Your Company Brand As A Talent Magnet

In a perfect world, you wouldn’t need to post descriptions for newly opened jobs.  You wouldn’t need to wade through hundreds of resumes to find the three or four people that actually possess the qualifications that would make them suitable incumbents.  In a perfect world, you would have a constant, steady stream of amazing top talent knocking at your door before you even have openings.

While it’s true that the world will never be quite perfect, there are almost always opportunities that can help you make your world a little more ideal.  Your company can’t run without people, and if your ideal world includes finding a way to attract and maintain top talent, you’ll need to take a look at your company’s brand then work from there to make it a must-work-at place.

But where do you start?  Here are some tips to help you turn your company into a top talent magnet:

• Perception is Reality. 

  Just as you are too busy to be bogged down with a billion unqualified resumes, top quality candidates aren’t going to waste their time applying for companies that have a reputation of being undesirable places of employment.  Ultimately, perception is reality to busy professionals, and if your brand is based on a bad reputation, no matter how great the opportunity may actually be, perception will trump that reality.  Fortunately, there are experienced companies that are happy to help you build a brand that is perceived as irresistible to top-quality talent!

• Competitive Advantage is Essential.
  

    Chances are, the leaders in your organization, no matter how big or small, spend ample time identifying your company’s competitive advantage so you can set yourself apart from your audience’s other options.  All too often, this assessment step stops on the consumer side.  Keep in mind that potential candidates are another form of customer, so identifying and advertising what sets your workplace apart from the competition is just as vital as sending the right messages to the people that might buy your products or services.

• Cater to Your Candidates. 

  You can’t create a brand that is undeniably attractive to candidates if you don’t understand what great people are looking for in the first place.  Look toward what the human capital trends will be in the coming few years, and work to align your company’s current situation with what will be “in” in the coming years.  For example, great businesses have taken notice of the fact that top performers do best with regular and consistent feedback that is given within an appropriate time frame of when the action or project for which the feedback is being given took place.  Annual reviews, just as other age-old practices, are becoming a thing of the past, and if you want to be a talent magnet, you’ll need to update your practices to meet the expectations of potential employees.

• Veracity is Vital. 

  Identifying issues is all for not if none of this awareness turns into action.  The truth of the matter is that telling top talent what they want to hear without being able to deliver on those promises after they sign on the dotted line will likely produce rapid turnover and an even more irreparable reputation than you started with.  Put a process into place that forces your leaders, all of them, to look honestly at your organization. Beyond anything, create an environment where current employees feel welcome, not afraid, to give feedback.

Are you spinning your wheels to figure out how to turn your company into a talent magnet?  Contact our team at nextSource, and let us help you optimize your brand.