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While there is continued anticipation of changing economic conditions, the US unemployment rate continues to hover at or near historic lows. Most businesses we work with still need to hire to meet business needs; locating and hiring your next talent can be challenging. We’re here to help.
Here are five tips we recommend for virtually any employer.
What does your brand mean today? A great place to start is a reality check on your brand as it is -- not as you want it to be. How do you measure your employer brand?
Once you’ve gathered a baseline of what team members associate with your brand, you can set your sights on the brand’s future. There is almost always some gap between reality and your aspirations. Bring your senior leadership into the conversation about what characteristics you want to emphasize.
Here are a few positive employer brand attributes you might want to include:
Develop your action plan. Work with leadership and your marketing team to create a brand campaign specifically geared to what makes your firm a great place to work.
You’ll want to make sure you review and update assets, including your company careers pages, benefits documents, and vision/values pages. Is the tone of the writing friendly and accessible? Are you thinking of all the relevant generations at work, each of which may have slightly different priorities?
Wherever possible, use photos of actual team members and work sites, rather than stock imagery, to set the best -- realistic -- expectations with future employees.
In 2015, consulting firm McKinsey published a landmark study illustrating that diverse companies outperform the norm for their industry by 35%.
Diversity makes good business sense.
Many firms have a diversity and inclusion (D&I) plan to articulate policies and objectives for a diverse workforce. You may also have put some effort into developing a diverse talent pipeline.
That’s a great start! To stay competitive, however, today’s employers are moving past D&I to belonging.
Some definitions:
Creating a culture where different types of people feel they belong, and bring their most effective selves to work, will ultimately give you a competitive advantage. Here are some things to be aware of:
The traditional way of viewing recruiting is as a method to fill open positions. We’re not trying to discount this goal. It is essential, of course. But a broader view of recruiting turns the tables to put the focus on candidate experience.
Creating a great experience is more about forming relationships with current and future candidates, so that even if they’re not hired for today’s requirements, they have formed a positive impression and may be a great fit for a future opportunity.
Some guidelines:
Outreach to both passive and active candidates will help you locate the right talent.
Passive candidates -- those who are employed, and not looking for their next job -- are often more difficult to recruit as they may be satisfied, or too busy, to consider your open position.
Yet this group represents up to 75% of the available market, according to LinkedIn.
Some ideas you should put into action to increase your visibility to potential candidates:
Traditionally, new team member onboarding consists of completing a large stack of paperwork, such as the I9, W4 and payroll/benefits sign-up forms. For some companies, completing mandatory compliance training is also a part of inducting a new employee.
While these are all required steps, they don’t create a friendly and engaging experience.
To stand out from the crowd, some firms are redefining onboarding as a full experience from the time the candidate accepts the offer, through when they’re fully productive, perhaps three months after hire.
Your new team member’s onboarding experience is a key part of them becoming a fully-engaged top performer.
Onboarding starts with “yes”. If you haven’t already done so, consider setting up an online portal specifically for new hires. Before their first day on the job, your new talent can already start on mandatory training, handle routine paperwork, view the holiday schedule, start to learn the organization, and even receive welcome messages from their new team mates.
Once the new hire comes on board, consider assigning them a “buddy” to help learn the ropes. This takes some of the knowledge-sharing burden off the manager, and helps ground the new person with a connection to one or more colleagues. Buddy duties can be simple, like a company-sponsored lunch, or more complex, like a mentoring relationship.
Something else to consider as part of onboarding is involving senior leadership through casual breakfast meetings or “lunch and learns” where new team members can broaden their knowledge about other parts of the company, hear an executive perspective on the market, and get to know leaders in a less-structured setting.
As an HR professional or company leader, you know how important talent acquisition is to company performance and growth. These five tips give you the foundation of a 2020 acquisition strategy that will pay benefits now, and into the future.