6. Demonstrate Your Company’s Value
You need to present your company as worthy of consideration by top talent. The interview and hiring process goes both ways, so make sure your company is presenting well, too. By showing the value you offer to potential employees, the discussion becomes more collaborative and focuses on how each side can benefit from the other.
– Jason Kulpa, Underground Elephant
7. Keep the Bar High
Recruiting is a momentum play, and it starts by keeping the hurdle for hiring extremely high. Great talent is attracted to working with great talent. While it can be difficult to get the virtuous recruiting flywheel spinning, avoid the urge to fill seats with anything but the best — and keep raising the bar with each new hire. Soon recruiting will become self-sustaining.
8. Start With the Best
If your first engineer is amazing, other engineers will want to work with them. If your founder is great, talented people will want to work for them and invest in them. Starting with the best you can get, is my No. 1 strategy because it has more of an effect on your recruiting and retaining outcomes than almost anything else. The early leaders in your organization will set the benchmark.
9. Listen to Their Ideas
We give our employees a lot of autonomy to run with their ideas, and it’s worked well so far, driving the company to develop in unexpected but lucrative directions. Build a reputation as a place where talented people can realize their ambition and fulfill their potential, and you’ll end up hiring not only talented people, but exactly the kind of people who can take your company to the next level.
10. Follow the Golden Rule
Remember the reason you started your business in the first place. For me, I felt like I could build a company better than the company I once worked for simply by appreciating my team members. If we focus on treating others as we would want to be treated, we will always recruit/retain the best talent in our industry. In the last seven year period, our employee retention rate is over 96 percent.
– Matt Telmanik, CCS Construction Staffing
11. Ask for Employee Referrals
Use your best employees as a referral source. If you establish a referral program, you will find new talent while rewarding your top talent, and incentivize them to stay with the company. Your top employees can recognize great talent, and will thrive even more when they are surrounded by it and feel like they are part of the recruiting process.
12. Focus on Cultural Fit
To me, cultural fit is simple: If this person was part of our team, would he or she make it more or less likely for the next person to want to join the company? Great people follow great people. One bad hire will not only hurt your bottom line, but will keep other good people from joining your company and drive away the good people you currently have.