In today’s competitive job market, it is more difficult than ever to find and hire quality employees. The jobseekers out there understand they are a hot commodity, and employers are pulling out all the stops to attract applicants to fill their vacancies. If you are looking to fill an empty role on your team, the usual methods and offerings just aren’t going to work now. So, we wanted to give you some tips on how to best attract, hire, and retain employees in this competitive landscape.
Creative Advertising
Long gone are the days of simply putting a “help wanted” sign out or placing an ad on indeed.com and the applications just come flooding into you. If you are an employer who is inundated with applicants right now, then consider yourself very lucky. There are so many industries like hospitality, nursing, education, and skilled labor sectors struggling to fill vacancies with qualified employees. Employers need to use all their tried-and-true methods, but experiment with some new and creative ways of advertising the openings.
Here we will offer some ideas on expanding your advertising. If you aren’t already advertising your job vacancies online, it’s time to jump on board. You can advertise in many places for free, such as indeed.com (you can also choose to “sponsor” your job for extra visibility) or pay for an ad on a site like ziprecuiter.com, which claims to be the most sophisticated online hiring platform. You could also put ads on local or industry-specific online job boards (such as constructionjobs.com), positing on social media job boards or paying for recruiting (Facebook and LinkedIn are good options for these), or local word-of-mouth or industry-specific private Groups on social media (search Groups for your location or industry, then request to join the Groups).
You can take it one step further by really building up your personal network. Joining industry-specific or professional in-person networking groups like BNI (Business Networking International) and making it known that you are looking for referrals of possible new hires for your company is a great way to get some leads. You can also leverage other people in your circle, such as your current employees. They can often be a fantastic resource for you. Offer them a bonus or a referral perk for a new hire that they have sent to you. You could also get the word out to your current customers or clients that you are looking to hire some great people, and who knows, maybe one of them is looking for a new job. Who better to consider for the job than someone who already knows and appreciates what your business has to offer? Chances are, since they are customers, they are fans of your business, and they might enthusiastically recommend a friend or family member to you who is looking for a job opportunity.
Make the Job Appealing
Once you have your job ad out in the online universe and it is getting viewed or you have someone apply who is interested in the opportunity, you want to make sure that they know all of the reasons why it would benefit them to work for you and your company. You want your job to be the most appealing and attractive to jobseekers as possible. Below are some of the perks that you should consider offering, in order to land the highest-quality employees.
Money is important, but it isn’t everything, especially to millennials, which are now making up a big percentage of the workforce. You want to start by offering a competitive salary. If you aren’t doing this, you don’t have a chance, so make sure to do your research and see what your competitors are offering as a salary or wage. You might also think about offering a hiring bonus, to be paid out at contract signing or after a certain amount of time on the job. Businesses that can offer health or retirement benefits to their employees should definitely highlight that, and something that has been on-trend lately is offering more than the traditional 2 weeks paid vacation time, along with more paid personal and sick days. A few more trendy perks that jobseekers are looking for are the opportunity to work remotely and a flexible work schedule. Both of those will obviously only work in certain situations and won’t apply to every business. Other things like a positive work environment or anything else that makes working for you unique or interesting should be made clear to applicants.
Keep Current Employees Happy
More and more these days, Americans are re-assessing their lives and deciding to make big changes. Job changes are one of the major things that people are considering at the moment. The last thing you want is for your trained employees to jump ship at this point. So, you want to make sure that your employees are happy in their current positions. Get their feedback as to their job satisfaction and make changes where you feel appropriate. If there is something you can do to show a long-term employee that they are valued, then it might be the right time to show your appreciation. It could be a raise, adding health benefits, a promotion to a more senior role, a change in company processes and procedures that will benefit them or make their job smoother, or maybe they are doing the work of two people and you promise to get them an assistant.
Whatever it is, find out what is most important to them and do your best to deliver. Remember that not everyone is motivated by money, and every employee with have different needs and desires. That’s why it’s important to communicate with each of them directly. Sometimes just feeling heard or getting positive recognition really goes a long way. Happy employees make your business more successful, so it’s always in everyone’s best interest to ensure that you are doing all you can for your employees. Hopefully they will see and appreciate your efforts, and they will stay with you for many years to come.