Effective recruiting strategies vary from industry to industry. There are, however, certain techniques that tend to work across the board. As you begin the process of finding the best recruits for your business, you’ll need to take some time to not only think about what makes a potential hire stand out for your business, but also what makes your business stand out to the perfect hires. Doing so will require a thorough understanding of how to market your business to potential candidates and how to ensure that you’re screening each application to ensure you get the employee who best fits your business.
Your business is unlike any other. As such, you’ll need to develop a unique recruiting strategy. This does not, however, mean that you’ll necessarily need to throw out everything you know about recruiting. Instead, you’ll want to take a look at how you’re working to recruit candidates now and get rid of those aspects of the process that just don’t work for you. Every recruiting strategy was developed by a company that needed that particular strategy to get great candidates – so make sure yours works just as well for your own company. Don’t feel like you have to follow a specific process just because it’s the industry standard.
Try to remember that you’re not just hiring what you see on a resume – you’re hiring a real person. As such, you need to think about what your goals are for that person and for your business. You’ll want to put some thought into not only what you’re getting out of your hire, but also what your hire is going to get out of your company. Doing so will not only help you find a person who’s a better fit for your company, but it will help you to ensure that the person you hire is willing to stick around.
A candidate persona can be thought of as your marketing profile for a potential hire. It’s the conglomeration of information including current employee profiles, hiring needs, and background data among other data points. You’re creating a profile for an ideal employee, one that will attract that person to your business. Once you have the persona identified, you’ll be able to start attracting the best potential hires. It may take you some time to create the ideal persona for your candidates, but the work you put in now will help you to better target the people you need.
It’s just as important to figure out what your potential employees are looking for in a company. Many companies make the mistake by having the mindset that it’s only the employee needs to put his or her best foot forward when in the midst of the employment process. Do research to find out what attracts employees to businesses in your field, as well as what other companies do to retain their best workers. Your goal should be to attract the best talent so that they’ll feel the need to impress you.
From most to least important:
It’s rare that a field will have such a limited number of opportunities that top candidates have no choice but to apply to a single company. Unless your business has an absolute monopoly in your industry, you’ll have to figure out a way to get the best and brightest to apply to your job postings instead of those of your competitors. Significant thought needs to be put into this factor, as even those who create fantastic job opportunities will lose out on top-tier talent if they are unable to catch their attention in the first place.
Recruitment is as much a game of marketing as it is one of filling open positions. You are looking to market your business as the best place to work for potential employees, even if you can’t offer the same perks or salary as your competitors. As such, you’ll need to get creative with your attempts to recruit. Your job is to go above and beyond the mundane, adding new methods of attracting employees to the tried and true methods of just posting on job boards or visiting college recruitment fairs.
If you want employees who are more than average, you’ll have to go beyond the average to bring them in.
If you want to hire top talent, you’re going to have to go beyond posting open positions on your local job boards. This is not, however, to say that you can avoid job boards altogether. If you can use job boards in the correct manner, you will certainly attract top talent. You will need to do more than just passively wait for applicants, though. Want to hire the best? You’ll need to aggressively pursue them before someone else convinces them to take a different job.
(Source: Gallup State of the American Workplace Report 2017)
Social media is a fantastic way to get in touch with new people. If you’re looking to hire top talent, you’ll want to do a bit of research on the who’s who in your field. Once you know the potential hires, reaching out to them on social media is the logical next step. You can have a conversation with these individuals in a low-stress setting, allowing you to make the pitch for your business before you start the formal recruiting process. Not only will reaching out through social media help you to make a connection, but it will also allow you to gauge the personality of the individuals to whom you reach out.
This figure increases to 86% of younger job seekers who are in the first 10 years of their careers.
Your end goal when recruiting is to bring a new employee into the office and integrate them into your business’ culture. One of the better creative recruiting strategies, then, is to jump ahead and give your potential employees a look at how your business runs by holding open houses and workshops at your office. Doing this will allow you to bring potential employees in your office and give them an idea of space in which they might work. If you hold a workshop in your office, it might also give the potential employee an idea of the type of mentorship they can expect to receive while furthering their own careers.
