It’s been another great month here at Asset Resourcing.
We have an ever-increasing pool of fantastic candidates for the best jobs in IT, Accountancy, Admin & Clerical and Sales & Marketing and our clients are already planning temporary cover for the Christmas holidays. How well prepared are you for when your key staff take their holidays and time off over Christmas?
If you need any information about holiday cover, have a read through September’s blog, it tells you all you need to know.
Recruiting the best talent
This month, we’re going back to basics with a post telling you about the best ways to both develop your existing talent pool and how to recruit and retain the best employees. One fundamental piece of advice is to try and adopt these tips as early into your recruiting process as possible. As the economy rebounds and becomes more stable, there will be a ‘talent war’ – a larger number of companies attempting to recruit from a smaller pool of available talent – and you need to be prepared.
1. Job Description – Obviously, a job description is designed to give potential employees the exact specification and key responsibilities of the advertised position but what companies with foresight do is to develop the job description internally. This way, they have a clear idea of the cultural and behavioural characteristics of the type of person they are looking for. This can be used to screen candidates, prepare relevant questions for interview and attract the right candidates that fit not only the role, but the company ethos also.
2. Networking – The search for appropriate candidates shouldn’t only come from the HR department and the MD. Each employee now has a vast social network on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (amongst others) and they can tap into them to look for the most suitable candidates so don’t be afraid to use them. Some companies will even offer ‘employee referral’ bonuses for positions that are hard to fill.
Another great source of untapped potential is through the networks of trusted suppliers and clients. They all know your business, how it works and the type of people who work for you so why wouldn’t you ask them if they know anyone who may be suitable.
3. Use your website – Most corporate website will have a ‘Work For Us’ page where it will usually say something along the lines of ‘if you feel you fit with our company ethos, please get in touch with us’. This is all well and good, but if you don’t tell the reader what the company ethos is, how will they know?
Tell the potential employee what your vision is, what sets your business apart in your industry and with the clear intention of making the best candidates say ‘this is the company for me’. Include testimonials from current employees as to why they like working for you. Remember, there is no greater testimonial than the voice of the satisfied end user.
4. Maintain contact – ‘Thank you for your application. You were unsuccessful this time but we will keep your information in file’ is one of the very worst things a candidate can hear. Each relationship needs to be nurtured and maintained because you may well find that an unsuccessful applicant for one position is perfect for another role that may come up only days or weeks later.
5. Become an ‘Employer of Choice’ – What happens to your employees once they join your company? Are they made to feel part of a vision? Do you recognise and nurture talent? Do you provide opportunities for personal and professional growth?
If you do, you need to make sure potential employees know it. Act like an employer of choice and you will be recognised as such. If you develop a reputation for attracting top talent, make sure you can stand by it.
6. Use your recruitment company – At Asset Resourcing, we do a lot of this work for you. We nurture and maintain contact with our pool of candidates; we are in frequent contact with them even though there may not be an open position; we are experienced in finding what you’re looking for and we do it having learnt about your business, what you stand for and the types of people you’re looking for. We’ve done our homework long before the recruitment process begins.
7. How do people perceive your business – The power of publicity cannot be underestimated. Good candidates will always identify specific companies they want to work for, especially if they’re inundated with offers. As such, they will follow your activity on social networks, in the mainstream and trade press and elsewhere on and offline. The oft-quoted phrase ‘any publicity is good publicity’ may work in some industries but not in recruitment.
Good, positive press goes a long way in marking your company out as an industry leader or, more specifically, a company the best candidates want to work for.
As always, we are available to you for information, for guidance and as a sounding board. Use us; it’s what we’re here for.
In the meantime, have a great month and we’ll see you in November.
Ben Sweeting & Michelle Scott – Directors, Asset Resourcing