Today’s talent market is highly competitive. Every company wants to hire the best talent but the top candidates are only available for 10 days before they get hired, according to Talentnow. To hire them, you need to outpace your competitors and speed up your hiring process.
However, the average hiring time is around 23.7 days, which is double that number. So it’s no surprise that about 42%
of organizations fear they’ll lose out on the best talent, (according to the
previously-cited report from Talentnow).
It’s for this reason that sourcing candidates is extremely important. Here are some ways to hire the best talent.
1. Hire Your Brand’s Fans
Your brand’s fans are the people who will take ownership of the company. These people may even work harder than your regular employees because they share the same vision as you. The best part about fans is that they are great for word-of-mouth marketing. They will likely go and tell their social circle about your organization.
This can get their friends interested in working with you as well. If they are passionate enough about the role, you can consider placing them even if they don’t have all of the requisite skills. Skills are trainable. Passion is not.
2. Treat Candidates Like Customers
Every successful organization places their customers above everything else. You should do the same with your candidates as well. You can even think about your recruitment strategy as a marketing and sales funnel.
Qualified candidates should be treated just the way you would treat a high-quality lead. You must make the effort to impress them and give them a great hiring experience. This is where you can use software like Candidate Rewards.
Image via Candidate Rewards
Candidate Rewards allows you to create custom landing pages for each of your candidates. It shows them the exact value of their offer letter and even gives them personalized access to content. This includes videos about your organization, a CEO’s message, and more.
You can even track the activity of your candidates in real time and figure out what they want the most. This will help you to tailor your offer letters to make them more compelling.
3. Create a Great Working Environment
Word-of-mouth marketing is a great way to find the best talent for your organization. It even makes sourcing candidates easier for you. For this, you need to make sure that your working environment keeps your current employees happy.
You need to build a great work culture and create a friendly place where people can work together in peace. This will create a positive effect on the employees, who will enjoy working for your organization.
This may even make them work harder and recommend your organization to their social circles. About 48% of businesses say that employee referrals are the best source of talent.
4. Offer Challenging Tasks
The best talent out there will seldom be interested in boring projects that don’t stimulate them. They will constantly look for projects that will challenge them and keep them on their toes. Such projects allow them to set a target and then meet it.
Sourcing candidates can be much easier if you come up with challenging projects. The best talent will want to grab the opportunity and make the most out of it. This will ensure that you can hire the best talent out there for your organization. Additionally, once they do meet their targets, they will be thankful to the organization for providing them the opportunity. This helps you retain your talent as well.
5. Strengthen Your Brand Online
It is important to not only strengthen your brand for customers but also for talent. You need to create a strong employer brand online. A brand that people have heard of and follow online will seem more attractive to the top talent out there.
You should showcase your company culture and write frequently about it online. Create a company blog or write guest posts on other relevant sites in your niche. When top talent reads your content, they will be prompted to join your team.
6. Network Continuously
A great way of sourcing candidates is through networking. While networking does help you connect with customers, it can also help you reach the best talent. You must take out the time to attend events and meetups in your industry.
These events and meetups tend to have the top people from the industry under one roof. And if you speak about your organization at an event, you’ll effectively be selling your brand’s vision to the listeners. Many of these people may be interested in joining your organization. In fact, about 55% of people say they had a good relationship with the brand before applying for a job with them.
7. Consider Remote Employees
It’s a good idea to not be fixated on hiring only local employees. You should be open to remote employees as well. This is especially true if you’re having a tough time finding reliable employees in your area.
Remote employees can be from any part of the world and they allow you access to a huge talent pool. The best part about remote employees is that you generally don’t need to offer them as many perks as your in-house team. This can help you save money as well.
If remote employment doesn’t work for you, perhaps you can offer a flexible working environment. This could be something like flexible working hours or providing days where employees can work from home. This can make the offer more attractive to your candidates.
Final Thoughts
Hiring may seem like a difficult process. However, by valuing your candidates as much as your customers, sourcing candidates will become easier. You also need to create a good working environment that will automatically get you some word-of-mouth publicity. Being flexible with work hours and work locations can also help attract the best candidates to your organization.
What do you think is the most important factor that attracts the best talent to join an organization? Let us know in the comments.