The competition for top talent these days is intense. So especially if you are going up against competition that treats their employees better, it becomes more of a challenge to retain them. So even if you grab the attention of the best talent out there, you need to retain them.
What Generation Z expects from their employers is very different from their predecessors. Moreover, Gen Z emphasizes their mental health, company culture, and flexibility rather than just getting an excellent salary. So, if you want to stay in the game, you’ll need to adjust to the way you work.
Considering that the world is changing so fast, we need to adapt to innovations more quickly than before, and in this article, we will show you the top six tips and tricks you can use for attracting the top talent to your company.
Let’s dive right in!
Six tips and tricks for attracting top talent
- Refine your application process
In a market full of candidates, to attract the best talents, the best alternative you have is to offer an excellent application process that can improve your overall brand image and attract the top talents around. However, it’s more than just applying on its own; how you interact with your candidates and how your job poster looks will give the first impression about your business.
A good candidate with a good first impression of your company will be more motivated to apply since it powerfully shows your organization’s culture and values. Moreover, here are a few steps you can use to improve the candidate experience:
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- Create a career page on your site
- Ensure candidates are applying for the right positions
- Make sure your interview process is simple
- Keep candidates informed in each application phase
- Don’t include too many interview rounds
- Please provide feedback on the candidates that didn’t get accepted; it’ll help them improve on the next job they apply for
- Define your employee value proposition
The initial step to creating a powerful employer brand is to make your employee value proposition (EVP). Next, focus on setting up your company’s vision, mission, culture, and values. After, identify what your business needs are and understand what type of talents you need in your company to fulfill your daily tasks and objectives.
Here are two essential questions you need to answer before you set up your EVP:
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- What can the applicant and candidate expect from your company or organization?
- What does your organization or company expect from the candidate or applicant?
The five core building blocks of an EVP include:
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- Employee benefits
- The employee’s career
- Work environment
- Company and work culture
- Employee compensation
While you don’t need everyone to know about your EVP, you can consider adding a few tips to help you design your EVP:
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- Draft the EVP
- Please test it and optimize
- Add the benefits you think are most important
Overall, your EVP should be optimized based on your company’s culture and goals. In short, it should be shaped by employee feedback and seeks to create a friendly working environment.
- Write the ideal job description.
Based on what we mentioned above, your job description should be written based on your company’s goals and values. The most important things to mention in a job description are:
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- To use a clear job title
- Speak directly to your candidates
- Describe what kind of daily tasks candidates are expected to complete
- Include how your workplace is totally against any employee discrimination
- Avoid any negative statements
- Include the benefits and salary range at the end
We will use Homerun’s content creator job description as an example to make things clearer. Here are the main steps to undertake.
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- Here, mention what the candidate will be in charge of and how it helps the company. For exampleyou’ll be in charge of the blog posts, newsletters, social media posts, and more. This will help our company reach our target audience and follow our content strategy.
- Specifications: what kind of skills and values do you expect from the candidate. For example, you have excellent editing and writing skills; you have experience in the writing and marketing industry, you know how to optimize your writing with SEO practices, and more.
- About the company: here, you start “selling” your company in terms of your values, ideas, mission, and more. For example, we’re an organization that believes in teamwork, hard work, and creativity. We love to build the best digital products and take our teamwork to the next level.
- Benefits and salary: if you want top talents to join your team, it most likely won’t happen if you offer them something less than your competitors. For example, check what kind of salary and benefits your competitors offer. If you offer less, we may have a problem here. For instance, Hootsuite provides a nap room in its office and a yoga studio to keep its employees full of energy.
- Focus on the 5 percent who deliver 95 percent of the value
Many companies fail to hire the 5 percent of talents to take their company to the next level. Even though companies seek to hire the best talents, they don’t desire to improve how they treat them.
For example, a navy should ensure that it has the top talents for its nuclear submarines. In addition, however, it should ensure it attracts the top talents for its role and hires one who can prevent any catastrophes in the crew.
Every time you are going through candidates, see which candidate has had the most impact in the jobs they worked before. Then, ask them about their achievements in their past jobs during an interview. You can do this during an interview or read it on their CVs if they have mentioned it.
Moreover, maybe candidates mention their achievements on their profile. Many candidates fail in this part; they only write what they did every day but never what they managed to achieve. Ensure you are always paying special attention to candidates who stand out from the rest.
- Provide the necessary training
Nobody is perfect, and don’t expect everyone that comes at your door for the first time to be so too. Likewise, a new hire you made doesn’t mean your candidate will be perfect from day one. To be as effective as possible, ensure you focus on talent retention. You can do this by guiding your employees.
For example, create a training program that can be anything from a course to helping them when they face challenges. Doing this shows employees how much they care, which will help newcomers feel more valued and encourage them to work more.
Building a healthy mentorship in your company is a way to lift others to a higher level of success. It supports teamwork and helps strengthen ties within the business. Senior managers and experienced employees should serve as mentors when they approach newcomers. As mentors, they can provide feedback, guidance, and support and thus, help newcomers gain more experience.
After all, when they see you are continuously helping them, they’ll know who to go to first when they have any issues.
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- Encourage employee recognition
Showing appreciation is an excellent way to improve talent retention; however, many employers overlook it. In fact, according to statistics, employee recognition was a priority for 37% of employees. Recognition for hard work informs employees that they are on the proper path toward growth and should continue with the following efforts.
One of the best ways to consider is having a one-on-one meeting with your employees and personally giving them their rewards or complimenting them on how well they did.
Download a template for your 1:1 meetings here and find some valuable tips and tricks on how to make your employees feel more appreciated, regardless if they work from their offices or remotely. Recently, especially during the pandemic, these meetings are becoming more and more a necessity rather than just a form.
On the contrary, when you avoid giving employees the required credit, they won’t be inspired to take their efforts the extra mile or may even end up going somewhere else in the worst-case scenario. Therefore, whenever you see employees exceed expectations or are achieving great things within your organization, award them for their efforts. Moreover, if the accomplishments are big, consider handing out rewards such as coupons, more days off, a bonus, trophies, etc.
Wrapping it up
That’s all for this article. These were our top six tips on significantly improving how you attract and retain top talents. Now, the best professionals are scarce and only come at a cost. If you are refusing to value them and aren’t doing something to stand out from your competitors, it looks like you are one step closer to losing your best members.
Even though many employers fail to value their talents or even search for them, you mustn’t make the same mistake. As we mentioned before, five percent of the top talent delivers 95 percent of the value in a company. So write a descriptive and straightforward job description, focus on candidates’ achievements when interviewing them, recognize great work, and, most importantly, provide the necessary training.
It was never hard to say, “you did a good job,” so don’t be afraid to say it. Employee retention and attracting the best should be your priority, and when you treat it as one, you’ll be on the right path to making your business work at its climax.
About the author:
Tony Ademi is a freelance SEO content and copywriter. Being in the writing industry for three years, Tony has written more than 300 articles and has successfully ranked #1 on Google on some of the articles he wrote. Undoubtedly, he is very concerned about improving the quality of his work, doing extensive research, and being informative in his writings.
