No matter how sound your idea, how professional you are, how diverse your experience and how well your intentions may be, the truth is that firms are always comprised of the people who run them, and for that reason, you will need to make the best staffing decisions. With startups, ‘the best staffing decision’ may just involve anyone who can competently perform their role and are happy to forgo the comforts of a more secure salaried position, hoping to grow an otherwise unknown brand into something more stable and appreciated.
But no matter where you are in your approach to business growth, the fact remains, attracting high-quality staff is an important focus that we should all keep in mind. But how exactly can we achieve this? How can we do so in a manner that might not require you to raise your salaries to an unachievable level, or overpromise, or perhaps suffer under the delusion that your small brand name has much prestige to it (at least yet?)
In this post, we’ll discuss all of those questions and levy some advice to this end. We hope the following helps:
Carefully-Written Recruitment Ads
It’s good to place carefully-written recruitment ads in the areas most appropriate to where you usually recruit, be that online resource like Indeed, on more specific platforms, or on their own website.. It can sometimes seem as though companies feel it appropriate to write their job description as if it were a hidden admiration letter, giving away only a few pertinent details while shrouding the rest in vague script that has seemingly no objective value towards the post itself.
For this reason, it’s best to take a step back and consider how legible and up-front your recruitment ads are. What are the expected qualifications? What preferences for staff would you like to have, such as years of experience in a given industry? Are you looking for someone who can speak two languages? Moreover, what will the interview process be like, and what’s the expected salary range? The more candid you can be, the more you come across as a confident company sure of what you need. This attracts better and more appropriate applications. Remember – attracting ‘better staff’ is not necessarily the pursuit of attracting overqualified professionals willing to take a chance with you, but those perfect for the role itself.
Join In-Person Recruitment Drives
Companies can find plenty of value recruiting in places that allow them to bring on new staff they can onboard and develop over time. It’s why even the top companies set up recruitment panels at the job fairs local universities run. This way, you can attract willing graduates ready to apply their academic learning towards an actual position, with none of the bad habits or to-be-trained incompatibilities that come with hiring an industry professional.
Furthermore, young minds have energy, they’re creative, and they’re looking to prove themselves. For that reason, having recruitment drives as a potential option could be a fantastic means of hiring competent staff.
Reward & Recognize Current Employees
Of course, it’s also important to allow your staff to serve as ambassadors of your company. If they’re having a good time working for you, then they’re more likely to encourage others to join. You never know what industry contacts they may have just looking for the position you’re offering. They may even write reviews for platforms like GlassDoor that showcase just what life is like at your firm, including the pros and cons.
While treating staff well is its own reward and necessary for keeping appropriate staff turnover levels, measures like integrating employee rewards software can work magic on top of this. The more you can reward, recognize and appreciate your current employees, the more potential applications will want to work for you. As ‘best employer’ awards are often given within industries, this could even become a proper status that you develop as part of your shrewd efforts, which has a momentum-growing effect of attracting even more appropriate talent.
Be As Fair As Possible
It’s important to give everyone the opportunity to succeed in your firm. Much is being spoken of when it comes to the benefit of running a diverse workforce. Not only does this give you the chance to gauge numerous perspectives within your team, but diverse teams have also been proven to gain better results.
A good way to make sure that you diversify the workplace naturally is to remove the names, ethnicities and gender information from applications, allowing the person to review the qualifications to see only the experience, qualifications and addendums of each resume. Your hiring decisions will naturally diversify over time thanks to a practice like this.
Be Honest, Open & Expressive
Great communication encourages applications to follow through with your interview process, even if you split that up into several stages. It’s also worth considering how this process will be applied at the tail-end of the Covid-19 pandemic. Remote interviews have been popular over the last two years, for instance, with an in-person meeting serving as the last stop-gap approach towards recruitment.
It can also be worthwhile to properly lay out what to expect in each interview, from the dress code provided to the official documents you wish to see, or the references you hope to acquire. As simple as this can be, being upfront and courteous about this can help applications know that you’re not trying to catch them out, but you’re trying to be both approachable and diligent.
Get Them Excited About Your Brand
Remember that many applicants might actually be so sought-after that they have multiple options available. As such, as much as we want the candidates to appeal to us, we need to appeal to them. Get them excited about your brand. Show them what life could be like there. Ask them about their prior knowledge. Talk about your vision. All of this can be accessible on your website, but it certainly overflows into the positive interview process if correctly handled, too.
With this advice, you’ll be sure to attract better staff as standard.