If you can’t bring your potential employees to see your company’s culture, make sure that you have a way to send it out to them. A good newsletter that’s available to employees and the public alike can be a great way to advertise exactly what makes your company so unique. Your newsletter doesn’t need to be an advertisement, but it needs to be something that will interest people outside of your office. Fill it with the details of things that make your office standout, including the choices made by the leadership. Doing so will help to attract the talent that’s looking for a special place at which to work.
It should be a given that you’re going to screen your potential employees. After all, you don’t want to waste anyone’s time and you certainly don’t want to bring in an employee who is going to be a liability to your business. Despite the fact that you need to screen employees, though, you’ll want to figure out a screening method that won’t insult your potential employees. You’ll need to find a way to look at relevant information but in a non-invasive manner.
One useful way to screen employees is to look at the data that they put out in the public eye. This is actually a fantastic way to not only see how the employee looks at the rest of the world, but at how the rest of the world will see your employee once he or she represents you. Look for problematic statements and behaviors ahead of time, checking them against the statements he or she has given you. Doing so will help you to remove extreme cases from your hiring list quickly.
Your potential employee gave you a list of references upon your request. He or she certainly expects you to contact these people because they are likely to have something positive to say about him or her. Because the contact is expected, contacting references is a very non-invasive way to screen employees. Double-check to ensure that the references given actually have a relationship with the potential employee and that they can corroborate any information that he or she has given to you. Speaking to references is an excellent way to get a non-invasive insight into the personality of your potential employee.
Marijuana screening is still common, even in those states in which the possession of marijuana has been legalized. Whether or not your business screens for marijuana is a choice that your business will have to make. If your business’ reputation can be hurt by an employee who uses recreational or medical marijuana, you may still want to screen. Likewise, any business that works with the federal government or in a federally-regulated business must continue to screen. If your business doesn’t have those worries, you may not need to worry about disqualifying a promising candidate because of marijuana usage which may be a necessary medical treatment.
Once you’ve made it through the basic screening techniques, it will be time to interview. Don’t try to be too elaborate with this process. Instead, attempt to keep things as simple as possible. The three strategies below you will help you to make your search much more efficient and help you to gain the respect of your interview candidates.
Don’t waste the time of your potential employee. If you bring him or her into an interview, you should get all the information you need in one sitting. For positions that require input from multiple interviewers, you should schedule those interviews for the same day. Bringing in a potential employee for multiple days of meetings means that you aren’t interviewing efficiently and that you certainly aren’t utilizing your information correctly to make a choice. Show your candidates the respect they deserve by avoiding multiple rounds of interviews.
You should, however, have multiple candidates interview on the same day. While you might feel like you’re helping employees by giving them their own days on which to interview, what you’re really doing is dragging out the hiring process. Conduct your interviews on the same day so that your company can fill its vacancies efficiently and so that you can let your candidates know your decision in a reasonable amount of time.
Never try to lowball a good candidate. While there might be a number of very good reasons to watch the bottom line, you should always make a solid offer that is just as beneficial for your candidate as it is your business. High-tier candidates know exactly how much they worth and they know when a company is attempting to squeeze them for a lesser deal. If you don’t make a realistic offer, you’ll be stuck with an employee who doesn’t know his or her own worth.
Finally, ensure that your business is a place where people love to work. Your job is to make sure that new employees become long-time employees, never moving on simply because of your company’s culture. Treat employees with respect from the moment they interview through the day they retire, and make sure they love your company as much as you. Take a look at these company culture examples for ideas on how to enhance your company’s culture to attract talented people.
Also, taking steps to learn how to inspire your team can go a long way towards boosting your employees’ excitement to come to work day in and day out. If you can make a company that people love, the right candidates will find you, because your employees will be spreading the word to everyone in your industry they network with.
When you have the right recruiting strategies in play, you’ll be able to find a higher class of candidate. While the effort you need to put in might be significant, the rewards will be even greater. If you’re ready to bring new employees in, make sure to visit PayTech and download the new employee welcome packet.
