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Hiring top engineers and chip experts in today’s competitive and candidate-driven job market can be challenging. From crafting tailored job descriptions to coordinating technical interviews, each step in the hiring process requires careful consideration. And with changes in technology and shifting demographics, hiring managers need new, creative ways to find and attract qualified candidates. Over time, you may feel your once tried-and-true efforts are losing their effectiveness.

If your current strategies aren’t performing to your standards, considering new perspectives can help you refresh your hiring tactics and access top talent.

Here are three simple ways to rethink some hiring practices:

Another day, another new design and system challenge. It may seem like every day you face an obstacle that questions your merit, skill, and competence. If you can’t solve it, you may have a sinking feeling that another engineer— someone smarter or more talented than you— can. Over time, no matter how long your track record of accomplishments is, you may begin to suspect that you got lucky or that you don’t belong in your job. This nagging sense of fraudulence is known as imposter syndrome.

There’s a misconception about the underlying reason behind the lack of representation of women and minorities in STEM-related jobs: women and minorities are not choosing to pursue degrees in these fields and therefore not available for hire. It’s easier for recruiters or hiring managers to shrug off the importance of bringing in diverse candidates when they can blame the universities and the lack of graduates coming down the pipeline. But this way of thinking contributes to passive bias and lack of action to find more diverse candidates for STEM positions.

Everyday, it seems we see another report of time-to-fill at an all-time high. How can this be? More technology should help speed up the hiring process, shouldn’t it? But elements in the process like increased screening methods create more hoops for candidates to jump through. This leaves them to take other jobs while your desks remain empty for yet another day.

Today, contingent workers make up more than 40% of the U.S. workforce. With those numbers, it's no surprise the trend is on the rise for companies with blended workforces. Blended workforces utilize a mix of full-time and contingent workers making the workforce management an even more complex process. To help bring efficiency and solutions to the complicated workforce situation, many companies are turning to Managed Services Providers (MSPs).

Over the last decade, the amount of contingent labor making up the U.S. workforce grew more than ten percent. Today, more companies recognize the value of blended workforces—enough to make up 40.4% of the workforce, a figure that’s expected to only increase in the coming years. A blended workforce incorporates contract or freelance workers into the mix with full- and part-time employees. This type of arrangement can be mutually beneficial for both the employer and the worker offering advantages like flexibility and specialized skills for specific projects.

Employers look to contingent workers for a number of reasons. If they need to fill a vacancy left by an employee on leave or want to bring in someone with a highly specialized skill set for a new project, or even test out a temporary working situation that could eventually become permanent. Whatever the reason, more employers embrace the contingent worker than ever before.

But that doesn’t mean a blended workforces comes without challenges.

In the U.S. workforce, jobs in STEM are the fast-growing and show no signs of stopping anytime soon. Along with the opportunity to advance technology and help better our world, careers in STEM offer lower unemployment and higher pay than other industries. It’s no wonder it’s becoming a growing career choice for many graduating students.

But once you’ve got STEM workers in their jobs, how do you keep them engaged? STEM-related jobs can be competitive. Losing great talent when you’ve worked so hard to find it can cost you.

The semiconductor industry and its labor market have been on quite a journey this year. As 2016 draws to a close, we want to be sure you’ve gotten all the important content to set you up for a successful 2017. We’ve put together our most popular articles from 2016 in case there’s anything you may have missed! Be sure not to miss another semiconductor update.

What’s been happening in the semiconductor industry lately? We’ve seen a trend toward company mergers while semiconductor experts make efforts to prepare for increasing challenges in the semiconductor industry. And semiconductor sales didn’t do so bad either.

Have you ever thought how STEM initiatives can help your community—and your company? Using community-based outreach to promote STEM initiatives in education is a great way to develop young minds, inspire them to better our planet, and help prepare them for a career that will make a difference.