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Best Practice for Hiring Top Talent!

Are you doing your best to get the best? Follow our guide in your next recruitment drive to maximise your chances of hiring top talent for your vacancies.

There’s no shortage of recruitment going on: all the signs tell us that there’s a healthy job scene out there, with more employers looking to recruit than downsize, according to the most recent CIPD Labour Market Outlook report. This makes it a candidates’ market, and you may find yourself competing with other organisations to attract the top talent. The same report also reveals that around 40% of employers are likely to be carrying hard-to-fill vacancies – which tells us that attracting the talent is not always easy to do.

So we’ve got a guide here for your next recruitment process: a quality checklist to make sure you’re doing the best you can, to get the best you can – and keep them. We’ve also included a few suggestions to help address those vacancy challenges in the future.

Clear Company Brand and Values

The key to successful recruitment is not just to fill a position, but to bring in someone who aligns with your company’s values, and contributes positively to its growth.

Your brand and values should be clear on every platform you use – from your website landing page, to a single post on TikTok. Applicants do their research too, and it’s a lot easier for them to build their understanding of your ethos from every touchpoint you’ve got out there. So before you even begin recruiting, make sure you’re coming across in the best way you can for potential candidates. Check through everywhere you showcase your culture and values – and don’t forget to include some employee testimonials on your website and social media.

If your values and business ethos are clear from the start, you’ll attract the people you want before you even get their application form to your inbox.

Clear Requirements

This may seem obvious, but from the outset you need to be very clear about the reality of the role on offer. You’ll have expectations around the skills, qualifications, and experience required for the position, so make sure your advert spells these out to attract candidates who genuinely match the needs of the role – short, medium and long term.

Competitive Reward Packages

We’re going to assume that you’ve done all your research in putting together a competitive salary and benefits package for the role, but just a reminder – don’t forget what you’re up against, and if there are adjustments you could make to give you the edge over other organisations recruiting from the same pool, see what you can do about that…

Diversity

Include inclusion: because that will give you a serious edge over other organisations that don’t. Promote your diversity and inclusion credentials throughout the process, from the advert you put out to the effort you invest in accommodating different abilities, backgrounds and neurodivergence in the process. Not only does a diverse workforce brings a variety of perspectives and experiences, contributing to innovation and success – but putting inclusion front and centre could also snag you an ideal candidate for the role who’s been put off applying elsewhere.

Thorough Questions

Develop a structured interview process that includes a mix of behavioural, situational, and technical questions. This helps in assessing a candidate’s skills, cultural fit, and problem-solving abilities – giving you a good all-round picture of what they can do, and what they’ll be like to work with. You’ll also have a more rounded idea of how they might fit in with the rest of the team.

What Else?

Upskill and develop: answerthose hard-to-fill vacancy problems in-house, and retain the talent you have with development opportunities for your existing workforce. That will also reduce your risk of staff turnover and knowledge-drain and may even reduce the time you’ll need to put into induction and onboarding for new team members.

Cost-of-Living awareness: offer financial wellbeing support to your teams and remember to review your salaries and reward structures regularly to make sure you’re keeping competitive – otherwise your talent could feel forced to look elsewhere to meet their personal financial needs.

Employee Referral Programme: A policy that’s well worth considering for future vacancies is to introduce an employee referral programme, which rewards your existing employees for referring candidates who would be a great fit for your business. Employee referrals often lead to high-quality hires, as current employees can vouch for the workplace culture and values – and the rewards don’t have to be financial (although those are obviously some of the most popular!).

Recruitment can feel like a minefield, with pressure to get it right so that you don’t have to repeat the process to infinity until you do. That’s where some expert support can be really valuable – from a basic sense-check of your role and reward scheme, to developing in-house upskilling plans for your existing teams. Haus of HR is here to help: give us a call, and we’ll work together to secure the best talent for your business, so you can put all that potential into action.

Check out our FREE guide to Effective Recruitment here.

Contact us to book your FREE recruitment audit. We’ll look at how you currently recruit and advertise, providing feedback on how you may be able to recruit more effectively. Will send you our top tips and how we can add value to your organisation.

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