Key Messages
Unlock The Secrets Of Recruiting And Retaining Top Talent: An Expert Guide To Finding And Keeping The Best Employees
For any business to thrive, it needs to find and hire the best people for the job.
However, in a rapidly changing and unpredictable world, this is no longer as easy as it once was.
That’s why you need a guide to help you navigate the complex global labor market and achieve success in an unstable world.
Hiring Success: A practical handbook for mastering recruitment and retention offers just that.
This detailed guide reveals tips and tricks based on more than 30 years of experience in the recruiting industry.
It explains all stages of the hiring process, from defining the skills required, finding suitable candidates, and what too look out for when making your offer.
You will also discover why hiring is like marketing, how Steve Jobs made his dream hire5, what basketball can teach us about building a successful business, and other ways to ensure that you make wise decisions when recruiting new employees.
With Hiring Success: A practical handbook for mastering recruitment and retention, you have all the tools needed to succeed in the modern constantly-changing job market!
The Need For Smart Hiring Strategies Has Never Been Greater
When it comes to running a successful business, there are three main ingredients: a great idea, some investment money and experienced and passionate employees.
While the former two can be relatively easy to acquire, the last component is not so simple to find.
This is because the skills employers need today are much more specialized than they were in the past.
In many cases, companies are looking for software developers with specific programming languages or platforms.
These specific technical skills can be extremely difficult to master and this difficulty is only compounded by the increasing demand for these highly-skilled jobs.
A recent report by McKinsey predicts that by 2030 there will be over 85 million of such positions worldwide and not enough qualified candidates to fill them.
That’s why major players like Google have been placing an increasing emphasis on hiring in recent years – investing heavily into recruiters and proving strategic solutions in order to secure talented individuals for their business operations .
It’s clear that recruitment has become far from a simple task – hiring the right people with the necessary experience, enthusiasm and tech-savviness is challenging which is why it’s now more important than ever for businesses looking to stay ahead of the competition.
How To Attract The Right Candidates And Achieve A High Net Hiring Score
When it comes to hiring for a job, the task can’t be taken lightly.
It’s not just a case of writing “We’re Hiring” on a board and handing out the job to whoever happens to walk through the door.
Finding the right person for the job takes time and effort.
Many companies make the mistake of seeing hiring as nothing more than an administrative task that should be completed quickly and at little cost.
However, this is inaccurate as an effective hiring process needs smart hiring metrics in order to determine success.
All too often, companies will only measure success by how fast they filled a position or how cheaply they hired someone; however, these metrics make for bad targets as they incentivize cutting corners which ultimately makes it harder to find the right hire.
A better metric is the Net Hiring Score or NHS which measures whether applicants are a suitable fit for an open position based on various qualities such as experience, skills, attitudes and growth potential.
To calculate this score each applicant should be evaluated against this quality rubric with scores ranging from 1-10; then a decision should not be made until most applicants have scored in the 9-10 range in most categories.
Though coming up with an effective multidimensional metric may be time consuming and require coordination from stakeholders connected to said position, taking care not to rush into any decisions ensures that everyone’s needs are met with who is eventually hired.
Marketing Your Job Opening: How To Attract The Right Candidates
When it comes to hiring someone for your business, the same concepts of marketing that you would apply to an ice cream shop or a retail store can be used.
You have to think of a job opening as a product and your potential applicants as the customers who could buy it.
The way to attract those customers is by being aware of what type of job you are offering, so that you can tailor your message accordingly.
To do that, you must first break the job down into its two basic components: impact (the importance of the job) and scarcity (how rare those skills are).
From there, you can select an appropriate strategy that best suits your needs.
For low-impact, low-scarcity jobs like secretary or clerk positions where there’s plenty of competition from other businesses vying for attention, it may be wise to use general advertising campaigns such as putting up posters in local shops or placing ads on social media sites.
Meanwhile for higher-impact, higher-scarcity jobs – neurosurgeons and CEOs come to mind – more targeted efforts are likely needed with recruitment calls placed in specialized newsletters or attending industry events.
Regardless of which method you prefer, always remember to make sure your message is clear and concise.
This will ensure that each applicant understands what they’re getting into and make the whole application process much easier for both parties involved.
Companies Can Greatly Benefit From Getting Creative With Their Recruitment Processes
When it comes to hiring, standing out from the crowd is paramount.
If you’re looking to funnel top talent in your direction, an inventive approach is a must.
This could be something as simple as launching your own novel “Snapplications” campaign like McDonalds Canada did in 2019.
In just 48 hours, with the help of social media buzz and the novelty of their Snapplications campaign, the company managed gathered 10,000 potential candidates.
Aside from engaging potential new talent with clever ideas like this, leveraging existing networks can also make all the difference.
Look among your team for potential referrals to get pipelines full of qualified applicants for that perfect job announcement – with small bonuses to incentivize workers no less!
