There’s a lot to consider when trying to attract talent to your business. It can be easy to expect that just because you have an open position that people will simply start applying right away. That’s not always the case, and here are a few of the reasons why and how to fix them:
Nobody has heard of you
This is especially true for new start-ups. It’s easy to buy into your own hype a little bit and assume that everybody knows of your plan for world domination, but why would they?
To remedy this, you’d be best off starting to write a few blogs, beef up the ‘about us’ page on your website and start shouting about your business. If people know about you and what you have to offer, they’ll want to work for you.
One of the best places to start is on social media. Create your branded accounts and start following businesses in your area. Build high-quality posts that talk about why you’re different from the competition and what makes you unique. LinkedIn provides an ideal toolset for generating a business page that attracts talent simply through generating and sharing content-led social posts.
Through LinkedIn, it’s easy to create easily shareable posts that link to your job openings. Add a little bit of colour and a call to action to a post and encourage your contacts to share it. It’s surprising how far it can go with very little input from yourself.
Make yourself unique.
When candidates have plenty of choice for who they’d like to work for, it’s often the business that stands out the most that wins the day. When trying to attract qualified, experienced candidates, it’s always wise to make a big deal about why you’re different from all of the other startups who are chasing the same goals as you.
According to LinkedIn’s research, more than 25% of candidates said that they changed jobs searching for better company culture. Culture is often the differentiating factor between businesses that makes them stand out the most. More than just having a beer fridge, bean bags or ping pong table, desirable talent often comes searching for growth opportunities.
If your startup advertises itself as a fresh new opportunity to build something new and exciting, that’s all good, but how are you going to achieve that? Offer your employees more creative responsibility, more of a partnership than a traditional top-down company structure and the potential to grow to their own expectations. These are just a few of the options you have to design your unique offering to attract candidates.
Good people attract great people.
It’s often said that the first employees in a business are the most important, and it’s true. That initial set of staff will determine the next hire and the next, so it’s vital to get the first wave of talent right.
It’s also wise to remember that good people attract great people. Many startups fail because their teams aren’t diversely skilled enough to manage the fast-paced, tooth and nail industries that they work in, where big corporations are top of the food chain. If you have the experience to start with, you stand a much better chance of sustaining your growth and getting yourself heard.
That’s not to say that finding the right fit is easy. It’s often easy to hire the first person you interview, especially if you need to scale fast. But remember, those first hires and how they fit into the company are vital. When interviewing a candidate, make sure your best and brightest are there too. Candidates are much more likely to choose to work for you if they’re going to be working with some of the best co-workers.
Let the candidates make a big impact.
Startups have the unique ability to start from scratch. For that reason, they attract mission-driven candidates who want to make a difference. More than that, though, those candidates want to have their name attached to their work.
An opportunity to make a difference is an opportunity to grow. The potential to grow is often what drives attractive talent to leave their cosy position in a big firm where new opportunities have all but dried up.
By allowing your team to take ownership of their own progression, work and schedule, they’re much more likely to stick around. By shouting about those opportunities for candidates, you’re much more likely to see a raft of experienced talent applying for those roles.
So there you have it. Attracting top talent isn’t as simple as firing a job advert out and crossing your fingers that your perfect candidate applies. It’s a combination of culture, making yourself stand out from the crowd and hiring the right people to help you grow.
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