15 Dec 8 Proven Ways to Recruit Talent After the Great Resignation
Most are familiar with the Great Resignation, the resignation boom consisting of record numbers of people leaving their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are many factors that led people to quit including familial obligations, job insecurity, feeling burned out by innovation, not being recognized for their performance, and poor responses to COVID-19.
The impact of the Great Resignation caused companies – regardless of size – to have to adopt innovative ways to attract talent. We’ve highlighted 8 ways your small business can recruit top talent to your teams.
Tip 1: Be a place where people want to work
These days, recruiting is a lot like sales. You need to know how to hook the candidates you want to attract. This is called your Employer Value Proposition (EVP).
What’s the special sauce of attracting top talent? Your brand! Similar to developing your brand for your customers on why they want to do business with you, your employer brand should show future employees why they should want to work with you.
What makes your culture appealing? What makes your employees want to come to work every day? What benefits do they enjoy? What do they look forward to every day? What sets you apart from the competition?
It can be helpful to turn to your employees to answer some of these questions with a stay survey to help you understand why they stay and would make them want to leave. You can even look into an engagement survey to your employees’ commitment, motivation, and sense of passion and purpose for their work and your company.
You can get a lot of insight from these two methods. Just make sure you keep it casual and short.
You might find that your employees love your community outreach activities or that they love the flexibility of your newly adapted hybrid work policy.
As you get answers to these questions, your employer brand will begin to unfold and you’ll be able to clearly see what makes your company an attractive place to work.
In the war to attract top talent, a strong, focused EVP will set you apart from the rest.
Tip 2: Make your brand visible.
There’s a few things you can do to increase your employer branding:
- Become a master storyteller. This is a great way for potential employees to connect with your brand. Figure out how your company’s inception story is meaningful and tell that story. Then, leverage your social media channels to tell stories about your employees and their success. Your stories should tell your audience about why your company is a great place to work. And while you’re at it…
- Be present on social media. These days, social media is one of the most relevant channels for promoting your brand – especially if your target hires are Millennials or Gen-Z. No matter what generation you’re targeting, LinkedIn is generally the best platform. Use features like live streaming, stories, interactive content, video, and questionnaires/quizzes to drive interaction with your small business. People love to interact!
- Benefit a cause. Social purpose has become a huge priority with the upcoming workforce. They’re looking to work for socially responsible companies because it speaks to a company’s values. So communicate these values wherever your candidates might see them: careers page, about us page, social media posts, etc.
Tip 3: Evaluate your ‘Careers’ page
If your company isn’t perceived well by a candidate, they won’t apply to any open positions. Unfortunately, many companies don’t leverage design and content to speak to their ideal candidates. Is your website helping to drive qualified candidates your way?
Consider adding these items to your Careers page:
- Intuitive job search. Your open positions should be easy to find and navigate.
- Creative copy. You want to highlight the attractive qualities of your company. What about your culture, mission, perks, or benefits would want to make somebody come work for you? Then, make sure your headlines are eye-catching, so a prospective employee will engage.
- Visual content. Break up text, add images, graphics, and videos.
- Highlight non-financial benefits. These include work-from-home opportunities, flexible PTO, and leave policies. What besides an interesting new job would make an employee want to work there?
- Bonus content. People want to work for a company that they can feel good about. So if you have testimonials, company awards, or awesome reviews, showcase them!
- Interactive content. Feel free to get creative! You can add a Google Maps widget with your company’s address, a chat pop-up, or other elements that change when they’re scrolled over.
In all of these make sure to avoid any jargon, cheesy stock photos and visuals, and content overload.
Here are some companies that are doing it right:
The Hotjar team is fully remote which can make hiring and communicating their brand a huge challenge.
But they nailed their career page. Their page has a collection of pictures of team holidays and international meet-ups. They even have a movie to show others what these get-togethers look like, giving a glimpse into their company culture.
Hotjar also provides an animated video explaining what their product does. This gives insight into what they’re about and what they’re wanting to achieve.
The inclusion of their Glassdoor rating is a smart move too, because it shows social proof and that they’re a legitimate company.
Betty Block did an excellent job with clearly stating their mission, culture, and what kind of employees they’re looking for.
Potential candidates can find everything from benefits and perks to a clear path into the company’s journey. At the bottom of the page, they’ll even find the LinkedIn profiles of their recruitment team making it super easy to reach out and connect with them. The key is to focus on why the candidate would want to work at your company
They really outdid themselves with their “Discover Our Departments’ section, though. Here you’ll get insight into their product development, services, revenue departments, their tools and strategies, and even a short introduction of the people working on each team.
The Student Hotel is a great example of how design can speak about the heart of a brand. They’ve used their distinctive brand elements to create a youthful and energetic feel to their careers page. They’ve created contrast with bold colors and imagery. This breaks up the website and encourages people to continue scrolling.
Tip 4: Re-evaluate strictly in-office positions
Most workers prefer not to be in the office 5 days a week anymore. Offering the option for employees to work remotely or hybrid is something many are looking for in their next job.
In fact, 59% of people said that they’d be more likely to choose an employer who offered remote work. Employers and employees are finding out that there are many benefits working from home:
- Remote workers save between $600-$6,000/year just WFH half-time because they’re saving on food, commuting, and parking.
- 32% of hiring managers found that productivity increased
- Remote workers have reported less stress, more focus, and a better work-life balance
- Employers can save, on average, $11,000 per half-time telecommuter per year
Whether you like it or not, remote work is here to stay. If you’re not ready to shift to a 100% remote workforce, consider a hybrid route where your employees can work from home 2 or 3 days a week.
