If you find and retain people with marketable skills, you stay ahead of the competition simply by bringing the best people on board.
But you already know that, right?
The question is how to discover them in the swamp of many you may want to avoid.
Your primary hiring strategy should not be focused only on how to find but also on attracting and retaining talent.
Retaining talented employees is more difficult than just hiring candidates with impressive CVs because mistakes during the process come to light when the relationship develops.
Let us find out how to avoid those mistakes and source people you will enjoy working with because they help your business grow without a headache.
How to Find Talented Employees in 10 Steps
Whatever you put out there in the job ads will be returned to you tenfold. If you are unclear about what you want from the prospective candidate, you will hire a poor match. Here are the ten steps that will put you out there in the recruitment jungle and attract talented employees that won’t quit at the first sign of trouble:
No time for long reads? Listen to our Virtual Frontier Podcast below!
1. Rethink your recruitment strategy.
The onus is on you to make the job opening as evident and as detail-packed as possible. Suitable candidates will understand what you need and provide the information necessary to ensure you have what is required for the job.
To attract talent, ask for accountability and responsibility on behalf of the employee.
Employees who take task ownership go well beyond fulfilling the job role. They understand they need to do the job and will do the job.
However, talented employees also align vision with goals and take action to deliver results. The task ownership approach doesn’t exclude your guidance and check-ins. But it does ask employees to take personal care that project goals are accomplished.
2. Become an employer of choice.
When talented employees look for new job openings, they look for what sets a prospective job employer from mediocre companies. Ensure you know what makes you an attractive employer and include those perks in your social branding, employment culture, and team accomplishments.
Being an employee of choice establishes a natural referral system. Your current employees are an investment into a future talent pool.
If you cringe at sayings like: ” Excellence breeds excellence” it is time to reconsider what may be in the organization that makes talent circumvent you and go to your competitors.
3. Have an open call to create a talent pool.
You have daily opportunities to build communities and engage in conversations on social media or other ways of networking. You don’t need a bureaucratic procedure for creating a talent pool that will require multiple talent specialists.
Spark a chat in social media feeds, send webinar invites, and add a section for new job openings on your website. Create a profile on talent pool apps.
Even if you don’t hire anyone via job recruitment platforms, you still have access to experts for future recruitment and the potential to learn more about attracting and retaining talent for your company.
4. Create an outstanding onboarding experience.
Helping your new employees feeling welcome is a double whammy:
- Employees gain confidence in you as an attractive employer
- You make their job easier by providing tools and instructions.
A great onboarding employee experience is the second pillar of finding talented employees, called talent retention. The recruitment strategy is the first pillar, and the learning and development strategy is the third. A smooth transition between these pillars builds a solid structure for your business that will support the process of finding, attracting, and retaining talent.
5. Educate candidates about your company.
Explain what your company does, who the customers are, and what problems you solve.
A short explanation of company history, values, and culture gives a better picture of what to expect on their first day at work.
Avoid using cliches and generalized statements. Be specific. When you prepare crucial interview questions, make them as job-related as possible. Even better, include the first round of questions in the digital hiring process to tweak the talent pool.
6. Hire freelancers.
Many prejudices about freelancers are incorrect. Or, you simply don’t have the tools to find talented freelancers. By default, freelancers meet three criteria of what makes a qualified employee — responsibility, motivation, and expertise.
An unexpected advantage of working with freelancers is the opportunity to scale your business.
YES, I WANT TO SCALE MY BUSINESS WITH FREELANCERS
Watch the video below to learn how to find reliable freelancers that are among the top 10% best performers on hiring platforms:
7. Ask for a solution to a problem.
If you think about it carefully, most job challenges arise from the inability to solve a problem.
Talented employees can solve problems in new ways, which means they deliver exceptional value that can expand your business above and beyond what is currently at stake.
Therefore, when you write job descriptions, ask for a solution to a critical business problem. Problem-solving skills are complex skills. They ask employees to deploy their critical thinking, logical reasoning, creativity, and deduction skills. These skill areas are what differentiates talented employees from the average job searchers.
8. Transform your team skills.
Many job skills are becoming historical because of automation and digitalization. As a consequence of automating simple tasks, talent skills have grown to a whole new level. The way jobs functioned just a few years ago doesn’t work anymore.
Employees who want to stay ahead of the changing skills curve need to have a remarkable set of cognitive, self-leadership, interpersonal, and digital skills if they’re going to keep their place in the talent pool. So, maybe it is time to rework your team skills requirements to be more attractive for future jobs.
9. Lead by example.
Leading by example refers to actions that demonstrate to people how to act themselves. Leadership by example is also about setting boundaries about what will not be tolerated. When you come from the leader’s position, doing the second without the first is a mistake. By setting an example of how you want a talented workplace to look, you set up team rules for healthy conflict resolution.
Watch the Ask the CEO video “How to Become an Attractive Workplace” below:
In the sphere of finding and retaining talented employees, leading by example means being aware of your own talents, constantly improving them, and effectively using them to solve problems.
10. Deliver on your promises.
Lack of consistency and discipline is a major setback when it comes to retaining talent. You need to set up the workplace in a way to recognize its best assets and any drawbacks, too. Consistent, disciplined action nurtures team trust and ensures talented employees your words are supported by deeds.
Adaptability in the face of change, resilience, and transparency in the face of adverse working conditions are three attributes of companies with a culture of team respect, collaboration, and empathy.
To find talented employees who want to stay and are proud builders of your company’s success, you need to reshape how you approach the workforce.
If you find this blog post helpful, we have more free tips in the team building pack available below!
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