1. Home
  2. Recruitment & HR Blog
  3. Talent acquisition
  4. Bringing your talent acquisition to the next level

05.11.2021 Talent acquisition

Bringing your talent acquisition to the next level

Bringing your talent acquisition to the next level

Finding the best talent is one of the biggest challenges that companies face, especially now that the pandemic is coming to an end and organisations are opening up their doors to fill the roles that have been put on hold for almost two years. 

Finding the best talent is one of the biggest challenges that companies face, especially now that the pandemic is coming to an end and organisations are opening up their doors to fill the roles that have been put on hold for almost two years. 

All of that is unsurprising. The tricky part, especially within smaller teams, is setting up a dedicated and extensive workforce plan. Doing this will mean that your talent officers have a plan of which positions should be a priority to hire, and means there is a clear roadmap for everyone involved to follow. This should include interview steps, company culture alignment, onboarding and feedback.

If you don’t already have a workforce plan then that’s a great place to start, without having a proper plan in place you may find the advice below to be redundant. 

Below we’ll go through some simple steps to help improve your talent attraction, from writing job applications, through to the interviews and hiring stage.

The basics

Time to hire

First thing’s first, candidates don’t want to have to jump through hoops to get a job offer. Candidates nowadays are likely to be part of several interview processes at one time. This makes shortening your time to hire — from application to a signed contract— an essential marker when securing the top talent.

It’s likely that if your hiring process is more than 2 – 3 weeks long that you’ll lose your candidate to another company. Some great talent will only be on the market for around 10 days before signing a contract.

Of course, there are other elements that contribute to whether someone will take an offer from you, or would rather go with another company. Let’s explore those below. 

Your values

What kind of team would you like to build? Having people that work well both within their primary team and across departments will improve productivity, communication and motivation.

If you have a strong working identity and everyone is on the same page about expectations, the team will flow much easier and you’ll get faster results. Here are some prompts to think about when developing your company values:

  • Are learning and knowledge sharing important to your company identity? 
  • Would you like to offer the chance for people to work in a hybrid or remote setting, or would you prefer people to work from the office? 
  • Are socialisation and community spirit going to benefit your teams?
  • How far up your values list are things like honesty, trust, and respect?
  • Are you looking for experts in their related fields, or are you looking to develop skills in people learning or moving careers?

If you set up your values and take some time to think about the important traits that should be valued in your team members you’ll find talent that matches your core beliefs and values, and you will see an increase in employee retention rates. 

What your team wants

Develop a solid Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

We spend the majority of our time working, whether that’s at the office, in a hybrid setting, or completely remote. So, it’s important to give your team benefits that work for them. 

One big mistake seen in a lot of organisations is the thought that an EVP is a one-size-fits-all solution. 

But of course, we’re human beings, and we all have different interests, wants and needs. If you have a lot of social team members, you’ll find that they appreciate team events and after-work drinks. However, you may have different personalities that aren’t interested in socialising but appreciate health and fitness benefits like yoga classes or discounts when purchasing a bike.

To combat this, you can create a few different personas of your team members, so that you can offer tailored compensation packages. 

Some points to think about when developing these personas are: 

  • What stage of their life are they at? Group your personas into age ranges. 
  • What level of risk might they be willing to take?
  • What are their expectations for career development?
  • What benefits are other companies or competitors offering?
  • What would financial security mean for them?
  • What kind of learning opportunities would benefit them?

Compensation & Relocation

Having a transparent compensation package will encourage trust in your employees from the start. It’s important to show your expectations and that you’re willing for some negotiation. This will stop people from getting through several stages of your hiring process, to then reject an offer or stop the process early because your compensation expectations were not aligned. 

Relocation is a hot topic in this post-pandemic world. Firstly, more and more people are encouraged to apply for a new role if the organisation is open to either a fully remote or a hybrid working environment. Think about whether you’d like to include this as a perk for all your employees and if it would align with your company values.

If you’d like to have at least a hybrid environment, but especially if you’d prefer for your team to work completely from the office, it will be a great advantage to offer help with relocation. 

Some companies offer full or partial financial help with temporary accommodation for a certain time period until they can find something permanent for themselves. Often this option is too much to offer, especially if your organisation is young. In this case some relocation help is always greatly appreciated. For example, you can collate your team’s knowledge of housing websites and information about the different districts of your city. You can include moving companies and tips on what documentations and government appointments they might need to go to when first arriving, as well as any visa support.