A good referral program will keep things both easy and fun for everyone involved so that when you finally make that announcement everyone will feel part of a bigger team they want to be a part of!
Evaluate Prospective Candidates By What They Could Do, Not Just What They Have Done
It’s important to remember that when evaluating potential employees, you should evaluate them based on what they can do, not what they have done in the past.
This is the key takeaway from the story of Brian Acton and Jan Koum, who applied for a job with Facebook but were rejected due to their lack of experience.
But five years later, Facebook wanted to buy their company Whatsapp – at a cost of $19 billion!
If only the hiring team had seen their potential and not judged them solely on their past credentials.
When hiring new employees, it’s important to look beyond aptitude and assess intangible qualities like mindset, work ethic, personality traits and values that are often more crucial for an employee’s success than any diploma or degree.
Structured interviews are very useful in this process since they help you ask precise questions related to how applicants will perform on the job.
To go a step further and reduce bias inherent in interviews, consider supplementing them with personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Finally, make sure that your offer is attractive enough so that your chosen candidate actually accepts it!
Closing The Deal: How To Make An Offer That Your Dream Candidate Can’t Refuse
Making a job offer is a pivotal point in the hiring process, and to ensure success, you need to make sure the offer you make is one that can’t be refused.
If you want to lock down your ideal candidate, you have to make it impossible for them to turn down the position.
The best way to do this is by making the offer meaningful and memorable, as well as competitive with other offers they may have received from other companies.
This could be done through something as simple as including an extra benefit or bonus, or something more creative such as putting together a custom “We Need You” playlist like Spotify does, or delivering a special gift package with carefully selected items that mean something to them.
You also have to be prepared for negotiations and counteroffers from the candidate’s current employer- this is especially common in highly competitive markets.
Don’t take offense if this happens- it’s simply an indication that the candidate knows their own worth and wants to get the best deal they can!
When they do accept your offer, provide easy access to administrative information so they can hit the floor running.
By following these tips and making an offer that’s impossible for your dream candidate reject, you’ll be sure to complete your hiring process with success!
To Acquire Top Talent On A Consistent Basis, Build A Robust Hiring Team
It’s not enough to just hire one talented employee; for real success, you must have a consistent system for hiring the best under your belt.
A robust hiring team is the essential key here- just like a basketball team needs more than just one star player who can net three-pointers, companies need a strong roster of employees to keep ahead in the competition.
Google is an excellent example of this – they devote 16 recruiters for every 1,000 employees- since they understand that staffing an effective team greatly reaps rewards.
Such teams consist not only of human resources experts, but also marketers because recruitment is essentially a sales job.
The company Gallagher knows this, which is why they prioritize getting stakeholders on their side.
Furthermore, having specialized members will help with filling the pipeline and sourcing potential candidates as well as finalizing employment offers in the past stages.
With such divisions of labor once all complete recruiters must collaborate with managers for every step to ensure that new hires have what it takes for their position and interview approaches are up to par.
Finally, tracking progress regularly enables adjustments along the way if recruiting strategies need tweaking or improvement- and ultimately provides top talent year after year.
A robust hiring system starts with a robust team!
Create An Inclusive And Humane Hiring Process To Unlock The Power Of Diversity
In today’s economy, it is absolutely essential to have a diverse team in order to succeed.
A variety of perspectives are necessary for problem solving and decision-making, allowing teams to come up with innovative solutions for their challenges.
One great example of this is how diverse teams outperform homogenous ones – a McKinsey study showed that organizations with a plethora of ages, genders and ethnicities were 30% more likely to outshine their homogenous counterparts.
That being said, it is important for companies to be mindful and put extra effort into recruitment processes that lead them towards having a diverse team.
This means that companies should make sure they reach out to all kinds of people, including those who may potentially be unrepresented or underrepresented minorities – through social clubs or trade organisations, for instance.
Companies should also ensure their job posts are written in an inclusive language so they do not choose one group over another, as well as focus on getting to know candidates as people rather than solely looking at their resumes.
Finally, companies can accommodate special cases such as autistic candidates which may not flourish in interview setting by inviting them to audition by actually doing work during the hiring process itself instead.
These might seem like extra steps – but creating a humane workplace begins with humane hiring practices, making such efforts worthwhile in the end.
Wrap Up
The Hiring Success Book from Chief Executives has a straightforward but important message – the key to a successful business lies in its recruitment.
Companies that take the necessary time, effort, and money to recruit high-quality staff will reap the rewards later on.
It’s not enough anymore to post a job opening and hope for the best; companies must think like marketers, approaching talent acquisition with creative strategies to attract and engage qualified individuals.
The final actionable advice offered is not to settle for maybe – if you’re on the fence about a hire, keep searching because a bad hire can potentially lead to major losses.
Investing more time and resources early one will save money in the long run– so say no to maybe!
