6 Hiring Secrets to Attracting Top Talent

The success of your business largely depends upon your ability to attract, hire, and retain top talent. Finding top talent and getting them to join your team, however, is not for the faint of heart. It should be intentional and strategic. Luckily, we’ve done some of the legwork for you and have found these six hiring secrets to attract top talent.

Hiring Secrets #1: Define the position

It’s no hiring secret that if you’ve got an open position that you should start with a solid job description, but have you asked yourself the following questions?

What are the specific needs of the organization or group? When do those needs need to be fulfilled? If you’re responsible for recruiting, you need to think beyond putting “butts in seats,” and how this position will fulfill the company’s business objectives. If you don’t consider what you’re doing for the business in a strategic way, no one else will.

How will you measure results? Every position should be measurable. Consider what performance metrics will be put in place (if not already in place) to measure the success of this person.

Are there any common characteristics among top performers in this position? While you’re defining the job requirements of the position, be sure to take into account any hard skills, soft skills and personality attributes that have made previous employees successful within the position. Also, consider any personality traits that have worked against the position if there are any so that you can screen those out.

Hiring Secrets #2: Rewrite your job description

Again, it’s no hiring secret for a recruiter to have a plan, but do you have a recruitment plan that includes a job description that will actually attract anyone to work for your company? Get rid of your old job descriptions and try rewriting your job description like this:

Start with a functional title. Example: “project coordinator.”

Now go for something a little more creative, such as Project Coordinator who has a knack for turning chaos into organized bliss and can work with just about anyone. While the functional title tells you exactly what position you’re hiring for, the creative title helps you look for a person that will be the right fit for your company.

Now write a personal note to the ideal candidate. You’ve probably got plenty of stock job description material collecting dust in your office. Toss it to the side and pretend that you’re writing a personal note the ideal candidate – a note that would not only tell them exactly what they’d be doing, but would also attract them to your company. Use this message as your job description.

Example: Our team is growing rapidly. Our project managers simply don’t have enough eyes and hands to get it all done. We need you! You’ll be part of a team that is actively revitalizing downtown. Your job will be to support the team by keeping track of the project schedule, coordinating subcontractors and tracking meetings. It can be a bit chaotic, but we know that with your organizational skills, you’ll be able to keep us focused and get the job done on time!

Select a keyword that will get your open position in front of as many potential candidates as possible. If you were posting your job opening to Instagram or Twitter, you might use hashtags, but for general posting, keywords are critical for effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Read more:

Should you mention salaries when crafting job descriptions

How to write winning job descriptions [expert’s advice]

Hiring Secrets #3: Draft relevant interview questions

Once you’ve got a solid working title, start drafting a shortlist of interview questions that are relevant to the position and will reveal a candidate’s ability to perform the job. Oftentimes, hiring managers tend to equate years of experience to performance, which is a dangerous assumption. One of our hiring secrets is to focus on questions that are relevant to the position, avoid hypothetical questions, and attract top talent regardless of how many years of experience they may have. For example, try asking questions such as these:

  • Walk me through your most recent project.
  • How did you handle personality differences on the job?
  • What attracts you to working as a project coordinator versus some other administrative type of position?

With interview questions, it’s important not to work in a vacuum. Be sure to run your draft interview questions by top performers to make sure you’re asking the right questions.

Read more: The Ultimate Interview Checklist

Hiring Secrets #4: Treat Candidates Like Customers

This particular hiring secret is mission-critical. Customers and potential candidates aren’t all that different. Both are interested in your company and both have the ability to make or break you depending on how they are treated.

Treat a customer poorly and they’ll be sure to tell at least 10 of their friends (or more if they post to Facebook) how little they think of your business. Treat a candidate poorly and the same thing is likely to happen, but you may lose a shot at finding the right person in the process.

Your goal with each candidate is to have that person genuinely interested in working for your company, even if they aren’t a good fit for the job.

Hiring Secrets #5: Be Selective about who interviews

It can be quite tempting to have everyone in your business interview a candidate so that everyone’s opinion can be heard, but be careful. Some people aren’t good interviewers and may detract a candidate from even wanting to join your company. Others may be so fearful of hiring someone that everyone they meet is a “no.”

One of our hiring secrets is to identify the people who interview well and have those selective people be on the interview team.

Hiring Secrets #6: When you find the right person, don’t hesitate to make an offer

Our last hiring secret is to move quickly. Recruiting and hiring is kind of like dating. Some people feel like they have to date a lot of people before they settle down, while others marry the first guy or girl that comes along. Whether the right person for the job is the first person you interview or the 24th, if a candidate is a good fit, make an offer and don’t look back. Chances are that if they really are that great, someone else will swoop them off the market if you don’t.

The real hiring secret is this – you don’t have to do it all as a recruiter. Utilizing free online recruiting software is a great way to increase productivity in the overall and online recruiting process as well as save money. There’s no need to spend countless hours manually filtering through hundreds of applicants. A free online ATS will do these things for you. The stress and headache of organizing and filing are eliminated!

Recruiteze is perfect for in-house recruiters and staffing agencies alike. Recruiteze gives your job candidates the ability to apply online and be added to your database immediately in a user friendly way. End-users can access resumes online and make changes quickly and easily. Recruiteze would rather that you spend more time focusing on asking the right interview questions instead of tracking applicants. Click here to try Recruiteze for free!

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