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Mastermind

3 Things You Need to Know About Hiring Top Talent in Today’s Job Market

As you are probably aware, finding and motivating talent to fill your job openings is becoming increasingly difficult in today’s very competitive job market. The following will provide you some insight to the reasons why and what you can do to be more effective.

There’s a shortage of great talent

We are at a historically low unemployment rate. Anyone who is worth hiring (and many that are not) is constantly being approached by recruiters, including your employees! You must therefore assume that every candidate you are pursuing has multiple opportunities they are exploring and possibly a job offer in hand that they are comparing to what you have to offer before deciding which is best for them.

Solution: Work on your Employer Brand and promote it everywhere possible. Define and promote what we call your WOW factor. Why would anyone leave their current job and come work for you? Depending on the individual, some of these may include:

Flex work schedule and/or working remotely, etc.
Great culture/work environment.
Opportunity to work on more challenging projects that make a difference in the world.
Growth opportunities (personal and professional) and immediate career advancement based on results.
Opportunity to work with other smart people they can learn from and together, can accomplish a lot more
Better benefits and pay although most of the above listed items trump pay as long as you are competitive!

Your WOW factor should be a brief paragraph that outlines all of these elements that you can use in all of your communications with candidates: Your career page, job Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook and Glassdoor business pages. Ensure all of your employees know your WOW factor and believe these to be true as they are your best (and typically under-utilized) source of employee referrals.

2. Focus on providing a great candidate experience

As I stated, candidates have a lot of options and they are trying to make as good of a decision as you are. if you do not provide a GREAT candidate experience, they will opt out and go where they feel valued and appreciated.

Solution: Every step of your hiring process needs to convey that your company is a great place to work. It begins with your employer brand and then becomes obvious at every step of the process they go through. These can include:

Application Process

Minimize redundancy, keep it simple and easy. Don’t ask for basic info that may already be provided in their resume.

Pre-screening

Take steps to identify if they possess the required knowledge and skills necessary to be successful in the role. Top talent want to work with other smart people and pre-screening for these specific skills is seen as a positive step in weeding out the weaker applicants and says a lot about your company – we only hire the best!

Interviews

Be prepared, don’t wing it! Be aware of the environment they will experience and ensure it is positive, professional and well-coordinated. Ensure that all of your hiring managers take time to pre-determine what questions they will ask that are relevant to the role and identify if the candidates possess the right knowledge and skills. And inform each candidate that you realize that this is a two-way street and that you know they are trying to make a good decision just like you are. Therefore, you want to be sure that you answer all their questions and ensure they are fully informed.

Communication & Responsiveness

ensure you are pro-actively responding to candidates throughout the entire process, including informing them of your timing, delays, next steps, replies to their “thank you for the interview” emails or if they are no longer being considered. A bad experience will show up on Glassdoor and this is the first place candidates go to to check out if they want to work at your company!

3. Relying too much on HR and/or Recruiters

The ability to hire top talent is the greatest asset of the world’s greatest managers (read – First, Break All The Rules, By Marcus Buckingham). Unfortunately, too many hiring managers assume that this is the responsibility of recruiters and/or HR. Realize this; even the best HR/recruiters are eventually going to send you 2 or 3 candidates that YOU have to interview and decide who the best one is for your team, and this means that you HAVE to be as good if not better at interviewing than the HR/recruiters. The cost of a bad hire is enormous for the company and YOU as you will now have to spend the time repeating the hiring process, and training someone new – again!

Solution: Make it a priority to learn how to conduct an effective, objective interview. There are lots of books, articles/blogs and training programs available to help you become great at interviewing.

Want to learn more, visit our website xp3talent.com and download our free tools. You can also read my book, HIRE TRAIN RETAIN: How to get the right people in the right roles, doing the right things.