How to Attract Better Talent for your Business

Attracting top talent has always been essential for any brand looking to grow and succeed. Whether you’re a startup or an established global brand, a team of talented individuals can help you achieve your goals and stay ahead of the competition. However, with all businesses looking to do the same, how can you make your brand more attractive to potential recruits?

Behind all good talent acquisition is a strong candidate attraction strategy. With the skills gap widening, as many as 87% of employers in the UK are struggling to fill positions due to a lack of candidates with the skills needed for the role. Finding the right match is getting tougher, and more competitive. So, what can companies do? Below, we’ll look at how your company can stand out and be a compelling brand for talent, and how to create a hiring strategy that finds and retains employees for longer, helping you build a stronger, more effective team.

Strong Company Culture

Having a company culture that stands out in today’s job market is a vital part of attracting top talent. Candidates will take notice of your brand if it matches closely with their own ideals and outlook, strongly aligning them with your culture. Just like a hiring manager will assess candidates on their skills and experience, potential employees will research your company too, to discover what it is that makes you a great place to work. They’ll look for employee reviews and your social media feeds. They will check how diverse your workforce is. They will read through your brand values and position on social issues and the environment. Brands that aren’t transparent with this type of information may struggle to attract top talent. Not all candidates are focused on the compensation package, but rather on how they will fit into your company and achieve job satisfaction overall. According to Glassdoor, strong workplace culture is more important than salary for 56% of workers globally, with 79% considering a company’s mission purpose before applying for a job there.

Having a strong company culture helps to strengthen employee retention too, helping to create a bond with your employees and a sense of belonging. If your teams have a sense of purpose and can see the bigger picture of what the company is trying to achieve, they will be more engaged and productive. Hiring becomes less of a necessity in the future if you can nurture the talent you already have, rather than having to replace them, which can potentially be difficult and costly.

Working on your company culture will help with talent attraction and acquisition if you have clearly defined core values and these are communicated and shared with your team and in job postings. Conducting employee surveys or focus groups can help you to continuously evaluate and improve your company culture, ensuring it remains relevant.

Employee Referrals

Identifying and hiring candidates for your business isn’t easy, so why not ask your employees to help? What better way to discover hidden gems in the job market than by encouraging employee referrals? Your employees simply recommend people they know for currently available roles. Not only can they potentially headhunt for your company and discover the talent that would be otherwise difficult to find, but your employees can also provide first-hand experience and be the perfect advocates for working at your company.

Employee referrals have a number of advantages, including speeding up the hiring process rather than waiting for top talent to discover your job listing and apply. You will also be able to gain faster insights into a candidate from the employee who refers them, helping speed up the decision process. Referrals can also be much more cost-effective for your business when compared to placing job ads and using recruitment agencies, especially if it’s taking a long time to get the right candidates through the door.

Employees can be incentivised for bringing in referrals too, which can boost employee engagement. This could be a bonus in their pay package or a gift once their referral is successfully hired. The process should be as transparent as possible, keeping your teams in the loop with how the scheme works and the progress of any referrals they make. With as many as 40% of all candidates through employee referrals being hired and 70% of employers finding candidates that are a better fit for company culture in this way, there are lots to benefit from doing so.

Better Recruitment Marketing

With a focus on promoting your company and any open positions you currently have, recruitment marketing can be ideal for identifying and hiring the right candidates. The main aim is to provide a positive overall image of your company so that working for you is seen as an attractive prospect. Of course, this has to be built on honesty and transparency, reflecting your company culture, values, and the genuine advantages of working for your company. To be able to find top talent that is the perfect match for your open roles, you’ll need to put in place a recruitment marketing strategy that is well-defined. With 75% of job seekers investigating a company’s reputation before applying, and 50% of candidates avoiding employers with a bad reputation even if the salary is higher, your brand’s reputation will be noticed.

You should know the profile of the type of employee you want to find and build from there. As you are looking to entice the best of the available workforce, you’ll want to create content on your website that will highlight your company culture and values, engaging your target audience of potential new hires. The more good stuff you can show, the better your chance of uncovering those hidden gems. Recruiting and retaining top talent becomes much easier if you can provide plenty of information that connects candidates with your company’s existing employees and demonstrates your work culture, so they can easily envisage working for your company. You can use your company’s social feeds to promote this, helping to shape a narrative around your brand and promote available roles.

Create a Great Hiring Experience

The hiring experience is crucial once you attract the right candidates. If the experience is not ideal, then it can undo all the hard work put into your candidate attraction strategy. Not only does the interview process need to be well-defined and work like a well-oiled machine, the onboarding experience you put new hires through needs to continue that good work. Positivity is key and will improve your company’s image and reputation. This will also ensure you are continuing to bring on employees who are advocates for your brand, helping with future recruitment efforts too.

During the hiring process, keeping candidates informed regularly is important but many employers overlook this. Also crucial is providing timescales during the process so they know what to expect. Being as transparent as possible in the job specification as well as during interviews ensures no surprises and helps candidates more accurately imagine what the job will look and feel like. With 87% of talent admitting a better interview experience can change their mind about a role or company they may have doubted, it’s important to get this right.

An efficient hiring experience requires giving feedback to candidates whether they have been successful or not, and showing appreciation for taking the time to apply. This ensures that whilst they may not have been successful this time, it doesn’t burn any bridges in future, and candidates will have a positive experience they can share with others. Also, receiving feedback from candidates on the process helps with refining and improving it for the next time.

Talent Acquisition – Put the Hard Work in Now

To bring in top talent for your company, the groundwork has to be done. The more effort put into creating a hiring strategy that is designed to bring in the right type of candidate the better. This will also help to improve retention rates too. Crafting a positive company culture and image and highlighting this online and through social feeds is crucial, whilst the hiring experience needs to be on point.

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