4 Maritime Recruitment Challenges (And How to Solve Them)

Have you ever wondered why sourcing and recruiting the right seamen for your seafarer jobs seems to be such hard work? All you want is to fill your empty maritime jobs with suitable candidates but it seems to be increasingly difficult to hire top talent.

With that in mind, we decided to take a good look at some of the recent staffing challenges that shipping companies face, and explore how you can solve them to eliminate your hiring headaches for good.

How to solve these 4 maritime recruitment challenges 

As a maritime recruitment agency we’re in a prime position to identify - and address - sourcing and staffing issues. And if any of the problems below are affecting your shipping company’s recruitment drive, these are the things you need to stay on top of before they become even more problematic.

Challenge: The battle for top talent

The problem: The talent pool in the shipping industry is diminishing due to a number of reasons: More seafarers than ever are jumping ship to embark on shore based maritime jobs. Fewer cadets are joining the industry.

There is a lack of promotion of seafaring as a career at a high school or college level, particularly among young women. New technologies are disrupting the shipping industry leaving skill gaps left, right and center.

The solution: It’s time to get proactive. Waiting for candidates to come to you when they’re ready just isn’t going to cut it. You need to get out there and fight for skilled crew members for your seafarer jobs.

Shipping companies need to approach the task just like sourcing other products. For example, think of the number of licensed seafarers out there who might not be actively looking for a job - but who could be interested in sea careers with your company if you approached them and made them an offer they couldn’t refuse!

Challenge: An un-dynamic maritime recruitment process

The problem: Your recruitment process is slow. You’re dealing with manual tasks that make the day to day grind tedious and time consuming. By the time it takes you to schedule an interview with an applicant another, more responsive, shipping company has snapped them up.

Your hiring process is taking too long and candidates are dropping by the wayside.

The solution: Streamline and automate your maritime recruitment processes. Technology is your friend - use it to your advantage.

Martide’s integrated crew management and recruitment platform enables you to find candidates, communicate and negotiate with them, and hire them all in one centralized place.

Best of all, because you can build your own recruitment pipelines you’ll only ever be shown candidates that are qualified for your jobs. Imagine how much more efficient you’ll be!

Read more: 3 Ways to Simplify Your HR & Maritime Recruitment Processes

Challenge: A lackluster candidate experience

The problem: See above! You’re spending so much time dealing with paperwork, following up with phone calls and answering emails that you don’t have the time or energy to focus on what really matters: finding great people for your seafarer jobs and ensuring they stick with your maritime recruitment process and see it through to the end.

If talented mariners are dropping out halfway through the process or declining your job offers, you need to take urgent action.

The solution: Conduct an audit of your shipping company’s hiring process. Does the process leave you feeling inspired and hoping you’ll be offered the job? Or is it more likely to make prospective hires run for the hills? Go direct to the source and ask recent recruits what they thought of the process and address any negatives.

Again, automating tasks and making it easier for mariners to apply for your vacant maritime jobs by using a purpose built crewing system will go a long way to improving the candidate experience.

Digitization is everything for the modern maritime recruitment agency and the upcoming generation of seafarers are expecting you to make full use of technology.

Challenge: A lack of teamwork

The problem: You’re trying to do too much. Your processes are unwieldy and you’re spending all your time trying to chase up and track down candidates while collating the huge amounts of data and documents you have for each of them. You don’t have time to focus on the bigger picture: sourcing and hiring top seafaring talent.

The solution: Implementing a applicant tracking system that pulls all of a prospective employee’s data into one place and then giving other members of your team access to that data will see your productivity skyrocket!

Using a Software as a Service solution, such as Martide’s online maritime recruitment platform enables you to invite teammates to join you, while still allowing you ultimate control by setting permissions for access.

You can also choose to outsource your recruitment to new or existing manning agents.

Hello efficiency and new recruits, goodbye hassle!

Look to the future of maritime recruitment

Recruitment in the shipping industry can be difficult. And with the introduction of so many new technologies it doesn’t look like it’s going to get any easier. You may already be having trouble finding the right seafarers for your vacant seafarer jobs but moving forwards you’re also going to have to start thinking about ways to attract digital talent.

Related: How Martide's App Helps Solve Maritime Recruitment Challenges

Coding, Artificial Intelligence, digitization and automation are changing the landscape of maritime recruitment. How prepared are you to navigate it?

Implementing a integrated maritime recruitment and crew management software solution that has been developed with the needs of the shipping industry in mind is your first step towards streamlining your processes and future-proofing your recruitment strategy.

If you’d like to learn more about how maritime recruitment agency Martide can help you achieve that. Register your account or talk to us today.

PS - don’t forget to tell your crew to download our seafarer job app for iOS or Android from the Apple App Store or from Google Play!