Hiring Strategy for Success and Business Growth – How to Attract and Retain Top Talent

We still find ourselves in a candidate driven market. Organisations continue to face recruitment challenges and talent shortages, forcing them to adapt their hiring strategy and approach to attract the talent they need to achieve organisational goals and objectives in this year.

At CSG Talent, we work closely with our clients to provide insight into market activity, candidate movements and motivations through the strong network our specialist teams have within their niche industries. This in-depth knowledge enables businesses to effectively evaluate their existing processes and enhance their hiring and talent attraction processes knowing how the market will respond and engage with their business and job opportunities.

Here are some of the key areas to consider when establishing an effective hiring strategy to attract top talent this year.

Employer brand and workplace culture

Your brand and workplace culture aren’t necessarily what you say it is, it’s how you are perceived by your employees and the perception of others externally. It’s the culture you promote and the environment and culture you offer and facilitate for your employees.

What does your brand say about you as an employer?

What makes your workplace culture attractive to potential and your existing employees?

Conducting regular internal surveys to hear if your employees are engaged and connected to the company brand and culture is a useful exercise to ensure your employees are happy, it will also help support attraction of new employees. Research what employees are looking for and evaluate the type of culture and brand you want to promote to attract the right talent to your organisation.

In a competitive market, having a strong and credible brand will enhance your appeal to potential candidates and establish you as an employer of choice for all levels. When attracting senior level candidates and potential leaders for your organisation, it’s important to have a clear vision and highlight your values. A leader will enter your organisation with the task of promoting the vision and values from a top level, to feed into all areas of the business.

Competitive benefits packages and salaries for a great employee experience

Salaries are always a huge driving factor when it comes to attracting and retaining talent, therefore regular salary benchmarking practices are essential to ensure you remain competitive in what is already a highly competitive market. With an increase in counteroffers in recent years, alongside the great resignation, it is crucial you can offer an attractive salary package to remain competitive in the market.

Consider the talent you are keen to attract and establish the benefits and perks that appeal the most to each demographic. It’s also important to think about what appeals to different people at various stages of their career and their family life cycle. Can you offer a wide range of benefits, perks and flexibility?

Widen talent pool to attract top talent

Look at your existing hiring processes and assess the talent pool you recruit for business-critical roles.

Do you focus solely on location or industry experience?

Establish if these two criteria are essential, or if there is scope for flexibility to allow you to widen your talent pool.

Remote and hybrid working is a more common practice for businesses in comparison to five years ago. Increased remote working has resulted in hybrid working across all industries, with many business practices and activities able to function anywhere in the world collaboratively because of enhanced technology and success of the hybrid working model. Why not consider talent in a variety of locations to widen the talent pool available to add value to your organisation?

We’ve had clients experience huge success with adapting their approach in this area specifically within Construction and Construction Equipment, Mining, Automation and Technology, with other sectors implementing this as part of their recruitment plans going forward.

There has also been success in attracting talent with transferable skills and expertise from alternative industry sectors to address the talent shortage and limited candidate pool available. This has proved successful for several of our clients.

Streamline your recruitment and interview process

Before you begin advertising, pipelining candidates, facilitating interviews or meetings with potential hires, it’s important to review and streamline your recruitment and interview process to give candidates the best experience, and to ensure you get the most value out of the process as a hiring manager.

Implementing a structured recruitment process will ensure you are delivering the best possible candidate experience that is effective and efficient. It will eliminate the chance of a potentially complex or lengthy process where you run the risk of losing high quality candidates who seek roles elsewhere throughout the process. Ultimately, your hiring process will give candidates the best opportunity to demonstrate their value and be considered for the opportunity both fairly and objectively.

Firstly, establish the role you are hiring and think about how this sits in the organisation, what will the role involve, what are the key accountabilities and how will it grow/develop?

Consider the following questions:

• Are you utilising neutral language in your job advertisements and job specifications?
• Who is involved in each interview process, at what stage and what are they accountable for?
• How will the interviews be conducted and how many stages?
• In what way will you assess candidates, how will you ensure the process is fair and objective and allow you to choose the most suitable person for the role?

Diversity and Inclusion to support talent attraction

Gender diversity in the workplace is a huge topic and is something we are focused on at CSG Talent, working closely with our clients to ensure they demonstrate and promote hiring processes that support diversity and inclusion. There has been a huge shift across many industries to increase the presence of women in both leadership and senior level positions.

There are three important considerations when it comes to diversity in the hiring process.

1. How diverse is your leadership team and wider team.
2. How diverse and inclusive is your hiring and recruitment panel.
3. How you communicate your diversity and inclusion policies and stance as a business.

There is a strong focus on encouraging females into leadership roles, especially in STEM related fields, where there is a distinct lack of female presence at a high level within an organisation, our article delves into the topic of female leaderships roles within STEM.

Women highlight how a lack of female presence on a leadership team they are considering as a potential employer, can have a negative impact on their decision to move forward in the interview process.

Ensuring you have an inclusive and diverse interview panel, representing all groups will not only enhance the effectiveness of your interview process, but it will eliminate risk of potential bias throughout the interview process.

Read more on how to ensure your talent acquisition strategy is future-proofed for diversity. or download our guide - How to Create a Diverse Hiring Strategy.

Engage with a Recruiter/Headhunter to support your hiring strategy

In a market experiencing significant talent shortages, where candidates are limited and organisations are competing more than ever to attract top talent to their business, engaging with a recruitment expert is key to driving business growth and achieving headcount growth. Engaging with a recruitment who operates specifically within your industry sector will result in the greatest success in attracting talent.

A recruitment expert within your industry will:

• Have access to a vast network of high calibre candidates within the sector who they are in regular contact with, many of which have long standing relationships with a great deal of knowledge and insights shared.
• Understand current recruitment trends and challenges in the market and have insights and knowledge to share effective ways to adapt the approach to hiring and overcome and potential challenge to support business growth.
• Be able to advise on how your employer brand is currently being perceived by candidates in the market and suggest how you may need to adjust your employer brand to position yourself ahead of competitors. A good talent partner can essentially become a brand ambassador, ensuring you are promoted in the right way to the best talent.
• Be able to recommend how you may need to adjust your salaries and packages to be competitive and even back this up with salary benchmarking reports within your industry sector.
• Be able to advise on the best way to extend the relevant talent pool – for example, which allied markets have proved successful to tap into and the locations which have proved successful to tap into from a remote working perspective.
• Offer support guidance and expertise throughout the full hiring and recruitment process. A recruitment partner who can advise and make recommendations on delivering the best and effective candidate experience that meets D & I objectives.
• Manage the time-consuming tasks such as handling communication and coordination of interviews, meetings, offer negotiations and potential start dates. Allowing leaders and hiring managers the opportunity to focus on other key priority business areas.

Organisations and leaders need to ensure they consider these factors as part of their hiring strategy to ensure success in attracting top talent and future leaders to drive their business forward this year.

Our team at CSG Talent are not only experts in their specialist markets but they have in-depth knowledge on talent attraction strategies and work closely with both clients and candidates in establishing market trends, challenges and solutions to hiring.

If you would like to have an initial conversation with one of our experts to discuss your hiring plans and goals in the short term or looking forward into the next 12 months, please click here.

Keen to enhance your hiring strategy? Download our Hiring Guide - How to Create an Effective Hiring Strategy