Today, employers must be creative to find awesome talent. You need to cast your net wide to find high performers. Consider using multiple avenues to create interest in the position and your organization, and build a talent pool.
Streamline your selection process to enable you to move quickly when you find that best-fit candidate. In our recent post, we show you how to increase the success of your selection process by 170%. We work with you to ensure you assess candidates full talent stack.
You gain the insights of our analytics. SuccessFinder predicts the probability that the candidate will exceed expectations. You manage the process, our recruitment bundle supports you through the process from writing the ad to onboarding.
When you use our talent analytics you may discover a high performer for a different role in your organization. It is likely to be a better fit for the candidate too.
Ways to Find Awesome Talent
Betty Liu, Founder/CEO Radiate offers nine ways that could help your company source some great talent:
- Referrals. Try looking at the people who are already around you. Employees often have extensive networks to tap into. Remember the old adage: "I get by with a little help from my friends." With a whopping 48% of businesses saying that their quality hires come from employee referrals (according to a 2017 LinkedIn report) this tactic makes a lot of sense!
- Career sites and job boards. Love them or loathe them, online career sites and job boards are a surefire way of getting as many eyes on your job posting as possible. Make sure you choose the right sites for your business as some search sites have a reputation for focusing on certain industries like tech. An index by Jobvite shows that an enormous 43% of job seekers search for positions using a job board, while 32% search use career sites.
- Social networks. Hiring managers are increasingly sourcing talent from social media networks. In fact, 95% of companies surveyed said that they successfully hired from LinkedIn, while 24% pointed to Facebook and 16% credited Twitter. Social networks are also a great way to forge meaningful relationships with passive candidates. One of our most recent hires came from my own social media network.
- Attend events and constantly network. Your talent pool can be dramatically expanded when you spend time in the right places. I have met some extremely talented people at meet-ups. These non-pressurized surroundings are a great way to meet people in the right industry and to promote your business. Co-founder of Naturebox Gautam Gupta agrees with the importance of networking: "You've got to cultivate your network so whenever you have a hire to be made, you can reach out to people that have worked with those types of folks before and fill that role very quickly."
- Become an employer of choice. Candidates are drawn to a positive company culture and mission. Cultivating a progressive and lively company culture can help employees approach you. By focusing on core values, Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra maintains that a company will "find people that are symbiotic and synergistic with your mission, who really connect to your mission."
- Consistent communication. While some companies issue an automatic reply to every job applicant, over 40% of recruiters don't respond at all. This will leave a negative taste in a job candidate's mouth. If a candidate proved to be unsuitable for a particular role but showed some promise, keep the channel of communication open with them as there might be a more fitting job down the line. Fifty-five percent of candidates reported that they already had a relationship with the company before applying.
- Leverage your current employees. Letting potential employees know the calibre of talent that work in your company can be highly beneficial. After all, talent attracts talent. Social media posts, video interviews and employee testimonials can raise the exposure of your company and help the wider audience get to know your brand. Employees make great brand ambassadors. Glassdoor says 76% of candidates want details on what makes the company an attractive place to work.
- Expand your candidate pool. If you are struggling to find talent in your local area, try expanding your job search area. Hiring remotely opens up a whole host of talent outside of your competitive job market. With recent advances in technology, it's never been easier to work remotely. Don't lose out on outstanding employees just because they aren't located in the same city as you are. Randi Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of Zuckerberg Media, has a very positive experience with a remote workforce. "I have on my team a mother who has to work from home because she has a child with special needs, and she has to be home with him. Normally someone like that wouldn't have the opportunity to get back into the workforce, but thanks to the incredible tools we have...she is as my right-hand woman."
- Headhunters and recruiters. For really hard-to-fill positions, headhunters, recruiters and employee placement firms are the way forward. Many of these firms have done a lot of the hard work for you and have gathered an extensive pool of talent to choose from. Expect to pay 20-35% of the cost of the new recruit's annual salary. Leave this option for only highly-skilled workers.
If you employ more than 50 people in the same position, we recommend that you have us develop a custom high-performance benchmark for the role. We determine the common behavioral traits of your high performing employees. You can then quickly screen candidates and hire the high performer.
SSQ Financial’s HR management decided to build a specific high performer benchmark for the sales advisor role. The model was built with a large data set of high performers and low performers. The result was a personalized profile that was specific to this role and that would be used to predict sales advisor success. The pilot lasted 18 months. Following their training, and after 12 months in their role, the new hires from the past year were evaluated to see if the SuccessFinder benchmark recommendations had played out accurately in actual on-the-job performance.
Of the recommended hires, 93% met or exceeded performance on the job. For performers below this bar who were hired, over half proved to not meet expectations in actual on-the-job performance. These strong predictive results impressed SSQ management and the project was approved for expansion. Download the case study.
Want to know if a candidate is is likely to exceed expectations?
Use Our Best-Fit Staffing Proces
We can predict the likelihood that a candidate will meet and exceed expectations with 85% reliability. We assess candidates against benchmarks of high performers in the same role. You know that you are truly getting a high performer . . . not just the best of a bad lot! We can your “A-list” pile, identifying the five to interview and complete analysis of the final two or three. Then onboard your new hire with a development plan.