It might benefit your business and employees more to offer the option to work from home two or three days a week. Just make sure you clearly define the expectations and policies for whatever WFH policy you create.
Can your employees leave in the middle of the day to go to a doctors appointment? Do they need to have a designated workspace? Are their objectives clear each day? How can leadership support them while they’re working from home?
Tip 5: Showcase benefits
A Glassdoor survey found that 60% of employees consider perks and benefits when considering a job offer. Even more, 80% prefer additional benefits over a pay increase. A complete benefits package can help your hiring efforts significantly.
Now, make sure to tailor your benefits to the type of candidate you want to attract. For example, a medical device company that has mid-level employees might need candidates with different skills when compared to a trendy digital marketing company that needs entry-level candidates who have more social media knowledge. Each industry will need to offer benefits based on what their employees are looking for.
Here’s a list of some of the more attractive benefits that candidates are looking for:
- Student loan assistance
- Wellness programs (spa services, gym memberships)
- Parental assistance (childcare, paid parental leave, adoption assistance)
- Vacations (floating holidays,, summer Fridays)
- Family support (Eldercare support, spousal death benefits)
- 4-day work week
Competitive perks have actually been shown to be strong enough to sway people from taking higher-paying jobs. If you want to boost your applicant pool, it might be worth taking a look at your benefits and making changes/additions where you can.
Tip 6: Update your hiring strategies
Traditional ways of hiring are being clouded with fresh new ideas that found their genesis post-pandemic. While using sites such as Indeed and Ziprecruiter does still yield results, the way we hire is shifting as surely as the way we work has shifted.
Hiring, like working, needs to make the move towards becoming virtual. 3.5 billion people use social media worldwide, so there’s no surprise that the use of platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and TikTok in hiring strategies is rising. In fact, 79% of job seekers use social media when job searching. 89% of companies are already leveraging the use of social media to recruit and another 9% are considering it. Hiring managers have found huge success with this strategy which makes sense because this is where you’ll find your Millennial candidates.
Consider making virtual interviews the standard for your company. The Smart Recruiters blog has an excellent article with tips on how to do this seamlessly.
There are two types of virtual interviews. For the first, think of it as a regular interview, but using video software in real time. The second option is to send your list of interview questions to the candidate and wait for them to send them back.
Let’s look at some other ways to update your tactics for recruiting:
- Employee referrals. This is a great way to vet and hire candidates quicker. Make it easy for your employees to recommend folks and offer incentives so people will be motivated to refer.
- Be upfront about work-from-home/hybrid options. If you are offering this, make it a part of your recruiting strategy.
- Virtual hiring event. This is just like a virtual interview except that you conduct group interviews. You can set up an event through Indeed where you can detail everything from the technical requirements, to the benefits, to your questionnaires. Here’s an example for an upcoming virtual hiring event for an assembly line worker position:
- Improve candidate experience. There are a number of steps from the moment someone runs across your hiring platform to the moment they’re hired. Look into the application, submission, providing details before they’re needed, assessments, and feedback and communication and see where there’s room for improvement.
- Make quick quicker. Consolidate the hiring process where you can to make it quicker. The average hiring process takes 23 days but if you can do it even faster, you’ll be at less risk of losing a potentially great employee.
- Look past employment breaks. There’s nothing wrong with taking an employment break. Don’t pass on potentially qualified candidates without giving them the chance to explain them. Many of our own employees took breaks to raise children!
No matter which aspects of the hiring process you change, be sure to maintain constant communication with the applicants to see where they are in the process and if there’s anything that they need from you.
Tip 7: Look internally
Recruiting can get really expensive for businesses of any size. Internal hiring can be a successful strategy to combat the costs and the time.
There are several methods for hiring internally:
- Promotions
- Transfers
- Internal advertisements
- Freelance to full-time employee
- Looking to make retired employees freelancers or part-time workers
- Employee referrals
There are a number of benefits to doing this from the fact that internal employees already know the companies (and you know them) to boosting morale because your employees will see that there is opportunity for growth, learning, and progress.
Just like with anything else, there are disadvantages too. These include stagnation due to lack of fresh ideas from new employees, lack of diversity, and resentment between employees who feel entitled to positions they feel they deserved but someone else got.
Tip 8: Use reviews to build up your online presence
Your customer’s first point of contact with your brand is most likely online. People prefer to stop on sites like Google, LinkedIn, Indeed, and Glassdoor before visiting a business.
This is why building your online presence should be a part of your strategy if you want to stay competitive.
Business review sites can improve two things: purchaser behavior and SEO.
Improve purchaser behavior
Some businesses are reluctant to post their business on one of these review sites for the fear that they’ll drive customers away with bad reviews. But it’s going to be tough for someone to consider your business if you have no reviews at all because reviews serve as a way to validate their purchasing decisions.
Improve SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a way to improve your site to increase its visibility on sites like Google, YouTube, and other search engines.
According to Moz, the quantity, velocity, and diversity of reviews are top factors in influencing how and where a business appears in an organic search result. You can take advantage of this by embedding or displaying the reviews on your website and business review sites.
Simply asking your customer for reviews, responding to reviews, and promoting them can create awareness and keep your business top of mind.
Conclusion
Even if your recruiting strategy worked pre-pandemic, consider taking your hiring efforts in a new direction to shift into this new era of work.
What it takes is commitment and trust in the strategies that businesses have found to bring them results.