How to Attract the Best Employees in Today’s Job Market

By Robert Newland

Anyone can hire people.  It takes clear vision, real skill, and a carefully planned and properly executed program to attract Top Talent.  There isn’t always a labor shortage in today’s job market, but there is always a fight to hire and retain the best Talent.  Organizations that more effectively market and service Top Talent will have a consistent competitive advantage.

Many leaders and organizations tend to view recruiting as a mystery and often call it an intuitive skill.  Others say that there’s always a 50/50 chance when you hire somebody.  What many don’t know is that evidence, such as a study by the University of Michigan, which demonstrate that a well-structured and strategized recruitment process can yield 75% successful results as opposed to the traditional 25%.

As an owner of a talent management firm that includes recruiting services, I am often asked what it is that we bring to the table.  I tell them that our job is not to find people who are looking for work.  Our job is to find the best people (Top Talent), the ones who are not looking for work because they are successful and doing well on their current jobs.  We also make sure they are qualified and fit our client’s organizational climate and team synergy.  Then we do the really hard part – we convince them on the promise that working for your company will bring significant upside to their careers if they leave that great job they have now.

There are many elements to a sound recruitment program and in this article we are going to focus on attracting the right people to your company.  Yes, there is more to the recruitment cycle but it begins here.  Remember, your process output will be only as good as the initial input.

When it comes to attracting Top Talent to an organization I always refer to the 4-M’s: Message, Media, Mechanics and Metrics.  Let’s talk about them.

Message – Unlike a good marketing plan, most recruitment efforts don’t start with a clear message.  That is because we see recruitment as a transactional activity but forget that Top Talent is driven to work for organizations that send a message they like.  It is a message they can connect with because it fits their personal lifestyles, or because it fills their career or financial ambitions.  This message has to be clear and must define who you are and what your organization can offer.  This is often known as the promise.

Will you promise hard work and great rewards, or will you promise a balanced life?  Will you promise the challenge of the unknown, or a sure thing with a clear career path?  Whatever your message, it has to reflect your organization for one very simple reason.  While attracting Top Talent is a challenging, yet rewarding endeavor; retaining these people in your organization will depend largely on whether you can deliver on your promise or not.

Media – In today’s world it is extremely hard to find the right media mix for an employment message.  There are job boards, newspapers, magazines, blogs, network groups, and trade and professional associations to name a few.  Add to this the demographics associated with each and within each channel – it can get confusing fast.

You must begin by understanding your target Top Talent characteristics.  What do they read and watch?  Where they go?  Who matters to them when making decisions?  What are the triggers for those decisions.  If your organization already has Top Talent, try examining closer who they are and ask them some of these questions.  I am sure they will be a great source of information.

Mechanics – Many times an organization will select one candidate over another because of certain factors that do not undermine the capabilities of other finalists in a selection process.  One was just a better fit for the company.  Yet, if you ask people that go through this exercise in most organizations they will say that the process was at most, impersonal and neutral, and more often they’ll say the process was silly, slow, senseless and frustrating.

Now picture this instead.  A candidate who was not selected is talking to friends who ask about his/her employment search and he says – “I came across this incredible organization.  There was something about the way in which they presented themselves that made me want to be a part of it.  I didn’t get the job but they were nice enough to call and let me know.  They also explained what I should do to come closer next time.  I would truly recommend them to anyone.”

I could explain but I think you get the picture.

Metrics – I recently went to a seminar that reminded me of an old saying – people do what you inspect, not just what you expect.  This also holds true for recruiting but you need to know what to measure and inspect.  Otherwise, you could be looking very intently at the wrong piece of information.

It pains me when a client says they are cutting costs in employment advertising, recruiting firm services and HR staff in order to looking for efficiencies in operations.  But you ask them about their recruitment metrics and they have none.  So yes, many companies do this: “We have no clear recruiting expectations or goals, we have no measurement systems and we usually kind of wing it; but we know for sure our problem is that we are spending too much money.”

Setting the right goals and measurement systems is critical to any part of the company’s operations, and nowhere can this hold more valuable than in recruiting.  When you set goals and metrics – don’t think cost; think results!  And how do you measure results?  Well, how about low turnover, positive employee surveys, low recruiting cycles, the number of offer acceptances vs. turndowns, etc.

In Conclusion

Attracting Top Talent can appear intimidating but think this – The cost of making a bad hiring decision can cost you up to one and half times the candidates annual salary.  I know this cost is not often plain to the eye, but your job should never be about just observing the obvious.  When it comes to recruiting, there are many hidden costs, but nonetheless they are real.  And contrary to common wisdom – what you can’t see; will hurt you.

For more articles and news, click here.