War on Talents

As more and more start-ups are popping up and more companies are expanding, it also creates more demand for talents and creates more opportunities for candidates. Companies are scratching their heads how to get the best talents and trying different ways to attract them. Some are offering unlimited holidays; some are offering competitive salary package while some are even offering 100% remote work. Those are good initiatives, and it works to some degree. But recruiting today doesn’t just end in hiring or attracting talents. It is also about how you make them stay.

Let’s talk about four things. Attracting Talents, Expectations, Company Culture and Talent Retention.

Attracting Talents

With the current competition for talents everywhere, good talents typically get multiple job offers at the same time. The question is, how do you then make your company stand out in this competition that we are in today?

I’ve heard companies say, “We are the one who are investing financially to the candidate so candidates shouldn’t be picky”. That is true, but it is also true that candidates are also investing their time, talents, mental health, and their experience to your company. The reality is that good candidates are picky because they know that they are good.

So how do you attract them?

1. More market exposure – How many times have you spoken to a candidate and the candidate tells you, “Oh, I haven’t heard of your company before, can you send me the JD and your company profile first?”. If you want to attract people, let the market know that you exist. It doesn’t cost that much to have your marketing team to post pictures and make videos about your company events and festive celebrations. Make your employees feel that you are proud to have them, and they will soon follow by posting more about your organization on social media like LinkedIn. Trust me, it works.

2. Interview Process – How is your interview process? Does it take you 3-5 rounds of interviews to decide whether you want to hire a candidate? Perhaps it is about time to review your recruitment process and eliminate any unnecessary steps. Instead of having 2 separate interviews, why not have a panel interview? Another thing is feedback. After the interview, it is a common sight to see candidates patiently waiting for the result and feedback from the hiring company. Making candidates wait for an unreasonable amount of time without updating them what is happening from the back end typically leads to a bad candidate experience which then turns into offer rejection.

What we don’t want to happen is that by the time that you have made up your mind, the candidate has already accepted an offer from another company mainly because the other company is “faster”.

3. Candidate Experience – It think it is time to change the way we do interviews. Instead of preparing lists of questions to ask during the interview, I believe that we should focus on making it more of a discussion rather than a Q&A Session. Get to know more about the candidate and focus on their ambition, what they want to achieve, and how can their skills support your organization rather than asking questions about the skills that sometimes even the hiring managers don’t even have.

Positive candidate experience can also lead into positive exposure in the market. Timely feedback, regular follow ups and giving them pointers to improve when you reject them can go a long way. Remember, people will forget what you said, but they will remember how you make them feel.

4. Hiring Managers – If you are a hiring manager, don’t be afraid to give constructive feedback during the interview. Being honest while being objective can go a long way and it helps the candidate to improve. I have met so many candidates who have told me that they don’t want to apply to that specific company because of the bad interview experience that they’ve had. Let’s practice giving a positive candidate experience to all candidates.

Additionally, hiring managers should be working closely with the recruiters to share job advertisements on social media like LinkedIn. A simple “like” and “share” on your recruiter’s post helps a lot in increasing the visibility of the job posting. It literally only takes few seconds to do that, and it doesn’t take too much of your time. Not only that it helps your recruiter to increase the reach of your job posting, but it also builds your credibility as the hiring manager. Something that might attract interest from potential candidates. How awesome would it be if candidates would reach out to you and tell you that they want to be part of your team, right?

5. Salary – I have spoken to a lot of companies, and I always hear this phrase “Our internal equity/salary benchmark is lower, hence why we can’t offer what the candidate is expecting”. With all honesty, I think this is nonsense. If we want to attract the best talents, we should be incentivizing these good talents to join us rather than making a comparison of salary between our current employees and potential candidates.

I am not asking companies to pay crazy amount of money like 40-50%. What I am asking companies is to look into the market data on how much other companies are paying for the same skillset and base the salary from there. If you are unable to adjust the salary due to limited budget, perhaps you can lower your expectations/requirement or focus on upskilling your team, so you don’t have to hire new talents to do a specific job for you. Yes, it might take time, but so as hiring.

Having candidates to go through a long hiring process and ending up in a painful salary negotiation only hurts your company image in the market. And even if you can get candidates despite of offering them a lower salary, your company will become a hunting ground for other companies who are willing to pay higher for good talents.

Additionally, investing and growing your talents is a wise thing to do. People tend to stay in the company when they feel that they are still learning, growing and having a sense of purpose.

6. Sell your company – I think one of the things that interviewers and hiring managers often get wrong is not selling their company during interviews. With so much competition out there and candidates getting so many options, we should take the initiative to make sure that we are selling our company enough to increase the candidate’s interest with our company.

Often times, candidates reject a job offer as they don’t really see what value your organization can bring in or add to their arsenal. Remember, it is no longer the companies who holds the power to choose who they want. In this new era of shortage of talents, candidates now get to decide who they want to work for, and to work with.

Expectations – When you need someone to join your team, you must ask yourself. Do I need someone who is a superstar, or I need someone who can be a superstar? I have seen so many memes about some companies listing so many requirements on their JDs and it looks like they are hiring for the whole team in one JD.

I believe that it is very important that we set the right expectations and requirements and we have to be realistic about it. Of course, we all want the best talents. But we have to be realistic of our requirements to make sure that we are attracting enough talents instead of pushing them away. You might think that you need a BMW but for all you know, all you need a highly reliable Toyota.

Hiring managers should also focus on the candidate’s potential and help them achieve their goals. When you hire someone, it is very important to set a very clear but realistic expectations and help them to works towards it.

It is not only the employees’ job to make sure to hit their goals, but it is also the leader’s responsibility to make sure that their employees achieve the goals that you set for them. What we don’t want to happen is your new hire leaving your company in 2 months because of unrealistic expectations or feeling lost due to lack of guidance or support from their managers.

Company Culture – Folks, company culture is NOT about a nice office, free food, office entertainment or nice company trips. It is about how you handle poor performance, how you treat your team when things go wrong, how you encourage them and how you make them feel. Be there for them when they need support, giving credits and acknowledgement and most importantly, make them feel appreciated even if it is just a small win. These things can go a long way in creating a positive and healthy working environment for everyone.

Talent Retention - The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported that on average, it costs a company 6 to 9 months of an employee's salary just for them to be replaced. That is a LOT of time and money!

But I think we should focus on other things as well. Why do people leave and how can we make them stay?

They said that “If a team can run for 6 months without a manager, you shouldn’t be hiring. You should be promoting”. Promotion is one of the best ways to show your employees that they have a path to take in your company. People stay when they are appreciated, and people leave when they feel that they are worth and can do so much more but there’s no opportunity for them to move up to the next level.

Remember, employees think about their growth as well. Be it salary, career growth or learning something new.

Additionally, people leave when they feel that they are not being heard. Creating a safe environment for people to speak up makes them feel that they are being heard and understood. If there are certain things that cannot be changed, at least communicate with your employees, and let them know the reason behind. I think the easiest way to lose trust within the organization is to not communicate at all.

Overall, hiring and employee retention are very complicated things. It is hard to solve these problems as it involves us, humans and we all have different perspective. However, having a balance between your business need and people can somehow make it easier for your organization. Let’s focus on making it a win-win situation for your business and people.

Just like what they say… “Take care of your people, and let your people take care of your business.”

If you are a hiring manager and you are having challenges hiring or retaining your talents, I am more than happy to have a chat to give you my perspective on these things. You may reach me via email at joe.nuevo@adecco.com for us to schedule a chat over a cup of coffee or via Teams.