Effective Strategies for Attracting Top Talent | Meaden & Moore

The years following the COVID-19 pandemic were referred to as “The Great Resignation.” In 2021 and 2022, almost 100 million workers quit their jobs. Today, employers are continuing to feel that absence, with most companies having more job openings today than they had before the pandemic. This talent shortage makes recruitment and retention more important than ever.

Recruiting High-Quality Employees

Finding and keeping high-quality and talented employees begins with a strong recruitment strategy.

Craft the perfect job description

Your job description is the first introduction potential hires will have to your company. It needs to attract the right candidates (and deter unqualified ones), describe the position accurately, and outline expectations for the role — not an easy feat in a few short paragraphs. When crafting your job description, we have a few suggestions.

Do collaborate with the hiring manager. Even if HR drafts the job description, the hiring manager is the best person to flesh out the skills that are needed for a new hire to excel.

Don’t be vague. Be specific when describing the skills, personalities, and experience levels needed. Vague descriptions waste your (and your candidates’) time.

Do delete buzzwords. Buzzwords like “detail-oriented” and “self-starter” make your job listings too ambiguous and make your organization sound tired and cliché.

Don’t combine multiple roles in the same listing. Create listings for each job opening. This will help expedite the resume review process.

Do tailor examples to fit your company. If you start with a job description template, customize it. Describe a day in the life of a person in that position, or provide examples for projects a new hire would likely need to tackle in their first few weeks on the job.

Don’t share too much information. Share enough to pique interest, but not too much. If your listing encourages candidates to do research before applying, you’ll be left with a better pool of contenders.

Perfect your branding

Branding is key when attracting candidates because it shows applicants why they should choose your company over all others. One way to improve brand image is to highlight company culture. You can do this by adding employee testimonials to your website, perhaps right alongside client testimonials. You can also expand your social media and web presence.

Leverage technology

Technology can play an important role in recruiting. Joveo, for example, is an AI-led recruitment marketing platform that crafts job descriptions, uses conversational AI to engage with candidates, schedules interviews, and more.

Optimize your screening techniques

When it’s time to start interviews, you can further cull your list of candidates with some of the following screening tests.

• Behavioral interviews — Assesses a candidate’s potential performance by asking how they would handle a difficult workplace situation.
• Skills assessments — Evaluates a person’s knowledge and competencies in a technical area to see if they can handle the rigors of the job.
• Personality tests — Identifies relevant and useful personality traits to determine a person’s character, communication style, and social skills.
• Cognitive ability tests — Pinpoints an applicant’s mental process when solving work-related problems.
• Cultural fit assessments — Compares an applicant’s values to company culture to see if they would be a good fit.

Onboarding and Retention Best Practices

Once you perfect your recruitment strategy, you can move to onboarding and retention.

Setting the tone for success.

The first 90 days are a crucial time for new hires. It’s during these first few months that your employees get a feel for the workplace culture, their working conditions, and the other personalities they’ll be interacting with. A few ways to make their first 90 days a good experience are to:

• Take care of administrative tasks early. You don’t want your employees struggling with inadequate building access or temporary technology solutions. Give them what they need to thrive within the first few days of their employment; show them that they matter.

• Assign a mentor for guidance. A buddy system can empower your workers to ask questions as soon as they notice a problem rather than letting those questions build up and cause problems later down the road.
• Have regular check-ins. Managers, mentors, and HR should check in with new staff regularly to make sure they have everything they need.

Remember that retention is a continuous process

Employee retention tactics — at least the successful ones — operate under the assumption that keeping employees happy is a work in progress. You can’t build a good foundation and forget about it. Throughout the year you should:

• Reevaluate compensation and benefits regularly. Reevaluating your benefits ensures you’re finding adequate benefits at the best cost. Not only that, but looking at your compensation and benefits package in a new light is helpful when your workforce is changing. For example, to meet the diverse needs of your workforce, you might consider prioritizing flexible remote work options, which many workers value, alongside offering a variety of investment choices in your retirement plan, which may appeal to others.
• Listen to what your employees say. Listen to your employees during exit interviews, of course. But you should also pay attention to the water cooler gossip. You may hear things you don’t want to hear, but you’ll have better insight into what’s making people quit.
• Invest in professional growth. This is important for you, so that you can hone your skills as a leader, but also for your employees. Investing in their training tells them that you value them as long-term employees.
• Cultivate a positive workplace culture. This will look different for each business, but it might be setting positive examples, providing valuable and in-the-moment feedback, being open to criticism, making concessions to meet employee expectations, and more.

Retention is all about consistency

Consistency is key. Consistency in operations, in how you treat customers, and in how you treat employees — all these contribute to how likely an employee will want to stick around. To maintain consistency in operations, rely on systems. Have your workers follow the same set of systems to ensure everyone is treated consistently across the board.

Overcoming a Tough Labor Market

It’s no news that the labor market is complex. So much has changed in recent years — the dominant generation in the workforce is shifting younger, AI and smart technologies are playing more of a role, and workers are demanding more flexibility. Even though change can be hard to predict, it isn’t unmanageable. With the right tools and techniques, your business can find success. 

Reach out to us today if you want to discuss strategies for finding quality employees.