If you’ve ever hired a new employee or have been involved in the hiring process, you know that it’s not an easy undertaking and that things don’t always go as planned. Job candidates lose interest, accept positions at other companies, and sometimes even fail to show up for an interview and don’t even call to let you know why. While some candidate fall-off is expected, if you’re consistently failing to recruit and hire interested candidates, then you might have a problem with how you’re representing your brand and engaging top professionals.
As a leader, it’s important to realize what job seekers are looking for in a new opportunity and how you can position your company to meet these needs. The 2016 Talent Trends study identifies 3 priorities job seekers have when considering a new position. Keep reading to learn more about these priorities and how you can best relay this information to these job seekers.
Culture
According to the survey, more than two-thirds of respondents wanted to know about a company’s culture and values, above everything else, before making a decision to change jobs. These results alone should tell you that culture should be your top priority when attracting and recruiting candidates.
Candidates want to know what it’s really like to work inside your company every day, and the best way to show them is by the people who are currently working there. Encourage your employees to be brand advocates by having them share company achievements, news, and pictures on their LinkedIn and social media accounts. You can even create your own company hashtag to give employees a way to share why they love working at your company and include this hashtag in your job descriptions. These days, candidates do their research on companies by visiting the company website, social media accounts, the social media accounts of current employees and sites like Glassdoor so it’s important that an accurate picture of your company is represented on all of these sites.
Benefits
Perks and benefits are becoming a hot topic for candidates as companies are starting to offer incentives like yoga classes, unlimited vacation, parental leave, daily meals, and massages in place of traditional health insurance options. While these may be non-traditional benefits, you have to know what is important to your employees and what they will see as the greatest benefit. One way to know what’s important to your employees is to simply ask them. That way you can give your current employees a reason to stay and find candidates who are interested in the same benefits.
Mission
Job seekers and especially Millennial job seekers are very interested in the overall mission of the company, not just the product you’re selling. For example, your company may sell windows and doors, but if you’re donating money to conservation efforts to protect forests or providing jobs to people in underdeveloped countries, then your mission is bigger than just selling your product. Make sure to describe your social conscious efforts to job seekers and have it on your website.
Also, part of describing your company mission to job seekers is explaining how they can contribute to this mission and make an impact on your company. When describing their job duties, talk about how they will have monthly meetings with the CEO to brainstorm new ideas, or how they will be a part of a new project that will directly impact the company. Job seekers want to make a difference at your company and it’s your job to show them how this is possible.
If you’re looking to bring new employees on board to your company, make sure your company culture, benefits, and mission are clearly defined and part of your brand. Showing what your company is all about will help attract talented professionals who want to work for your company just as much as you want to hire them.
