Attracting Talent
We have been consulting with our clients to help them market their job opportunities for nearly 60 years. In that time, we have learned what attracts talent and how employers can optimize their processes to enable a faster and more confident hiring process.
Whether working on your own or with our support, this guide will walk you through the vital steps you must complete in order to optimize your hiring process to be successful in this new Talent-centric era.
Step 1 – Create Your Timeline
We’ve found that a slow hiring process is one of the biggest impediments to attracting and hiring great people. Setting an internal hiring deadline is a must to be competitive, and to help organize your interview process.
Consider the preparation time you will need for getting approval to hire, reviewing responses, pre-screening, all interviews and debriefs. Understand the timing and necessary steps to prepare a workspace including IT requirements for hardware, software, and credentialling as well as all HR requirements for onboarding.
Once you are ready to hire, be prepared to move quickly in order to:
- Keep top talent engaged throughout your hiring process. 43% of the survey respondents2 who said they’ve ghosted in the past stated that they did so because the process was taking too long to complete.
- Get to full productivity faster to off-set your Cost of Vacancy Unfilled positions represent a lack of productivity resulting in mounting costs, which escalate each day a position remains unfilled.
The average interview process takes 24 days6, but the best candidates are off the market within 10 days4 creating an imbalance that allows the most efficient employers to secure the best candidates.
Step 2 – Know What You Need
Decisiveness stands out as one of the key factors that drives a fast and effective hiring process. You don’t want to start interviewing until you document your must haves and know your options for developing the right talent.
These benchmarking process and culture matching worksheets are designed to help you identify exactly what you need in a position, so you can begin documenting your interviewing checklist both in terms of skills and workstyle preferences.
Completing this in advance will enable you to make quick and confident decisions once you start interviewing.
Step 3 – From A-Z Your Team Sells the Gig
Document Your Employer Value Proposition
In today’s competitive hiring environment, you need to take every opportunity to reinforce why a candidate should want to work for you. This is called your Employer Value Proposition and it’s such a key requirement to a successful recruiting plan, we have created a worksheet to help you create/document your own employer value proposition.
It’s always a good time to remind your key staff of your EVP. Voluntary turnover remains 20% higher than pre-pandemic3 with more than 4 million people quitting each month. Use this Turnover Risk Quiz to gauge who may benefit from a check in with you.
Step 4 - Create Job Ads that Attract
Nearly half of the jobs advertised online are open for more than 90 days and can cost more than $400/month, so if you are going to invest the time and expense into advertising you need to make sure you are getting the most out of it.
Our Advertising Your Opportunity Worksheet walks you through the process of creating ads that keep the focus on what’s important to potential applicants.
Step 5 – Job Match in Every Interview
As a leader you understand the value of consistent business processes, and that is especially true of interviewing. We have found that establishing a consistent interviewing process is one of the biggest differentiators between employers who tell us they have a successful hiring process and those who tell us they struggle.
We developed our Interview Success Form to bring more consistency to the interviewing process. Using it will help you:
- Keep candidates fully engaged by reminding them of why they’re interested in working for you.
- Speed up your hiring process by ensuring you can make a true apples-to-apples comparison, so you feel comfortable that you have everything you need to make a quick decision.
Are You Conducting Virtual Interviews?
82% of employers are now using video interviews5. Our Virtual Interview Guide will help you establish consistency in this critical interviewing format.
Step 6 – PTO Upfront, not the Deal Breaker at the End
All too often, we’ve found the typical starting PTO levels can be a barrier to hiring experienced employees who are currently working. While your preferred candidate may love everything about your company and your opportunity, many experienced workers struggle with the reality of giving up their accrued vacation levels.
We’ve found it is best to get this out there early so that the offer stage isn’t the first time a candidate is hearing about this. If you can get approval in advance to offer an extra week or more if needed, it’s always helpful to know what level of flexibility you have to make a deal work.
Step 7 – Make a Total Opportunity Job Offer
It can take a lot of time and effort to get to the offer stage, and this is when you are at the highest risk of losing your preferred candidate to competing offers.
Candidates tell us that while compensation is very important when evaluating a potential employer, it is fourth on their list of things they consider. You have a lot to offer any candidate. Our Total Opportunity Job Offer form will help you structure an offer that is tailored to your top candidate which will increase offer acceptance.
Step 8 – Don’t Lose Your Candidate to a Counteroffer
Once you have an accepted offer, the final potential stumbling block is the counteroffer from the candidate’s current employer.
Our Counteroffer Threat Assessment helps inoculate you against the chance of losing your selected candidate to a counter offer by guiding the candidate through the many reasons that accepting a counter offer is often counterproductive.