Attracting Top Talent

Five ways to attract top talent…even in a tight job market


A special report by BusinesStaff
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At BusinesStaff, we’re seeing an uptick in the number of clients wondering how to attract top talent. With unemployment rates in the US at historic lows, filling demanding positions with superstar hires can feel like an uphill battle. In our 20+ years in the recruitment industry, we’ve developed processes and systems to work around this problem, and we’ve selected five top tips to share with you.


Tip 1: Be ready to pay what it takes to attract rock stars
We all know that salary isn’t the sole factor in recruiting great employees—and a high salary certainly doesn’t guarantee loyalty. But at BusinesStaff, we see a pattern that the highest-paying positions nearly always get lots of interest from our top-tier candidates. Across the recruitment industry, we’re hearing that salary is still the main reason that employees decide to look for a new position. We always advise our clients to consider the costs of having the wrong person in the job, or the benefits of having an incredible employee in a mission-critical role. Top performers tend to know what they’re worth; it’s no surprise to them that their skills are valuable and marketable. Bottom line, be willing to pay what it takes to land them.


Tip 2: Be vibrant, dynamic, and open to innovation
With many seasoned employees staying put in their current positions, we encourage our clients to look at new talent—millennials—even for relatively high-profile roles. Millennials have a low tolerance for strict chains of command, where their opinions are not valued simply because they’re still in their twenties or early thirties. To appeal to younger employees, we recommend that our clients foster and nourish a shared sense of purpose. You need to set this tone right from the start; in the interview, ask your candidates what missed opportunities they see for your company. If given the chance to plan a “moon shot” project for your company, what would they do? Once your new hires are on board, you need to continue giving them opportunities to use their creativity, and to have their voices heard at the highest levels of your company.


Tip 3: Have your employees’ best interests at heart
This sounds like a vague, feel-good statement, but at BusinesStaff, we encourage our clients to recruit great people, and then develop them even further. Tell your employees that you want their role in your company to be the best decision they’ve ever made about their future. Tell them that you hope they’ll stay with your company for many years, but that you want the kind of relationships with them where you’re helping them find a great new role if they decide to move on. “Churn and burn” doesn’t create a network of loyal evangelists for your company; one look at sites like Glassdoor will show you that there are two kinds of companies: those that bleed the life out of their employees, working them into the ground until they simply can’t take it anymore, and those where former employees say, “Years after leaving this company, I still miss my co-workers and the feeling of being part of the team.” Which one would you rather be?


Tip 4: Promote people you’d like to work for
When candidates consider your offer, they’re most likely to focus on two things: salary, and their immediate supervisor. You need to be self-aware about your managers, and you need to look for warning signs. Any time one of your employees resigns without having another job, it’s more than likely that the issue is their boss, or a close co-worker who they perceive as having authority over them. At BusinesStaff, we see firsthand that new hires have a low tolerance for bosses who:

• Simply aren’t good at the job: they don’t understand or value what their employees do; they belittle their employees instead of helping them shine; they are not hard workers, and they create a culture where mediocrity becomes the norm, and no one has an incentive to work hard.
  
• Have poor interpersonal skills; they don’t understand that employees come to work as whole people, not machines; they don’t know when to give a struggling employee space to improve, and when to intervene with a specific plan.
  
  
  

Tip 5: Embrace flexibility
At BusinesStaff, we encourage our clients to be flexible in two ways:

• Total rewards, including compensation and benefits
  
• Working hours, conditions and locations
  

If you’ve been in a corporate environment for decades, this advice may seem difficult to swallow. But today’s top performers—especially those in their twenties and thirties—have come to value and expect flexibility. But you need to be flexible in a smart way. For example, studies have shown that employees at companies with unlimited vacation time may actually take less time off than those where vacation time is tallied. How about offering the option of doubling your employees’ vacation time, with half of it paid and half unpaid? How about adding a benefits menu, where one employee might choose a childcare voucher but another might choose some sessions with a highly-regarded business coach? We recommend doing the same when it comes to working hours and conditions. “Come in whenever you want, just get the job done” is a nice idea, but the lack of structure isn’t necessarily beneficial in the long run. But creative solutions can work, and can attract top-tier candidates. For example, you might specify that everyone must be in the office from 10-2, and must work four additional hours during the day. An employee with young kids might choose to start working at 6 and clock out at 2, while an employee training for a  marathon might appreciate the chance to go for a long run before work. These types of structured but creative options can do a lot to enhance the quality of the candidates you’re getting.

At BusinesStaff, we specialize in matching top talent with the right opportunities. Contact us today to get our creative and effective solutions working for you!