The global workforce offers many benefits to employers – such as access to a larger talent pool and the option to hire remote workers at competitive prices – but it also poses some serious challenges. Entrepreneurs repeatedly state that talent is their top concern and that they need a new way to make it possible to get their hands on the new global workforce. The way they have been doing it – asking HR to post a job opening to job boards, then sitting and waiting until the right ones come – doesn’t seem to attract the right talent.
Additionally, the millennial workforce is increasingly sought out, yet challenging to retain. Millennials are notoriously quick to change jobs. A CareerBuilder survey showed that 45% of employees plan to stay with their employer for less than two years – and due to the added competition, targeting the best talent out there for your team, and then convincing them to stay can be tough.
The workforce employers are targeting has changed. It goes to reason, hiring strategies must also improve. How can you make sure your plan for sourcing candidates that fall into this new generation of global workers is effective?
1. Make sourcing candidates a team activity
Take a step back and ask yourself: who is a better judge of talent for a new developer? Is it an HR expert or one of your coding team?
The best strategy is to involve teams in the hiring process itself. While the final hiring decision is likely to come down to an HR professional or member of the c-suite (so they can deal with contracts, salary negotiations), your individual teams could help them whittle down the options to the top three.
Each and every one of your team members had their own personal journey before they joined your company. During their journey, they will have come across talented people who could bring value to the team. These people could be former roommates at their college, ex-colleagues at a previous job, or contacts which they have met in co-working spaces. Create an environment in which employees are encouraged to make hiring recommendations and one that embraces employee referrals. It increases unity and helps grow the team organically.
Facebook reportedly offers a $5000 recommendation bonus. But it’s not only tech giants who are sweetening the deal for employees. Some companies provide employees large financial rewards for each recommendation that leads to a successful hire. And other companies have been known to offer perks such as weekend city vacations breaks or even iPads for making fruitful connections.
According to Undercover Recruiter, recruiting fees run between 15% and 25% of a potential candidate’s total first-year annual earnings, reaching as high as 50% for a senior position and other hard-to-fill roles. When put in context, an iPad doesn’t sound like an extravagant cost.
2. Fish in the right ponds
The traditional ‘post and pray’ method isn’t going to build your A-team. Acquiring the best talent out there requires you to find their best medium. For some it may be social media channels, for others, it may be job boards. If you’re using social media, make sure you’re optimizing your social media strategy based on who you want to reach.
Highlight the demographic and skill that you are looking for, and then brainstorm with your team the best places to reach this group. If you need junior sales or admin staff, why not focus on university internship programs, or target recent college graduates with targeted Facebook advertisements?
A recent survey by LinkedIn revealed that 70% of users who follow a company or brand on its platform were interested in working for that company. Harness the power of social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram to spread the word when you are looking for new people.
If you are sourcing candidates with more specific skill sets, search for samples from the most talented people out there. With a quick internet search, you could find good developers by looking at their sample codes on GitHub, and excellent editorial members by looking at their writing samples they have published on their blogs. However, if you want a more hands-off approach, you can turn to popular people aggregator tools, which range from free to thousands of dollars per year.
Relevant: Listen to our podcast on Proactively sourcing talent and developing a plan
3. Sell your vision
Unless you are in a position to engage in wage warfare by continually trying to outbid your competitors, your best plan of action is to sell your company’s values and mission. Paint your company’s dream every time you contact a potential candidate, and hope the right fish bite. Employer branding will be a crucial tool to help communicate your vision to prospective candidates that are good cultural fits.
Office perks like free food and drinks, on-site gyms, and childcare are great, but not feasible for many growing companies. Instead of attracting staff with fancy flair and dollar signs, you should dazzle them with the potential benefits they could gain for their future career.
According to a recent study by Gallup, the most critical factor for millennials to move to a new job is the opportunity to learn and grow. Millennials are career-driven and aware that a job is no longer for life. So offer them the chance to challenge themselves, learn new skills, take on new responsibilities, and act on their own ideas. When they realize that they can do all these things with you, they might decide to stick around longer.
4. Enable your team
Advances in technology and the global workforce have signed the death warrant for ‘post and pray’ and other old-school HR hiring techniques. The young generations are ambitious and mobile, but it takes hard work to make your company shine, and attract the best stars to spend a few years of their career working on your project.
Instead of outbidding your competitors, harness the collective power of the team you have and get creative. Not sure how to structure your team to get their best input? Use your ATS to give each team member a hiring role and set up a required skill set for each job opening. Then your team will know what and who they need to keep an eye out for. Because if you don’t hire the best talent in your niche, then your competitors will.
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