Employees are the beating heart of every business. Without them, no business would be a success. Look at Amazon, for example. The idea came from Bezos, but without the willingness of his early employees and his current ones, the business would never have grown to the size it’s at right now. Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and countless other global brands are a testament to how important it is to hire the best employees from the get-go.
The goal of any business is to attract the top talent in the industry and retain them, but in such a competitive job market, that can be hard. If you’re looking to hire new members to your team and have been stung before, here are some top tips on how you can attract the best of the best.
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Offer a competitive salary
First and foremost, money talks. There are many other factors that influence whether a person will choose to accept a job offer, and for some people money isn’t a deciding factor, but for most, it is. People have bills to pay and outside of their financial responsibilities, it’s nice to have some extra cash to buy nice things.
With this in mind, you need to make sure you’re offering a competitive salary. If you’re not sure how much other companies are offering their employees, use a salary benchmarking service to find out how much candidates should expect to earn.
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Provide comprehensive benefits
Alongside a salary, you also need to ensure you’re providing comprehensive benefits. It’s these added perks, combined with a salary, that may draw people to your company. Common benefits include healthcare as standard, with some opting to add in dental cover. Other companies offer their employees free snacks, an early finish every week, flexible working hours with the option to work from home, and even a gym membership.
Giving back to your employees through these perks could convince the best candidates that you’re a responsible and positive employer to work with.
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Use a recruitment agency
When you’ve sorted out what you can offer employees, you need to find a way to get them to apply. You could post on generic job boards, or you could use a recruitment agency. The benefit of using an agency is that they take all the hassle out of finding someone and they often have access t the best candidates. On top of this, they filter out suitable interview candidates.
It’s particularly useful to use an agency if you need highly skilled employees. There are specialist consultants in almost every field, ranging from IT firms to recruitment agencies specializing in sales representative roles. This is a great way to filter out time wasters.
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Create a full onboarding and training process
There has recently been a proven link between training and staff retention. Studies show companies that invest heavily in onboarding and training immediately have higher staff retention rates. Too many companies throw new employees in at the deep end and are then surprised when employees leave due to feeling unprepared and overwhelmed. When you’re hiring, make sure you do everything you can to retain employees by giving them proper, comprehensive training.
You might be in a desperate position and need them to instantly start, but we’ve all felt out of our depth. Starting a new job is a hard adjustment and most people get highly nervous about it, so the last thing someone needs in their first week is pressure.
It’s a good idea to implement shadowing and give them a few days to watch and observe their superior or someone who has the same role as them. They can then start with smaller tasks. Some companies say that onboarding should take a year, but if you don’t have that long to wait, at least give them a month before expecting them to know your company culture and their responsibilities off the bat.
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Don’t overstretch or intertwine roles
Finally, don’t make the mistake of overstretching roles. What we mean by this is don’t fall into the trap of mixing up job roles. It’s common in the creative industry for employers to expect an employee to be a marketer, copywriter, SEO expert, graphic designer, social media specialist, and a data analyst. This is why many companies can’t find top performing employees.
These are all separate job roles and should be treated as such. The best people in the industry are not going to be experts in everything, so if you want to attract them and hire them, make sure you play to their strengths and don’t blur the lines.
Summary
Finding the right employees is a process and a learning curve, but these five tips should hopefully help you find the best fit for your company and, crucially, help you retain the,.
