How do you attract the best employees? It’s a question that many businesses find themselves wondering, quite often, as of late.  Finding qualified candidates who fit in with your company’s culture can be extremely challenging; even more so retaining qualified talent has now become an even bigger challenge! - Like plenty of hiring managers will testify. 

According to some studies, today’s applicants lack one or multiple of the desired/necessary traits, hiring managers are seeking; such as communication, collaboration, teamwork, reliability, work ethic, and complex thinking skills.  All vital skills are needed to thrive in the modern work environment. Considering everything that goes into placing or replacing a staff member (such as advertising job vacancies, screening, interviewing, selecting candidates, employee onboarding, and training or upskilling), It’s easy to see why hiring is such a dreaded task for most managers.

But don’t worry; Remember that employing the right talent is a key component of every company’s strategic growth and maturity.  So let’s review how your company can optimize its recruiting strategies and methods in order to be successful...

First, your company needs to develop a candidate persona. Define who your ideal candidate is, and the profile that represents your ideal candidate for a specific role. Include educational background, professional qualifications, skills, personal attributes, work experience, and personal interests. 

Knowing precisely what you’re looking for in a prospective employee will help you to customize your recruitment strategy to attract the most suitable candidates.  

Think about strategies for developing a candidate persona. Begin with a questionnaire, make a list of relevant questions, assess the data that you already have, and look at performance data from your people analytics system. Evaluate the background, relevant experience, and career profile of your top employees. This can assist you to define the necessary skills and experience of future hires, and also interview your top-performing employees. Talk with the best in your team. And, of course, research job boards and discover what top performers are saying online and what other companies are looking for in the positions you’re trying to fill in. 

Second, you should create an employee referral program. These programs are one of the major sources of quality hires. Your employees understand the type of candidates that you need to hire, so this makes employee referrals a superior recruiting tool, which helps with reduced costs, lower turnover, faster hires, and improved workforce planning. 

To help your employees in this process, make sure you identify your hiring priorities. Be clear about the incentives and benefits, and have them available in the human resources software platform. Make it simple. Advertise vacant positions internally, have one place for all the postings, and encourage your employees to share the link to your vacant positions on their social media, especially on sites like LinkedIn. 

Recognize the time and effort of your employees. If it’s with money, even better. If not, try to be creative. The more comfortable they feel in this process, the better it will be for the company. And finally, analyze if the program is being successful, by checking the employee participation rates, the overall percentage of referral hires, the numbers of referrals generated by each employee, and how the candidates, your team members, and the hiring managers feel about the process. 

Third, try to attract the best employees with improved employer branding. It has a significant impact on their ability to hire remarkable talent. For many potential recruits, the branding of the company is how they present their employee value proposition: The value a company brings to an employee in return for the value the employee provides. 

Talented candidates will compare companies and will choose those that offer the best culture, work-life balance, and opportunities for growth. They will look for the best employee experience. If your company can cultivate an appealing employer brand, you stand a much better chance of attracting high-level talent and finding long-term success. 

Focus on the best aspects of your company’s culture and values, highlight your compensation and benefits packages, your company culture, and the supportive and collaborative environment. Additionally, you could mention the growth opportunities offered by your company, along with an emphasis on your company’s work-life balance. 

Fourth on the list is to expand your outreach strategies. Different skill sets require different methods of outreach. You need to diversify your sourcing approach. That way, you will also be able to recruit a diverse team. 

Spend some time on LinkedIn, consider academic programs, niche-specific job boards, and spaces like conferences, networking events, social media, or online forums, where you have the opportunity to find a specialized group of talented professionals. 

Finally, even though it could seem obvious, make sure you take advantage of recruitment automation. Use technologies like artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and machine learning to automate the recruitment process. This will accelerate the time it takes to execute a hire, reduce the costs per hire, enhance recruiter productivity, and improve the quality and effectiveness of a company’s workforce. 

Recruitment automation is utilized by companies hiring at scale, as well as those seeking to attract the best employees in the shortest space of time. A series of hiring processes like job advertising, interview scheduling, candidate pre-screening, and applicant tracking, among others, will benefit from it. 

In this competitive job market, by creating effective candidate personas, maximizing brand awareness, and utilizing an employee referral program, employers can better connect with top talent. This, combined with recruitment automation and diversified outreach strategies, is the best way to discover the talent your business needs.