Attracting top talent: Five steps you need to take

No matter your business or industry, you will be faced with the same problem: how do you attract the best talent? Before you can develop high performing teams, you first have to put the right teams together. But building your dream team does not happen overnight.

Finding and hiring the right people, for the right roles can take time, energy and effort. To help you succeed in this critical task, here are five clear steps you need to take to attract the best people into your business.

Optimise and speed up your recruitment processes

In the current market, we’re seeing more jobs available than professionals to fill them. In a candidate-driven market such as this, whereby good talent is in short supply, you should make sure your recruitment process is fast and seamless so you don’t miss your chance to secure someone great.

Offering tailored assessment processes can improve how your organisation is perceived by potential candidates. It’s also important to be flexible and reach out to the right talent pools. Choosing the correct job boards and offering flexible interviews, such as video, will lead to wider coverage, which in turn will improve your chances of attracting the best talent across the country. In this new era of dynamic, hybrid working, businesses need to make sure they are as flexible as possible to fit candidate needs.

💡 Top tip: Send candidates a clear timeline of the recruitment process from the beginning of their journey. This way they know exactly what to expect and what the stages will be in the future.

Create clearer, more concise job descriptions

Clearer job descriptions can significantly improve the quality of responses and make your role stand out from the masses. A clear job description should include details of the role, company, and package, as well as few extras that will help you attract top candidates.

What are experts say:

Ensuring the job description is well balanced is really important: keeping the remit too open can lead to applicants being unsure of what you need, while being too narrow can limit your applications. You want to find a balance between the two.

Steer away from generic competencies when adding criteria and include only what is essential and note anything else as ‘nice to have’. Opening up your job description in this way will reassure candidates that you can work with them on areas they want to develop.

Make sure you also include benefits! If you don’t have the best benefits, try to utilise this section to describe what they will gain from joining your business. Be clear about your working policies – don’t just assume that applicants know your business’s approach to post-pandemic flexible working, as this could increase your dropout rate.

Finally, closing dates can be a great way to show timelines on your advert; but be careful not to launch a job description too far in advance. Looking at our Page Personnel statistics, applications that come in after 10+ days of a role being live only had a success rate of 2.9%. So, if you haven’t found what you need in the first 10 days, it might be worth revisiting your requirements.

Katy Bevan

Katy Bevan, Business Director,
Page Personnel Customer Service Contact Centres

Offer flexible working

We asked over 2000 employees across various sectors what the most important factors were for them when it comes to flexible working. The top results were having a better work/life balance, with 35% of respondents saying that this is the most important factor. Coming in joint second with 27% each, were the right to disconnect after working hours, and the offering of hybrid working.

It’s clear that candidates want flexibility in their working life. As an employer, it’s essential to make sure your business offers this to candidates – and makes clear from the beginning this is a part of the offer.

💡 Top tip: Include your flexible work policy on job adverts and job descriptions, and make sure you communicate this with potential candidates from the outset of the interview process.

Showcase your company culture

Company culture is a huge factor in making a position more marketable for potential employees. Introducing even smaller, softer perks like casual dress or birthdays off is a great way to showcase your culture to candidates from the early stages and can make a big impression on potential employees.

💡 Top tip: Add employee testimonials to your careers site to provide candidates with a better insight into the day-to-day working life at your business. Also, always advertise your company perks on job descriptions.

Highlight career progression opportunities

The prospect of career progression is often fundamental in a candidate’s decision to accept a job offer, so it's essential to signpost all available opportunities for professional development.

What are experts say:

From the hundreds of candidates I speak to each month, career progression is at the top of the agenda for top talent in the market. Since the onset of the pandemic, career paths have remained stagnant in certain sectors; career minded candidates have been left feeling trapped, with many wanting to explore new opportunities. This has created a huge opportunity for businesses who offer strong career progression, long-term career pathways, and opportunities for their employees.

It is now common for the organisations to actively highlight and promote career progression opportunities in interviews, rather than leaving the question to the end. The biggest proof of the opportunities on offer are the real-life stories of the successful employees who have developed their career within the business. Alongside this, job descriptions should no longer focus solely on the duties of the role, but also on selling future opportunities for successful candidates. Taking this approach will ensure that top candidates are excited about the business and role from the very start of the recruitment journey.

Clare Newman