What is Talent Attraction and Why is it Important?
Talent attraction is a method of recruitment marketing to bring the most suitable active and passive candidates to apply for a job in your company. The main focus of talent attraction is to get your most desirable candidates to apply to you whether you are actively hiring or not. Attracting talent and retaining talent are two of the most important things in order for a company to succeed long term.
Grabbing a candidate’s attention is becoming increasingly more difficult in today’s market. Ensuring that your employer brand stands out is one of the most important ways to attract candidates into your talent pool.
Every company has an employer brand whether they have actively participated in creating it or not. This helps companies to attract, engage with and retain the right people.
Investing time and resources into your organisation’s Talent Attraction strategy will result in an increase in both the quantity and the quality of candidates for any of your open roles and in turn create a more effective and efficient recruitment process. This will save you time, resources and money and will likely lead to increased performance overall as the overall quality of your new hires will be increased.
Methods of Talent Attraction
1. Employer Branding and Employee Value Proposition
“According to social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1985), people identify with an organization when they perceive that it is highly prestigious, with a positive and attractive image; this organizational identity then can enhance members’ self-esteem. To develop and maintain a favorable sense of self-worth, people seek to join and remain with high-status organizations, because such group membership is rewarding and creates a sense of pride.” – Source
Why should someone want to work for you? What is it about working for you that your current employees value and appreciate? Taking the time to research and find the answers to these questions is key to understanding your Employer Value Proposition and creating an enviable employer brand.
You may think that all employees really enjoy working in the office as it creates comradery and a team spirit however, if surveyed you may find that employees want more flexibility and feel disconnected from their peers and thus dampening morale.
If this was the case, you can address it and introduce a hybrid working arrangement. This would not only boost morale but also show current and future employees that you listen to what your employees have to say and are willing to make changes based on what they want.
Your company culture, Google Reviews, what past employees say about you, what current employees say about you, your business profile on job boards and social media activity all play a role in influencing public perception and offer an insight into your business’s personality.
Understanding your businesses personality, communicating your strengths and addressing your weaknesses is key to attracting the top talent to your business.
2. Social Media
Social networks are a powerful recruitment tool. It offers employers the chance to show off their personality, celebrate employees and milestones and highlights anything they believe will portray them in a good light.
Here are some stats: Source
- 55% of job seekers find social and professional networks to be the most useful resource during a job search.
- 73% of millennials found their last position through a social media site.
- 68% of millennials visit a company’s social media properties specifically to evaluate an employer’s brand.
Make sure that you are not missing this opportunity and utilising your social channels for branding and recruitment purposes.
Your Talent Attraction to Do List:
1. Assess Your Current Recruitment Strategy
Take the time to assess your current recruitment strategy. How are you attracting candidates to your business? Are you happy with the quantity and quality of your current applicants and pipeline? What do your current employees have to say about you as an employer?
Once you have a clear picture of where you are currently, you can better understand how you can improve for the future.
2. Expand your Employer Brand and EVP
Creating an enviable employer brand matched with a stellar Employer Value Proposition is key to attracting the top talent to your business.
Your employer brand is how candidates see your company as a potential employer. How staff feel about working there and the company culture are two of the main factors. EVP is simply your organisations values and offerings that are used to positively influence desired candidates.
An EVP Survey can help you define what your company offers as well as what your employees value. Here are some sample EVP survey questions should you be considering doing some research.
As mentioned earlier every company has an employer brand whether intentional or not. Your employer brand can be influenced and crafted to a high degree and being seen as a desirable employer is within your power.
3. Talent Pipelining
“A talent pipeline is a pool of candidates who are ready to fill a position. These can be employees who are prospects for advancement or external candidates partially or fully prequalified to take an opening.”- Source
Having a talent pipeline means that when a new position becomes available you are not starting a search from scratch. Keeping candidates interested and engaged with your brand so when a role opens up, you already have suitable engaged candidates. And so, companies need to seek to fill their recruitment funnel with as many candidates as possible. Both internally and externally.
Having a steady bank of candidates who are familiar with and ready to work for your brand can be invaluable and save you time, money and improve the quality of hires.
Read our previous blog on Talent Pipelining to learn more about how it can benefit your business.
Reach out to us today and let us help you hire top digital talent and build a stronger, more capable team for the future. Happy hiring!
