How to Attract Awesome Talent During Employee Recruitment Focus on these four factors to build your best team possible.
By Andre Lavoie Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Employers expect things like salary and benefits to help them attract top talent during employee recruitment, but there are several other factors that influence a candidate's decision. Employers have more control than they realize.
Here are a few tactics that can be used to transform a company from a possible place of employment to a desirable promise land for career growth.
Related: How to Attract Talent Via a Clear Hiring Process
1. Location matters.
CareerBuilder and Emsi researched how the most populous U.S. metros were performing against the national job growth trends from 2014 to 2015. The difference between job-growth expectation and the actual number of jobs added shows how a metro area is exceeding, matching or falling behind the national job-growth trends.
Cities like Dallas and San Jose are far exceeding expectations, showing that there are regional market dynamics causing these areas to outpace national growth averages.
In other words, location matters. Employers need to look at what areas are exceeding job growth and how competitive those markets are. Competition indicates that talent exists in those areas. Look at those local pools for talent, but also consider searching for job seekers who would consider relocation.
Candidates weigh several factors before relocating for work. Aspects like cost of living and the corporate health of the company are on the top of the list. Transparency is the best practice during employee recruitment. Providing information about how salary compares to the region's average and cost of living or the overall health of the company can impact a candidate's decision.
2. Build a strong interview process.
The interview process ties directly to a company's employer brand, and it carries a lot more weight than one would think. In the 2015 LinkedIn Talent Trends report, 77 percent of more than 20,000 professionals surveyed stated the interview experience is "extremely or very important" in their decision making.
Most people (53 percent) want to meet the prospective manager on the day of the interview, and 49 percent say they value open discussion that answers their business questions. Almost all of the professionals surveyed (94 percent) want to receive feedback following the interview.
While it is impossible to appease every candidate, it is plausible to build a strong employer brand with a streamlined interview process founded on transparency, active listening, proactive communication and a respect for job seekers.
Related: 9 Questions to Ask Candidates' References
3. Encourage employee referrals.
A Glassdoor survey of 116,000 job seekers in August of 2015 illustrates that employee referrals can boost the chance of a positive match by 2.6 to 6.6 percent higher than any other interview source. Good hires are important, because they ensure high productivity and strong retention. Online human resources solutions offer quality-of-hire metrics to help measure the success of employee recruitment.
To ensure strong recruitment, employers should build referral programs, which can result in higher quality applicants, time savings for human resouces and better retention. With a budget in mind, employers can offer financial rewards to their workforce for every hire made from an employee's referral.
Developing an applicant tracking system that provides key analytics will help inform employee recruitment in the future. Employers should also encourage their workforce to use social media to engage with a wider talent pool.
4. Engage despite a large company size.
Gallup studies released in a January of 2016 report show that the 1,000 employee mark is the tipping point for declining engagement from the employee and the company. Research suggests that companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147 percent in earnings per share. Employee engagement should be a top priority for employers, but how can large companies prevent engagement decline and continue to grow?
Employees appreciate feeling valued as a team member. It's important to treat them as such, involving them in some decision making, inviting them to build teams, encouraging a sense of self-reliance and being transparent about the successes and failures of business strategies.
This sense of engagement needs to be incorporated into the employee recruitment process. Start at day one with writing job postings. Keeping them clear and realistic will attract candidates that are well-suited for the role.
Continue engagement through the hiring process. Interviewers need to ask the right questions to determine who is a good fit. Once a decision is made, hiring managers should remain transparent about the process and provide a positive onboarding experience by sending a welcome message along with some pertinent information about the company.
How do you plan on attracting talent during employee recruitment?
