Find out whether anyone is applying before you spend another quarter adjusting the job description.
Why can you not fill a technical role?
Three different problems get treated as one.
The first is that people apply and none of them are suitable. That is a screening problem, and it usually means the posting describes something different from the job.
The second is that suitable people apply and decline your offer. That is a compensation or a company problem, and it is uncomfortable and fixable.
The third is that nobody applies at all. That is a supply problem, and no amount of rewriting the posting will change it.
The third one is the situation people misdiagnose most often, because it looks like the first two from inside.
What happens when a specialist skill does not exist locally?
I needed database administrators and I could not find them anywhere in the United States.
That surprised me. I assumed database administrators existed in a country this size, and that finding them was a matter of looking properly.
Nobody was putting in an application. Not unsuitable applications. None.
So I started looking at sponsored hires from outside the country. My boss did most of the work setting the program up and managed it. I found the people.
None of that was about cost. I was not seeking cheaper labor and there was no policy telling me to do it. I had roles I could not fill and a domestic market producing no candidates.
How does employer sponsorship work?
The employer petitions, not the worker, and that is the first thing most people get wrong.
The main route for specialty roles requires the company to file on behalf of a specific person for a specific job. It typically requires at least a bachelor’s degree in a related field.
Most positions fall under an annual cap, which means a lottery. Registration happens during a window each spring, and if registrations exceed the cap, selection is by draw.
After selection comes a certified labor condition application, then the petition itself, then consular processing for many applicants.
Every step has a fee and a waiting period, and the lottery sits in the middle of it. You can do everything correctly and simply not be selected.
What has changed about sponsorship recently?
Enough that anyone using my experience as a guide would be badly out of date.
Selection is no longer a straight draw. It is now weighted by wage level, which favors higher-paying positions and disadvantages smaller employers competing for the same people.
A separate six-figure payment applies to certain petitions for workers currently abroad, introduced in late 2025. Expedited processing costs more than it did. Automatic work-authorization extensions were eliminated and site visits expanded.
None of that existed when I was doing this. Verify the current rules before acting on any of it, because this area changes faster than almost anything else in hiring.
What does sponsorship cost a small employer?
Five figures per petition before anyone does a day of work.
Ten thousand dollars and up is a fair planning figure for a typical employer, counting government fees and legal help. Smaller employers pay somewhat less, since some fees are reduced or waived below a certain headcount.
Somewhat less is still five figures, which is the band a company with forty people is planning against.
Then add the six-figure payment on certain petitions, and add the possibility that the lottery does not select you, in which case the money spent on preparation bought you nothing but a place in next year’s draw.
Does sponsorship produce better hires?
Mine came out about even, and that is the honest number.
Two of the people I sponsored worked out well. One later left and started his own company, which is doing well. Another stayed for many years, moved on to a new company, and is doing well there.
The other two did not work out.
Half is a good hit rate. Nobody says that out loud, because every article about hiring implies a good process approaches certainty, and mine across thirty-three years is roughly half.
What I will not do is explain why the two did not work out, because I do not know with any confidence. The reasons a hire fails are usually specific and unglamorous, and the manager rarely has the full picture.
The number that matters is the one nobody prints. An expensive, slow, legally involved process produced the same odds as ordinary hiring.
What should a small company do about specialist scarcity?
Establish which of the three problems you have before spending money on any of them.
Count the applications. If suitable people are applying and declining, the answer is compensation or the role. If unsuitable people are applying, the posting is wrong. If nobody applies, you have a supply problem and the options are different.
For a supply problem, three routes exist and none is easy. Sponsor somebody, which is expensive, slow, and now includes a lottery. Contract the skill rather than employ it, which works well for specialist work that is not continuous. Or grow it internally, which takes a year or more and requires hours your team probably does not have.
The specialist shortage is not new and it is not going to resolve. Entry-level technology employment has fallen sharply while specialist roles stay scarce and expensive, which means fewer people are entering the pipeline that produces specialists. That was true in the nineties for the same reason. Specialists take years to make and nobody is making them.
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