Attracting and Hiring the Right Talent for Your Business
Today’s hiring landscape is vastly different than in the past. So much so that 80% of organizations feel that hiring has become more challenging due to the competitiveness of the hiring market. With tight resources often in play, more and more companies are becoming hyper-focused on hiring the right talent.
Recruiting the best employee fit for your business starts well before you post a job opening. You must first understand what employees are looking for, build trust as an organization, leverage technology before and during the hiring process, and remain adaptable.
Whether you’re a small business looking for new talent or you’ve been around for a long time and want to fuel growth with the right people, the principles we’ll discuss in this article are sure to connect with you. Let’s talk about some insights provided during the Ampleo CFO & Growth Summit by Carl Sokia that can help you hire top talent for your company!
The Value of Trust
Merriam-Webster defines trust as “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” Any relationship expert will tell you that trust is vital in a healthy personal relationship, but it is also crucial in the relationship between employees (or potential employees) and their employers.
“Trust defines an organization’s license to operate, lead and succeed. Trust is the foundation that allows an organization to take responsible risk, and, if it makes mistakes, to rebound from them,” says Edelman, a global communications firm specializing in brand reputation. “For a business, especially, lasting trust is the strongest insurance against competitive disruption, the antidote to consumer indifference, and the best path to continued growth. Without trust, credibility is lost and reputation can be threatened.”
So when should building trust with employees begin?
Building trust begins even before an employee is hired. With that in mind, leaders and recruiters must carefully determine the kind of company culture megaphone they are communicating to the outside world, using the following tactics.
Reflect Your Positive Company Culture
What lens is being used to view your business? While you may define your company culture in one manner, is what you are sharing publicly reflecting a tone that is dissonant to your overall mission and values?
73% of job applicants will only consider companies that have similar values to theirs. Because an employee’s first impression of you may be through the lens of social media messaging, the company website, or your leaders’ LinkedIn profiles, it is important to review the kind of messaging you put out into the world. That means leadership can no longer remain passive in sharing the right messages. There are two ways to go about this:
- Reactive messaging: An emotional (or forced) response to a situation that has already happened. This is often hectic and rushed, with little time for internal review and alignment.
- Proactive Messaging: A thought-out response to a situation that has not yet arisen. This allows time for internal alignment with all stakeholders and analysis of procedures and policies to achieve consistency.
With the heightened scrutiny of the digital world, communication and interactions with customers, current employees, and partners should not be reactive. Instead, anticipate and be proactive about the communication you share. Proactive messaging takes responsibility before a situation even occurs. If you do as you say you will, you can build trust that will entice future employees to work with your team.
Take an Individualized Approach
When building trust, you must consider each new hire as an individual and understand what motivates them. Focusing on the collective—“I’m going to do for you what I’m doing for everyone else”—will not work. Organizations must take an individualized approach that includes tailoring the total reward program to fit a person’s needs while maintaining equitability for the entire team. This approach takes a great deal of time and energy but is one of the biggest keys to success in the future of the workplace.
In Edelman’s study, 80 percent of employees consider personal empowerment “a strong expectation or deal breaker when considering a job.” Personal empowerment consists of the following:
- Regular communication
- Truthful information
- Easy employee input
- CEO embodies values
- Employees in planning
- Employee diversity
Knowing that, what can you offer to the individual person you are recruiting to help build trust? This consideration will go a long way with a person considering working with your organization.
Foster Experiential Relationships, Not Transactional Relationships
For far too long, companies have focused on building transactional relationships with their employees: “I’m going to do something for you, you’ll do something for me, and that’s the end of our interaction.” Reviewing Edelman’s research shows that it’s long past time to transition to experiential relationships.
As mentioned before, employees are prioritizing personal empowerment. In addition, they expect the following:
- Career Advancement (83 percent): Competitive wages, work experience, training, career opportunities
- Societal Impact (71 percent): Reflects my values, greater purpose, meaningful work, social impact, listens to employees, CEO takes a stand
Understanding these expectations will help you craft an experience that will satisfy your employees and leave them feeling fulfilled, a powerful draw for potential employees.
Lean into Technology
When it comes to attracting the right talent, you are competing against all the other organizations that are hiring for similar positions. Standing out from the crowd and appealing to the right kind of hires will require getting creative.
The movie Moneyball is an insightful look into how the Oakland Athletics found a clever way to compete with richer organizations in attracting talent. With the help of Peter Brand, an Ivy League graduate, General Manager Bill Bean sets out to find some diamonds in the rough. Leveraging sabermetrics and analytics technology, they identify overlooked players who have a great deal of potential. Billy faces some backlash from his organization, as his new approach is quite different from the 50 years of previous recruitment tactics. However, Billy quickly proves his theories correct as he builds a winning team.
The story of Bill and Peter and the Oakland A’s is a powerful one. By thinking outside the box and harnessing the power of technology, you can compete with other organizations looking for talent within the same pool.
As you consider individuals to interview, what kind of analytics are you reviewing? How are you implementing technology in your search for and analysis of potential candidates?
There are several recruitment apps on the market today. These apps can help you create screening questions, provide skills assessments, and analyze different applicants. They can also help you craft the perfect job description, ensuring you are interviewing the right kind of people.
Never before have organizations had access to so much information about their potential hires. With just a quick search, you can access LinkedIn profiles, review social media updates, and read through a blog article written by or featuring an applicant.
Understanding who you’re hiring will help you tailor the messaging for each potential employee. What a great way to build trust and stand out from the competition!
As you consider your hiring strategies, take a moment to assess how technology is supporting those efforts. Is there more that you could be doing to help attract the talent you’re looking for? Are there tools that can help you craft the right messaging, filter through the options, and better entice those individuals you believe will be great additions to your team? Where possible, lean into those solutions.
The Importance of Adapting
History is littered with stories of organizations who failed to adapt in changing economic landscapes, such as Blockbuster, who underestimated the demand for streaming services over DVD rentals, and Kodak, who didn’t embrace digital photography quickly enough.
It is often said that comfort is the enemy of progress. Those organizations that continue to employ the same recruitment tactics as they always have will no longer be able to attract the talent they are looking for. Only those businesses that understand the ever-changing landscape of employee motivations, use new and developing technology in hiring new team members, and set out to build trust will be able to land the right people for the job.
Remaining agile and staying ahead of trends will help you stand out in a highly competitive hiring market. Failure to adapt may mean talent you might have attracted will choose another company. Remember, a change in thinking can lead to immense growth for an organization. By implementing these strategies, you will find that you can more easily stand out from the hiring competition, attract the right people to your organization, and enhance the future success of the company, no matter the size of your business.
Speak with One of Our Amazing Fractional Leaders
At Amplēo, our fractional CHROs can help you play big by attracting, identifying and hiring the right talent for your current organizational landscape. Contact us today to speak to one of our executives.
This article was taken from a session conducted by Carl Sokia at Ampleo’s 2023 CFO & Growth Summit.