5 Of The Biggest Secrets To Hiring Great Talent

Here’s the biggest secret to hiring great talent. Experienced professionals know they’re great talent, and that the right to pick and choose which companies they work for is entirely in their hands. Author Ken Goldstein encourages brands to execute the secrets of hiring great talent by investing in “People. Products. Profits. In that order.” In order to attract great talent to your organization, you need to give them incentive to pick your company over any other they could select.

So what are the biggest secrets to hiring great talent that will help you scale the growth of your organization? We’ve compiled a detailed list that will help you get into the mindset of your prospective new hires so that you can appeal to their unique interests.

• Embrace the importance of flex culture

Flexible work hours and a healthy work/life balance were growing demands from workers dating back well before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the outbreak of coronavirus and the forced global adoption of work from home policies increased those demands.

Today, millions of companies have assimilated those demands for flexibility into their job descriptions. According to LinkedIn Talent Solutions, there’s been an 83 percent increase in job posts that mention flexibility since 2019. Plus, hiring managers have reported, on average, a 35 percent increase in engagement with job postings that mention flexibility.

The old ways of insisting on 9-5 office hours, plus evenings and weekends dedicated to sending or responding to emails are over. You need to foster a work environment that encourages employees to set their own hours and their own office locations. As long as the work gets done and productivity remains high, there’s no reason to stand in the way of those demands.

• Encourage employees to put their mental health first

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world in so many different ways. But one positive result that came out of the pandemic was that it shone a light on mental health and how important it is for every person on the planet to take time for self-care and personal development.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of people who reported feeling symptoms of anxiety and depression increased by 25 percent since the outbreak of coronavirus. It prompted 90 percent of companies to include mental health support in their COVID-19 response plans, but there are still many gaps in government-sponsored support programs. That’s why it’s important for companies to create cultures that motivate people to take care of their own health and well-being first and foremost.

In order to be successful at hiring great talent, humanize your job postings by mentioning details about your company’s culture. Show how you provide support for services like:

• Counseling or psychotherapy
• Flexible work hours and locations
• Encouragement for workers to set their own schedules
• Financial support for personal development
• Compensation for gym memberships and physical activities
  

• Invest in workers’ own development to attract talent

Keep in mind that there is no magic bullet or one size fits all approach to incentivizing professional talent. A motivated mindset and a healthy work/life balance is unique to each individual person, and your business must provide a flexible culture that allows each talented worker to find his or her unique way to support their own health and personal development.

As a business, approach those needs similar to how companies customize or personalize customer buying journeys to complete a sale. This is all about how companies position their products, services, and unique offers using messaging that is relevant to the end buyer.

The same approach is needed when recruiting talent. For example, some talented professionals may wish to go back to school to pursue an advanced degree in their area of expertise. In 2019, 56 percent of US companies offered tuition assistance for graduate or undergraduate programs. Demonstrate your willingness to encourage those efforts by ensuring yours is one of those companies that promises to support development efforts.

• Value capabilities ahead of credentials

An interesting research paper was published by authors at the Harvard Business School entitled, “Hidden Workers: Untapped Talent.” In this writing, hidden workers are the ones defined as people who want to work and are actively seeking work. But their efforts repeatedly fail to deliver results “due to hiring processes that focus on what they don’t have (such as credentials) rather than the value they can bring (such as capabilities).”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a significant rise in skills-based hiring and less emphasis on degrees or certifications. For so many years, job postings assigned an arbitrary need for university educated talent with x number of years of experience in order to even consider a candidate for an interview. The pandemic changed this approach by, instead, screening in talent based on their potential and their core sets of skills.

The Hidden Workers, Untapped Talent report states that there are 27 million hidden workers across the US alone. This is a largely untapped market of skilled workers who can develop their credentials and experience if given the opportunity to do so. This is one of the hidden secrets of hiring great talent; knowing when to take a chance on the potential of great talent because you never know when a superstar will go nova.

• Find the right talent using easy-to-use talent solutions

By following each of the preceding recommendations, you’ll create job proposals that match the secrets of hiring great talent. The final secret is to apply all of the ways that you can attract professional talent using technology to scale your efforts.

Talent solutions like High5 plug you into a global network of talented professionals eager to find their next great opportunity. The best part of High5’s Trusted Talent solution is that those networks are overseen by a pool of 18,000 subject matter experts that collectively possess over 1,000 skills.

These experts are the rocket scientists of the positions they will help you fill because they’ve worked in those very roles over the course of their own careers. They intuitively understand what to look for in a capable professional, and they truly are the linchpin to hiring great talent that will help your business flourish to new heights. By relying on High5’s subject matter experts, your own hiring team can spend 70 percent less time filling job requirements and reallocate those resources towards big picture ideas that will further help the business achieve growth.

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