Another nice perk to have when moving to a new city or country is to know some of the cultural attractions. You could organise a list of your team’s favourite restaurants, for example. 

It can be daunting and stressful to relocate for a new job, so any tips and advice you can provide will be a great plus when trying to attract new talent. 

Learn more about JOIN

Find out how we can help you find the best talent

Learn more

Get everyone involved

Evaluate your efforts consistently

Feedback and evaluations will be essential to improving the effort of your talent acquisition process.

Check in with your current employees, what benefits and compensations do they love already? Ask them if anything else would have been especially beneficial to them when they were going through the hiring process or once they first started. 

Remember to keep up with the feedback rounds, especially once new starters join the team. 

This will keep your benefits and compensation up to date and constantly attract better talent, while you consistently learn more about your team members and get to know the benefits and perks that they’re using the most.

Having an in-depth knowledge of these things will increase your employee satisfaction as well as increase your employee retention when you adapt and add new perks along the way. 

Brand ambassadors

Developing a company brand is a strong start to attracting better talent. But we can make it even stronger with internal brand ambassadors. Letting your team know what the company stands for, and which values are important to you will naturally encourage these values to become stronger.

You might want to offer some of the more outgoing and social members of your team the chance to be brand ambassadors. This will encourage better word of mouth about working at your organisation and in turn encourage candidates that already have those values and ideals to apply for your open positions. 

Brand ambassadors are also great candidates to be part of any special marketing campaigns you might run, like videos or advertisements. They can provide quotes and experiences about working in their teams for your talent officers, which can be used to advertise your company on a job ad. 

Company Culture

Having a positive and engaging company culture is one of the most important elements in development as it will attract and retain better talent. You may find that without a strong company culture it’s still relatively simple to attract talent, but they usually don’t stick around to grow with your organisation if the culture is lacking. 

Having a strong social culture at your workplace can do wonders for your talent attraction. If your current team enjoys coming to work and feels they have personal connections with their colleagues, they’ll be much more likely to recommend working at the company to their friends or acquaintances when they’re looking for new opportunities. Furthermore, if you have great talent already, they will usually bring great talent with them!

Don’t rush or overlook this step, read our extensive guide on team building and company culture here

First impressions

Your career page

Bring everything together to highlight your strengths! 

Talk about your company culture, what do you get up to after office hours? Do you have pizza Fridays? Monthly celebrations? Do you have an inclusive and transparent approach to updates and revenues? Let everyone know why they should apply to your company compared to others. 

Get some engaging photos on the career page. If you have an incredible green office, or themed meeting rooms, let your creativity shine and get potential applicants to visualise themselves working within your environment.

Job descriptions

Work on the job ads that you’re posting. It’s more likely than not that your job advertisement will be the first impression that potential candidates see of your company. 

Be honest about the responsibilities that the candidate would be performing. Highlight any learning opportunities that you offer and link to your website and social media platforms so that candidates can get a sense of what it would be like to work there. 

If you’re a young and growing company then you can reflect this with your tone of voice. Be friendly and laid-back, rather than cold and stoic. Together with a well thought out and extensive list of tasks and responsibilities to expect you’ll attract more talented candidates that align with your values, branding and culture. 

Final thoughts

If you’d like to improve your talent attraction, you’ll find that working on your company culture, getting to know your current employees and putting trust in brand ambassadors is a great first step. Together with a splash of modern benefits and compensation plans, you’ll start bringing in better talent for each department as well as a much higher employee retention rate.

Easily post your job ads to 10+ job boards

Find your next hire - for free!

logo ad misc glo en

Related articles

A complete guide to workforce planning
Organisation & processes A complete guide to workforce planning

In very simple terms, workforce planning is a process to ensure your organisation has the right talent to achieve long term goals. What's the best way to plan this and what are the advantages?

Hannah Squire Oct 20, 2021
The importance of team building and company culture
Company culture The importance of team building and company culture

Working on your team building activities can work wonders for your communications, relationships and productivity within your organization. It goes without saying that having high performing teams are much more successful and bring much better results. An easy way to work towards this is to give your employees a sense of community.

Hannah Squire Sep 08, 2021

Related tags