6 tips for attracting and hiring the best talent

As a recruiter we are not only judged on our ability to fill job roles, but also on the quality of candidate that we fill them with.

By finding the best candidates you help your business to deliver better work, grow exponentially and ultimately save a huge amount of resource in costly re-recruiting processes. With this in mind, it is clear that our goal should be to identify the best candidates and attract them into the business we work for.

It may all seem simple, but any experienced recruiter will know that this is far from the case. In this article we give six top tips for finding, attracting and hiring the best talent.

1. Define ‘the best’

You can’t find the best until you know what we are looking for.

Having a clear idea of what is meant by ‘the best talent’ will provide the starting point to go about finding and hiring it. Doing this will require some research and thought process to achieve.

Try noting as many details as possible in terms of what the perfect candidate will look like. Ask yourself and others questions including:

What skills will they have?

What qualifications will they need?

What will their approach to work be?

What experience will they have already gained?

What sort of personality will mean they fit perfectly into the business and team?

What salary would they expect?

What will motivate them?

Using your knowledge as a recruiter you can go some way to answering these questions, but you will also need to work with team leaders to get a deeper understanding.

2. Compatibility is key

You can see from the list of questions above that you don’t just want to ask what is wanted from the candidate, but also there is ass need to highlight how they will fit in and work with the team and rest of the business.

For example, a candidate may have the perfect skill set, qualifications and experience to get the job done. However, once that candidate is integrated in the team, if they operate in a different way or struggle to fit in this will affect their ability to work at their peak performance.

It is important to keep this in mind when writing the job description, making it appeal to the right candidate. You may also consider including some compatibility elements into the interview process, allowing you to test how they work in what would be their normal working conditions.

3. Make job ads specific

Once you know who the perfect candidate is you can put together a job ad that is going to attract them.

The mistake that we often see being made in this space is recruiters being scared of getting too few applications and making their job ads too generic. This not only leads to the wrong type of candidates applying to the job but will fail to attract the perfect candidates as they tend to know exactly what they are looking for.

Therefore, you need to make our job ads very specific. Not just in terms of the skills you are looking for but also writing the advert in a way that attracts the right personality. For example, if you need a highly driven and motivated individual to get the job done, try throwing a challenge into the job ad. Doing this is likely to attract those who relish a challenge and repel those looking for a process-based job.

4. Fish in a bigger pool

So, now you know exactly who you are looking for both in terms of ability and personality, you need to work out how they are going to be found.

To give yourself the best chance of finding these candidates you need to get your job advert in front of as many potential candidates as possible. This can be done by working with a business like eRecruitSmart who can create adverts and use their excellent relationships with the major job boards to get your ad in front of a huge amount of job seekers.

Carefully crafted optimised job adverts are essential because if they are generic, you could receive hundreds of irrelevant CV’s that would need to read through, wasting a huge amount of time.

By using the specific job ad tips as suggested above, the majority of applications received will be worth your time, helping you to find the perfect candidate to fill the role.

5. Refine your product and communicate it

As a recruiter the business you work for is your product. By making your products more attractive you are going to help potential candidates to find and want to apply for your job vacancies.

Doing this requires two continuous actions. The first is by actually improving the ‘product’, through the development of better work place cultures, benefits, salaries and interesting workload.

But having a fantastic product is pointless if nobody knows about it. So, you also need package that product in an attractive way and work to communicate it effectively to the perfect candidates we are looking for.

6. Understand attention

Getting this message in front of the right people depends largely on understanding where that group of people’s attention is.

This will likely take a little research. However, talking to others within your business in a similar role will likely uncover a lot of information on where this attention is. For example, this may be on specific social media platforms, specific job boards, online forums, events or a particular location such as a pub or bar.

We can see that finding, attracting and hiring the best talent in your industry can be quite a challenge. However, by following the tips we have highlighted above you can understand exactly who you are targeting, how you can reach them and how you can attract them to work for your business.

If you would like a helping hand with recruiting your next star employee, why not get in touch or book your job today?