There will always be competition for top talent. And, those potential candidates with talent know it. In a way they are interviewing you and they know they have options. Here we look at a few ways you can attract the talent you want for your business.
Tell your story
Every good business has a story, so start sharing yours. Think about what’s special about working in your business. Look at the things employees love about your workplace. Start becoming a thought leader. This simply means start to think about the things your business does well, the things you believe in and your view of the things that are happening in your industry.
Candidates want to work for businesses that they perceive to be industry leaders and you can achieve this by by becoming a thought leader within your industry.
Use social media to bring your culture to life
Social media is the perfect channel to use to show potential candidates how impressive your culture is. Think about the way you would describe your business. One of our clients is a creative agency and they want to ‘inspire’ their clients. When I talk to them about their culture the idea of inspiration keeps coming through. Our advice to them was to use Instagram to bring to life inspiration to life. Each staff member is tasked with taking the Instagram account for a week and find and share examples of the things that inspires them. This is a wonderful way to show potential candidates exactly how they live and breath inspiration.
Be real
If we go back a decade or two businesses were able to control their external story. And, there was often a misalignment between what a business was saying about itself and the way employees were talking about their actual experiences. In part this can be due to aspirational language rather than reality.
If we fast forward to the present day the reality is your employees and the broader community have the ability to generate content and opinions about your business in so many ways. Sites such as Glassdoor allow employees to comment on their experiences working within your business. Facebook has thousands of groups, pages and the news feed where employees and the community can comment and share their views and opinions. In fact, the list of social media sites is almost endless. Think LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter.
So what does ‘being real’ mean. It simply means be honest and transparent in the way you talk about your business. Interestingly, a great opportunity to show how strong your culture is when things don’t go to plan. Potential employees and the community understand mistakes are made, what they’re really interested in is how you deal with this publicly. When there is a crisis, be timely, be honest and communicate often. Potential employees will be impressed by this approach as it shows how you really behave and is a great example of your culture being lived.
If you would like to know more about how to attract top talent please contact us paul@paulgreening.com
