If you work in human resources, you know that even in this depressed economy, you have open positions that are hard to fill.

It’s no secret that these jobs are in technical areas, areas that demand a high degree of education and expertise – engineering, IT and healthcare. The fact is that for these areas of the labor market, demand is high, even though in other areas there are too many people chasing too few jobs.

A recent survey of more than 2,600 companies around the country showed that one-quarter of the businesses had jobs for which they could not find qualified people, according to Matt Ferguson, CEO of a job search firm. Ferguson says that their data shows that there is only one person looking for a job for every three open positions in a number of areas, including nurse practitioners and cloud developers.

If you are a human resources professional and/or recruiter, there are things you can do to help recruit the talent you need, Ferguson says.

One practice Ferguson recommends is to keep track of the positions that are hard to fill. If you are aware of the hard-to-fill positions, you can put a process of ongoing recruiting into place – networking with job hunters who are looking for jobs that may not be available now, but are likely to open up in the near future.

You also need to keep track of where the skilled workers are in your area. Find the cities that have the most people in the areas you are looking for and recruit there. Talent is not distributed evenly throughout all geographical areas. You have to go to where the supply is.

You also need to match the salary to the demand for the position. Don’t expect to hire someone in a hard-to-fill area at a bargain price. Make sure you are matching what your competition is offering.

You also can train workers yourself. If you are scouring the landscape for candidates, and you still cannot find anyone, your company should take on the task of training candidates in the skills that are needed. Many people have the basic level of skills that are needed to benefit from the training.

If you’re looking to fill hard-to-fill positions in construction, architecture or engineering in the Washington, DC area, give RealStreet Staffing a call. We look forward to hearing from you!