Top 10 Recruiting Best Practice Tips

The TalentRise team has compiled our list of top 10 recruiting tips to assist your organization to attract, recruit, and retain high-quality talent in today’s candidate-driven labor market.

1 – Understand your target job candidate demographics and job change motivations and appeal to their, “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM).

Areas to focus on:

What’s in it for me (WIIFM)?: WIIFM requires that you speak the candidate’s language by focusing on what he or she is looking to gain by working for your organization and the value you offer. Be sure to share your company’s benefits, perks, PTO, etc.

2 – Offer flexible hybrid or 100% remote work schedules for your hires

Workers value employers that empower them to manage their own time and give them the flexibility to utilize their time most efficiently. Garner found that among U.S. employees, work-life balance is valued more than health benefits. A hybrid work model provides employees with many benefits such as an improved work-life balance, flexibility in childcare, more time for daily exercise, and cost savings. An unhealthy work-life balance can cause employee burnout, a deterioration in health, strain on relationships, and reduced work productivity. Employees suffering from burnout are nearly three times as likely to leave their current employer. 

Related: How to Manage in a Remote Work Environment Related: Effective Leadership in a Remote Workplace

3 – Define your company’s Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and communicate it effectively on your website, job postings, and social media platforms

When formulating an EVP, companies need to ask themselves how they’d like to be perceived in the eyes of prospective employees. What elements of your organization do you want to promote? How is your organization different from others in its industry? What factors make your business a great place to work? An EVP should contain a message that’s both persuasive and compelling yet succinct and to the point—one that can be used for recruiting AND marketing purposes.

This statement should emphasize three main components of your organization:

1 – Your mission and purpose.

2 – Your long-term vision

3 – Your core company values

Related: What is Your Employee Value Proposition?

4 – Invest in building your employment brand and reputation online as a top employer to work for and research competitors for culture insights

Your employer brand is critical in attracting top candidates and retaining your best employees. With a strong employer brand, you will see twice as many applicants and spend much less for each employee hired. Promoting your employer brand is more than a list of perks or parties. Your messaging needs to come from your employees and be authentic.

Related: How Businesses Can Improve Their Brand Awareness

5 – Share your startup story and culture by highlighting your uniqueness in the market and using videos in your recruitment communications

Here are tips for telling your startup story:

1 – Share what problem you are solving and how you do it differently

2 – Explain how you are making an impact on the world

3 – Clearly articulate why employees feel you are a great employer

4 – Paint a picture of the company’s long-term growth strategy 

5 – Talk about your past startup successes

6 – Talk about how you value diversity in your culture 

7 – Highlight the WIIFM – “What’s in it for me (the job candidate)?”

6 – Create a high-touch candidate experience using self-scheduling and video interviewing tools, and AI chatbots to facilitate a consistent and timely recruiting process

To reduce the number of candidates dropping out because they feel they have been ghosted, streamline processes by scheduling an automated email to be sent to the applicant immediately after his or her application is received. In the email, outline the timeline and expectations for the hiring process. Specify a date, after which, the candidate should follow up to check the status. Utilize the platforms and tools available on the market to take the stress out of scheduling— and rescheduling—candidate interviews.

7 – Make job interviews human and be sure to use multiple data points to evaluate the WHOLE person in your hiring decisions

You can’t rely on just one metric to make your hiring decision. That is why you must evaluate the whole person. When it comes to evaluating candidates, look for multiple data points to drive a decision.

1 – Resumes and interviews help us understand the person’s knowledge, skills, and experience. They also help us understand the person’s values and cultural habits that may or may not align with our own. These tend to change over time and are situational in nature.

2 – We also know that understanding someone’s cognitive skills and their drives/motivations through PI assessments tends to be stable over time and can give us insight into job fit and overall ability to perform the job at hand.

Related: Competency-Based Interviewing Part I: Understanding the “Why” and “How”
Related: Competency-Based Interviewing Part II: Conquering Adoption Resistance

8 – Use validated assessment tools to gain deeper insights into a candidate’s alignment with your job, culture, and team

The first rule of introducing assessments into your hiring process is that you just can’t overweight their value. But validated assessment tools can be used to gain deeper insights into a candidate’s alignment with your job, culture, and team. A cognitive assessment measures cognitive ability—specifically a candidate’s ability to process complex ideas and demonstrate verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning.

9 – Be intentional in creating a positive culture. A positive employee experience increases referrals, attracts top talent, and reduces turnover. 

While an organization’s culture is only one component of its employer brand, it’s one of the main reasons why job candidates decide to join—and remain with—a company. A good cultural alignment results when a candidate’s beliefs and behaviors match the organization’s values and culture. When aligned, the candidate will be more likely to become an engaged, committed, and productive employee.

Related: Communicating Corporate Culture Through Employer Branding

10 – Create talent-optimized teams

To recruit and retain employees, create talent-optimized teams by understanding individual and team strengths, hiring to fill gaps, and assigning work and projects to team members based upon factors that naturally align with their behaviors and interests.

Keys to a talent-optimized team:

1 – Cultivate individual self-awareness at every level of your organization related to individual work and communication styles and natural behavioral preferences.

2 – Have regular team discussions to share behavioral insights and understand the behavioral strengths or gaps your team possesses.

3 – Assign work and projects to team members based on their behavioral strengths and what motivates their interests.

4 – Recruit talent intentionally to hire and fill behavioral fit gaps—not just skill and experience gaps on your team.

Are you looking for help with hiring high-caliber, hard-to-reach executive and emerging leadership talent? We can assist your organization to attract and recruit C-level, Vice President, Director, and Senior Management positions. Contact our team at TalentRise to learn about our targeted recruiting approach.

This blog was written by TalentRise’s Director of Recruiting and Operations Tom Hausler.