Columnist

Five ways to take control of your talent attraction

One of the biggest challenges to growing businesses is attracting qualified talent, throw skills shortages into the mix, and often companies resort to regularly using recruitment agencies to fill positions, despite the high costs and potential compromise on quality of candidates.

I started DUO to help companies build talent strategies that allow them to build their own talent pipeline, without the cost and quality issues that often arise through outsourcing. This way of working has become more than just a business to me, but a personal mission to help companies get off the hamster wheel of recruitment outsourcing, and begin to build proactive solutions for long term business growth.

There are a number of strategies that companies can employ to take control of talent attraction:

1. Establish & Communicate your EVP

Your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) is one of your most important tools when both attracting and retaining talent. Your EVPs are a set of benefits or characteristics that work to differentiate your company as an employer of choice from your competition when vying for top talent. When establishing your company EVPs you should ensure that all follow a stream of authenticity, consistency, uniqueness and innovation.

2. Build Talent Personas

How do you attract people you know nothing about? It important that when creating job criteria you consider building an ideal talent persona. What would your perfect candidate look for in an employer? What are their career aspirations? What is their personal situation? What motivations do they have when moving positions? What is most important to them when it comes to benefits? How can you engage with them? What platforms of communication do they use?

By building a profile of your ideal candidate you should be able to map out their aspirations and therefore package your company and job offer to match what they are looking for, in order to draw them into your recruitment process.

4. Focus on Culture as Number 1

In order to have long term success when recruiting, you need to build a working culture that allows top performers to thrive. Your internal culture is often more important than all of your other company benefits, including salary.

A simple way to update your company culture is to look at how authentic it is with your business and brand. For example if you run a Digital Agency that prides itself on providing creative client solutions - how are you fostering a creative culture internally? Do you have a work space that stimulates creativity? Or an open management structure that allows your staff to explore creative thoughts or ways of working? Refer back to your EVPs and make sure that your culture will not only attract the type of talent you want, but also helps you stand out from your competitors.

4. Proactively Build Talent Pipelines

In a growing organisation it is important that you plan ahead. The best talent will not result from a conversation over a couple of days, they need to feel engaged with your company which only happens when you put time into building a relationship.

Take a view of your company over the next 6-12 months - where are the key areas that will result in the most recruitment? Identify and map out desired talent in similar positions within competitors or connected industries and begin to build communication. The key is to grow relationships with the best candidates so that when positions arise, you have a talent pool that is already engaged with your business.

5. Don’t Negotiate on Quality

One of the biggest mistakes that companies make when recruiting is hiring candidates that are simply average, and not holding out for top talent. The 80/20 rule works well when looking at output of talent - you probably achieve 80% of your results from 20% of your staff. Therefore when recruiting it is important to hold out for that top 20% from other firms.

If you spend some time calculating what your top performer is worth vs an average one, you should see the revenue difference. Google once estimated in their business, that a top candidate was worth 300% more in related revenue difference to an average one.

If you want to learn more about how you can move your business away from a reactive model, and develop long term, proactive strategies to attract talent, give us a call, we would love to help. DUO Global Consulting, 0191 3759018, www.duoglobalconsulting.com

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Laura Weaving .