In this ever-changing world of work, competition for talent is fierce. Despite this, a staggering 62% of Chief Human Resource Officers report that their talent attraction strategy is not aligned with their future workforce needs according to Gartner Inc.
Attracting the best talent is one of the leading challenges for HR professionals. Sourcing the correct talent is the essence behind a company’s success, but it can also be extremely costly if a hire is sourced wrong.
The Recruitment and Employment Confederation found that a poor hire at mid-manager level with a salary of £42,000 can cost a business more than £132,000, with 85% of HR decision-makers admitting their organisation has made a bad hire.
So, how can HR begin to revamp old traditional methods whilst integrating technology to help attract the best talent?
Create and maintain a positive company culture:
If addressed correctly, the right internal company culture is the core foundation of attracting and retaining top talent. In a Robert Half survey, 35% of more than 1,000 workers polled said they would decline a job offer if the role was a perfect fit, but the company culture wasn’t.
This justifies HR’s roles in ensuring employees understand their work is having an impact on the company’s bottom line, employees are treated with respect, fair opportunities are presented for career growth and most importantly, make sure employees are smiling – work isn’t a prison.
Once you have this set-in place, don’t get complacent. It’s easy for a few regular occurrences to begin to disrupt the culture, make sure you spot the early signs and prevent your company from falling into the toxic work culture trap.
The importance of brand perception:
Building a strong employer brand is an important element in helping your organisation stand out from the crowd when competing and attracting the best talent. Strive to build a brand that is seen as the ‘employer of choice’ in your industry.
Encourage the employees who can amplify your employer brand to share their experiences across social media and review sites. According to Glassdoor, 70% of people look at the reviews before they make career decisions. Begin to use these comments as testimonials and promote them across your about us and careers page – remember, people want to deal with people.
Ask your biggest employee advocates to become brand ambassadors on LinkedIn, prompting them to connect and engage with potential candidates, providing more in-depth reviews and to create short blog posts around content central to our previous point, the company’s culture.
Candidate experience, more than just a buzzword:
Candidate experience is based on how a job seeker views your company once the hiring process is complete. Talent Board indicates that 77% of people are likely to share positive experiences with those in their network based on positive candidate experiences – aiding your brand perception and the likelihood of attracting the best talent!
HR should first start by identifying if the company is hiring for an actual purpose, get stuck into some skill gap analysis and uncover if you are filling a real need.
If so, produce a clear job description which is accessible across multiple platforms to meet the modern work experience needs. Pew Research Centre found that 43% of smartphone owners have used their mobile phone as part of a job search. Once applicants start flooding in, provide meaningful communication with the candidates through every step of the hiring process.
Ensure candidates receive your full attention throughout the interview stages and if they are unsuccessful, spend time giving honest feedback within a timely manner. The last thing you want to do is fall at the final hurdle. LinkedIn identified that 27% of candidates who have had a poor candidate experience would actively discourage others to apply.
It’s time to involve technology:
Over the years, technology has reinvented the recruitment landscape, helping to streamline many tedious processes that improve the candidate experience and bolster the employer brand.
As busy professionals, it’s hard to keep up with the latest advances in technology. Although you don’t need all the latest developments, it’s important to not become outdated. The latest tech can help increase an employee’s skill set and retain talent by allowing them to work where they want, when they want and how they want. Let’s not forget, it could be a deciding factor for a candidate when choosing between your company and a competitor.
Like it or not, social media has influenced many of our lives and this impact extends to the working world. According to Career Builder, 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates during the hiring process, whilst Talent Works found that 59% of candidates use social media to research companies.
Companies can also get the upper hand when it comes to attracting the best talent by using multiple social channels to advertise vacancies and allowing candidates to apply directly in a matter of minutes through their social profiles.
Each business has its own unique way of screening candidates but video communication is becoming increasingly popular and it’s clear to see why. Using video allows you and the candidate to complete the initial stages of the hiring process from anywhere at any time, preventing multiple lengthy face-to-face interviews. Incorporating video in your hiring process could see the average time it takes to hire a candidate significantly reduce, is it about time you get your Skype account out?
In Summary:
These points are just a small part of the overarching picture of attracting best-in-class talent but beginning to incorporate these into your overall hiring strategy makes acquiring top talent a much smoother process.
If attracting talent is not your only problem and you find that the recruitment process itself time-consuming and challenging, fear not. Natural HR is specifically designed to bring best-practice HR processes, helping you manage the whole recruitment process from raising a requisition to actually hiring the employee. Book a free demo with one of our HR specialists today.
