Part 1 – How to Attract Excellent People
I was recently asked the question “how do you attract and retail excellent employees?” This entry looks at the first part of the equation – attraction.
Almost all businesses have the major issue of attracting new staff unless you are Google! Any which way you cut it, this is extremely hard and, in the early days, took up a lot of my time.
Perhaps the easiest way to think about this is why would some join your business. What are the key things you offer that make you more attractive to employees – it is almost like a sales call – you should treat is as a marketing / sales exercise.
Firstly you need to define the product offering – ie the job. Key elements of a great job are:
- Being an exciting role – what makes something exiting for one person vs another is a difficult thing but people like to be excited so when you advertise the role, sell the good points.
- A clear future – it is important as part of the attractiveness of any role is a clear future. We all want a future!
- Great pay – this is never to be taken lightly. People always want to earn more however exciting roles and career advancement can off set this
- Fun culture – people like to actually have fun at work rather than slogging it out for 8 hours a day
Secondly, you need to advertise where people are looking. This is really important depending on what type of role and where you are located. There is no use advertising for HR people in a publication – online or offline – that is tailored to techs.
We spend most of our advertising dollars in online recruitment. We also rely heavily on internal referrals. We pay staff $2000 (or local currency equivalent) per person they recommend and who join.
Finally, when you get people into an interview room, you need to do as much selling as you do questioning. Don’t assume everyone wants to work for you – they probably don’t. You need to sell yourself and the business – especially if you have worked out that they are excellent in the first 5 minutes.
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