3 Modern Ways To Recruit, Hire & Engage Top Talent

Hiring and employing unfit talent often drives undesirable hardship on a company’s books and turnover rate, leaving operations and culture to suffer the consequences. Employers and management personnel must continually calculate whether retaining and re-engaging unproductive staff members is more beneficial than finding, hiring and training new employees.
If you’re planning on adding a new member to your team, the average cost-per-hire is $4,129, according to a 2016 Society for Human Resource Management survey. Correspondingly, it takes an average of 42 days to fill a job opening.
But when it comes to employment, we must take into consideration the productivity benefits. Businesses flourish when their staff is motivated, supported and producing. And according to Harvard Business Review, “The best companies get a 29 percent boost in productivity from their talent.” Their research specified that energetic employees who were also considered inspired were twice as productive as satisfied employees and 50 percent more productive than those who were found to be engaged employees. It’s these merely engaged and satisfied employees who drive either a high turnover or low productivity rate.
[bctt tweet=”Hiring motivated & inspired talent can increase your coy productivity by 50% says @makenziebonham ” username=”ATCevent”]
Are these unproductive employees disengaged or burned out? Forbes recently published an article citing information released by Kronos Incorporated that states, “95 percent of HR leaders say that employee burnout is sabotaging their workforce.” The perpetual cycle of finding, hiring and engaging talent is taxing.
In my work at a professional recruitment firm, I’ve learned best practices for finding and retaining talent, from the recruiting stage to engaging current employees. Despite the taxing nature of this cycle, discovering top-tier talent that will surpass the highest of company standards is never unattainable.

Recruiting Talent

Most businesses that pay top dollar for top talent prefer to work with employment agencies primarily to save time and to maximise resources. And though some companies choose to utilise traditional job boards, there’s a more cost-efficient alternative that is often overlooked: social media. Post your job openings on your commercial social media accounts and pin them to the top of the page. Briefly describe the job opening and reference the most important points (title, location, salary estimate and deal-breaker requirements). Don’t forget to add a strong CTA. But don’t give all the information that the position entails up front; applicants will be intrigued and more inclined to act.
Businesses that struggle to implement social media into their recruiting strategies generally lack a strong media presence online. Unprofessional or ill-managed commercial social media accounts will negatively affect recruitment efforts. You should properly manage your commercial social media accounts by creating content and maintaining conversations to promote your brand.
When it comes to finding talent, if your budget doesn’t allow for partnering with a staffing agency, try social recruiting. Social media platforms enable us to easily connect with others while providing a glimpse of who job seekers are, which will ultimately help you find what you’re looking for.

Hiring Talent

Determining the best talent is principally dependent upon the position’s hard skills, such as underlying qualifications and routine responsibilities— yet it’s also highly contingent on the individual’s soft skills, including decision-making and interpersonal skills. “62 percent [of employers] rate candidates’ soft skills such as having a positive attitude and being team-oriented as very important when recruiting,” according to another article published by SHRM. Employers should judge which job applicants, as well as current employees, have the potential to be the inspired, productive employees their team needs by weighing which hard skills and soft skills are required for the individual to be successful.
One of my favourite interview questions is, “If you were any transportation or motor vehicle, what would you be and why?” Follow that up with, “Which brand, model or colour would you be, and what does it symbolise?” This question isn’t about what they say, but how they say it. This extended question is meant to show how candidates view themselves, their creativity and their ability to think on their feet.
When employees are hired merely for their hard skills, their soft skills may not be up to par with the company’s expectations. When it comes to hiring talent, consider which skill sets are most vital to the position and which are in alignment with the organisation’s business cycle and culture to determine long-term employee and employer satisfaction. Like employee skill set and performance, engagement must be frequently evaluated.
[bctt tweet=”Don’t hire purely for hard skills. Soft skills are important too says @makenziebonham” username=”ATCevent”]

Engaging Talent

Successfully retaining high-performing team members is correlated with employee motivation and development. When employees are no longer inspired, their burnout costs the company in terms of production and recurring payroll costs. Monitor which employees are disengaged when evaluating performance.
Engaged or satisfied employees should be given recurring opportunities to discuss their employment status. Nevertheless, tolerating performance excuses is obsolete. By attempting to retain and re-engage employees who uphold their subpar performance, the company is damaging the determination of the inspired employees who are 2x to 50 percent more productive. When it comes to engaging talent, closely manage detached employees and offer company-wide options for certification and inspiration. Engaged or satisfied employees are most likely better suited elsewhere whether it’s in a different role, department or organisation.
In today’s marketplace, it’s essential to distinguish between burnout and turnover costs and recruitment and hiring costs to determine what will most affect the company. Regularly assess current employees; are they an asset or an expense? A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so recruit, hire and engage wisely.
Image: Shutterstock

This article first appeared on Forbes on March 29th, 2017.

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