Filling a Spot, Or Finding Top Talent?

Finding qualified employees is the number one issue for business today. We can talk about the people that are staying on unemployment or don’t want to work – but are those the employees you want? No! You want the engaged, excited team member that wants to come to work and help your business succeed.

Recruiting is seen as a time consuming process that has to be accomplished. Place an ad, talk to people, pick who you like the best. But that likely results in sub-standard performance of your new employee and the need to replace employees as soon as you get them trained. Worse are the employees that don’t leave, and stick around infecting everyone else with their poor attitudes and performance. According to Harvard Business Review, 80 % of bad employees are due to bad hiring practices.

To be successful in recruiting, view your recruiting function as you would a marketing program. And an ongoing marketing and branding program at that. Don’t wait until you need someone to start next week to look for your next top team member. Have an ongoing effort to build your candidate pool every day.

Before you start to look for your next employee, ask yourself these questions:

1. Why would someone want to work for me?
2. What are the first impressions of the organization?
3. Is social media painting the picture we want?
4. Do our employees speak highly of working here?
5. Does our web site convey the work environment?

Ensuring positive answers to these questions are building blocks you can start your program with. The war for top talent is real, and you need to set your organization up to be the employer of choice in your community. You must create and own an employer brand that can be shared with candidates. Dedicate a landing page on your website with images of employees doing meaningful and productive work. Talk about community involvement and the opportunity to grow with the organization on the website. It doesn’t have to be difficult, but it must be done on an ongoing basis.

An active and rewarding employee referral program is a very effective way of ensuring your employees are keeping their eyes and ears open for the best and brightest as well. Consider what you pay to recruit one team member, and then give a bonus to employees who find great employees in a similar range. I always recommend you spread out the reward to ensure satisfactory performance, and consider giving an additional award to both the employee and new hire if both are employees after a specific period of time. For instance, what if each received $250 at the end of a year – but both had to still be employed? That helps both recruiting and retention.

As the job market continues to tighten, you must actively manage your recruiting funnel. Only by having productive and engaged employees on your team it is possible to meet the goals you have set out for the future.

Launching our all new Recruiting Course!

Finding and Retaining Top Talent

Learn more about the new Recruiting Course!