In my experience, recruiting for hard-to-fill roles a smarter approach is more favourable than a wider one. Sometimes traditional methods miss the systems-minded candidates who may thrive in fast-growth environments. One approach which proved to be innovative in overcoming challenges was reverse-mapping operational fingerprints. This means tracing impactful organizational shifts back to the individuals behind them. Sometimes, we look for such individuals through unconventional sources like conference lineups, project credits, and tooling contributions. When talking with candidates or conducting an interview scenario based conversations allow us to understand how they think through real operational challenges. Also, the narrative outlook on the future instead of a standard job description helps recognise candidates aligning with the company's direction.
Anastasiya Shyianok, Director of Business Operations, MEDvidi
We recently had to hire an SEO specialist experienced in the finance industry. Traditional job boards and LinkedIn only gave us a large number of generalists, so we had to go where the candidates are. A really short search gave us a list of communities (Slack, Reddit) where SEOs spend their time and we started asking for people with a very specific background. After a month of no luck, we found someone in under a week.
Daniel Kroytor, CEO, TailoredPay
Our company uses an apprenticeship program with community outreach to find candidates for HVAC tech and licensed plumber positions, which has proven successful. We created a recruitment pipeline through mentorship programs that target students from Citrus Heights high schools, trade programs, and local youth organizations.
Our hiring approach now emphasizes career development and organizational values instead of traditional technical qualifications. The real career development stories of our crew members have been more compelling than any job posting on traditional job boards. Our initial investment in employee training and cultural development has led to reduced turnover and stronger internal skill development.
Dimitar Dechev, CEO, Super Brothers Plumbing Heating & Air
We successfully recruit for writing positions, but this involves filtering through large volumes of applications - many of which have AI-generated content. To address this, we embedded thoughtful niche questions throughout the application. Our questions help us identify candidates who provide specific responses in turn (rather than generic content). The results speak for themselves: we've since seen an uptick in genuinely qualified candidates.
Maurice Harary, CEO & Co-Founder, The Bid Lab
Something that's helped us here has been networking. Our own personal networking connections as company leaders, and then also asking our employees if they know anybody in their own networks who might be interested. If you can connect with people in similar positions to those that are hard to fill, that can often be a direct line to people qualified for those spots.
Jeremy Yamaguchi, CEO, Cabana
We try to cast a wider net when it comes to recruiting, especially for positions that are harder to fill. If we only have our job openings posted on our website, or only use a single online platform like Indeed, that automatically reduces the number of candidates we reach pretty significantly. So, we try to use a handful of different platforms and also try to take advantage of in-person events as well, like job fairs and networking events. The wider the net you cast, the more likely you are to find great candidates purely from a numbers perspective.
Eli Zimmer, Director of Operations, Luxaire HVAC Services
Q: Where can I find veteran supply chain recruiters?
Veteran supply chain recruiters work at boutique firms founded by former supply chain professionals. Look for recruiting firms whose team members have hands-on experience in procurement, logistics, operations, or manufacturing. You can also find experienced supply chain recruiters through industry associations like CSCMP or APICS.
Q: Where can I find specialized supply chain recruiters?
Specialized supply chain recruiters typically work at boutique firms that focus exclusively on supply chain, procurement, logistics, and operations roles rather than large generalist staffing agencies. These firms offer deeper functional expertise and understand the technical requirements specific to supply chain positions.
Q: What are the top supply chain recruiting firms?
The best firm depends on your needs. Boutique firms like SCOPE Recruiting, specialize exclusively in supply chain roles and excel at sourcing passive candidates for specialized positions. Larger firms like Korn Ferry, Michael Page, and Robert Half provide broader reach for mid-level or high-volume hiring needs.
Q: How do I find passive supply chain candidates?
Passive candidates aren't browsing job boards, so reach them where they spend time professionally: APICS/ASCM chapters, supply chain conferences like CSCMP, LinkedIn groups focused on logistics or procurement, and industry-specific forums. Build relationships before positions open and showcase interesting supply chain challenges your organization faces rather than generic job postings.
Q: How can I make hard-to-fill roles more attractive without increasing salary?
Highlight aspects of the work that candidates can't find elsewhere: interesting technical challenges, variety in projects, autonomy in decision-making, opportunity to build new systems, or impact on meaningful outcomes. Many professionals, especially those currently employed in repetitive roles, value engaging work as much as compensation when considering new opportunities.
Complete the form below to start your search for top-tier talent.
