By Maurice Gilbert, Founder and CEO of Conselium
Continuing from the previous list, here are five more tips recommended by professional executive search firms to improve your recruiting efforts.
While money may not be the best motivator an employer can use, it certainly goes a long way. Offering a better rate of compensation than your competitor can help you draw in and keep the candidates and employees you really want. While this may seem like a fairly obvious point to make, all too often companies seem more concerned about how to retain the employees as cheaply as possible. This practice is only sure to make your employees resentful of their pay, make them feel undervalued, and ensure that they take next better offer that comes along. In the end this works out for no one. Hiring employees should be seen as an investment which will payoff in the years of work to come, not a bargain shopping opportunity.
Along the same lines as the previous point, the benefits offered by a company can play a major role in attracting and securing the ideal candidate. Like a competitive compensation program, a benefits package should be developed with recruiting and employee retention in mind. Beyond the traditional medical, dental, and retirement components, a well-developed benefits package should also take into consideration employee flexibility and family plan options as well. Stock options, profit sharing, and bonuses can also be considered.
The main thing that employers should be looking for in the executive search and recruiting process is raw talent and intelligence in a candidate. While it is true that companies should be continually training their employees and providing educational opportunities, no amount of instruction can make up for pure talent on an employee’s part. Therefore, if you are looking to fill a position that requires certain skills of the employee, always try to find a candidate who seems to naturally possess these abilities. Hire based on the candidate’s natural strengths and not based on the idea that you can train them to better fit the position.
Another frequently overlooked tool in the recruiting process is the company’s own website. More often than not a company’s website does a fairly good job of portraying who they are, by illustrating the company’s products and/or services, values, mission statement, etc. So not only does creating a career page on your website to post job openings to provide yet another candidate sourcing tool, but also allows interested visitors to better familiarize themselves with you before applying.
One of the most important steps in the hiring process is one that many employers have a tendency to neglect, that being reference checks. This often goes overlooked do to the belief of employers that applicants would only list references that would provide them with shining recommendations. This is a flawed belief however. Given a bit of time and preparation, when conducting a thorough reference check, employers have the ability to use leading questions to draw out necessary information from a reference which may prove valuable in the decision making process.
The recruiting and hiring process is an extremely complicated matter, requiring a great deal of time and effort on the employer’s part to be done correctly. While there are a number of other factors that should be taken into consideration and implemented to build a strong recruiting procedure, these ten guidelines at least provide a solid starting point for you to work from.
Published by Conselium Executive Search, the global leader in compliance search.
