5 Ways to Acquire Game-Changing Talent In a Candidate-Driven Market

Finding the ideal candidate for a specific position isn’t an easy undertaking. In fact, roughly 75% of companies have reported talent shortages and difficult hiring, which is likely due to the pandemic and the Great Resignation which followed. 

Now, as the economy looks to recover, the world has entered into a resurgence of the candidate-driven market. The number of open jobs is abundant, but the number of top-talent candidates is in short supply. As organizations continue to compete with others, this trend only drives companies to offer higher salaries and greater benefits. 

While this is good news for prospecting workers, employers are struggling to fill open positions with the right people. Fortunately, every cloud has a silver lining, and this trending type of market offers some opportunities for companies to evaluate their hiring strategies and talent acquisition methods. 

To be successful in your recruitment efforts, it’s critical you understand what’s trending in the modern hiring market, and how your company can adopt more effective strategies to acquire top talent.

1. Develop a Strong Employer Brand

When a candidate knows their value, it’s likely they won’t jump at the first employment opportunity. To make your company seem more desirable, you should look to develop a strong employer brand identity that candidates will appreciate and trust.  

Not only will this make your company more attractive in the eyes of potential employees, but it’ll also raise the status of your organization amongst your existing employees. This means thinking beyond your company logo or slogan. How do you conduct your business? What are your values? How do you take care of your employees? 

Enhancing your employer brand means considering your company’s governing principles. From designing a webpage about your company structure, culture, and values, to showcasing real and positive employee stories on job sites, you can effectively demonstrate how and why your company is a transparent and trustworthy employer. 

Be careful not to oversell yourself, though. Candidates don’t want to work with a company that talks about who they want to be, or what they plan on implementing. They want to see who you are now and what ideas and standards you currently possess. 

Looking for ways to enhance your employer’s brand will help your company stand out from the crowd of monotonous competition.  

2.Conduct Your Own Employee Research

Preparation is a key part of the employee-seeking process. Keep in mind that your candidates have likely conducted research on your company, so it’s important to do your part and conduct research on them.

Perhaps one of the easiest avenues to research potential candidates is through social media. According to a study by Career Builder, approximately 77% of companies use social media to check up on potential recruits. 

Social media platforms offer a powerful solution to the screening process. Not only does it showcase positive characteristics they might possess — such as communication skills, diligence, and support of charitable causes — but it can also give employers insight into any other skills that could be useful in their future employment.

However, it’s important to be cautious when researching your candidates this way. While social media can provide an idea as to the character of your potential employee, keep in mind that not everything posted on social media is accurate.

Assessing your candidates based on what you see, read, or hear can cause issues, and a talented candidate could be hastily dismissed based on an out-of-context photo, video, or other forms of visual content. 

When researching your candidates, make sure to do so meticulously and cautiously. Stick with more professional social media platforms like LinkedIn, where employees can post content specifically related to their job, achievements, skills, and level of expertise. 

3. Focus On Employee Retention Strategies

With nearly one-third of new employees quitting their job after 6 months, employee retention is now more important than ever before. And since every company is actively searching for the best candidate, it only makes your retention efforts more crucial. 

But this doesn’t mean your organization is powerless. According to a 2019 Retention Report from the Work Institute, almost 80% of the reasons behind employee departures are preventable by HR or leadership teams. 

Your HR department should incorporate employee retention efforts into its talent acquisition strategy. Aspects like channels for delivery and feedback, training and development, compensation, benefits, and opportunities for promotions, raises, and bonuses should be discussed in the beginning stages of the interview process. Making these benefits and incentives known to candidates early on already positions your company as a more desirable employer. 

4. Optimize the Application Process

Imagine you’re a candidate. You spend hours fine-tuning your resume, filling out a job application, and answering specific questions with detailed answers — only to not receive any feedback, or so much as a simple “yes” or “no” about your potential employment. Naturally, you’ve become tired and unmotivated to repeat such a process. 

Now imagine that company is yours. It only makes sense that a top-talent candidate wouldn’t be attracted to your organization. Fortunately, this is a hypothetical situation, and there are plenty of ways your company can optimize your job application processes. Since three out of five job seekers are lost during lengthy application processes, it’s important to keep your instructions clear and application brief.

Also, more and more job seekers are increasingly looking for jobs on the go, so by making your application mobile-optimized, you can expand your audience of candidates. Ensuring your online form is user-friendly can lower any chances of them wanting to opt-out in the middle of the application process, as well.

5. Embrace Flexibility and Agility

In a competitive market, you should maintain a proactive talent strategy. Adopting an agile talent acquisition approach is about monitoring and making changes to your applications according to market trends, job openings at competing organizations, and other related factors.

Engaging hiring managers and recruiting teams to refine career pages, email campaigns, and job descriptions will help you attract a wider range of talent, increasing your chances of finding the ideal candidate for your company.

 

Author: Cesar Jimenez, myBasePay CEO
Cesar A. Jimenez is an entrepreneur, investor, and military veteran with over 25 years of staffing industry expertise successfully leading technology staffing organizations. His expertise in the IT industry allows him to use his experience as a thought leader for talent acquisition, staffing, IT, and recruitment technologies with a passion for contingent workforce solutions. Cesar has held various leadership roles for both a global staffing organization and technology solutions companies. This expertise has enabled him to develop alternative workforce models that provide the agility for organizations to be competitive in today’s marketplace. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with hisfamily, working out, and coaching high school baseball players.