5 Steps On How To Attract And Retain Top Talent For Your Team

High employee satisfaction and strong employer branding strategies are by far not enough to attract and retain the best talents. Recruiting process improvement and interview process optimization are critical to finding and keeping the best on the job market.

You can attract talent with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Although created in a different context, the behavioral theory has important implications for employers. Looking at Maslow's hierarchy of needs defines two main types of needs: deficiency and growth needs

Employee satisfaction - meeting deficiency needs

Employee satisfaction is the first step in becoming an attractive employer. In order to satisfy your employees, you need to meet their needs. These include e.g. the need for survival and safety. In a business context, such needs are met by a good salary and job security. The deficiency needs are easy to fulfill but they don’t have the ability to make your employees happy. You only cover the basic needs.

Employer branding - meeting growth needs

Do you want to do more than just satisfy the basic needs of your employees? Then you need to level up your game and work on meeting growth needs like a good work-life balance, additional health insurance, some extra time off, and, most of all, good development perspectives. Especially best talents invested a lot of time and money in their education and career path. Making sure that this road of development continues will set you apart from other employees and attract the best talents to work for you.

Recruiting process improvement & interview process optimization

The recruiting and interview process is not only a possibility for candidates to represent themselves it is also the stage to show your company’s strengths and benefits. Since HR processes are often common practices that developed over time you should evaluate your current process and be open to optimizations. We at DIMPACT summed up 5 steps to take in order to optimize your recruiting and interview process.  

5 steps to attract best talent

1) Use job ads for employer branding

A job ad is a perfect place to advertise your company. A person reading the ad already is interested in your company. Thus the ad is your chance to convince the candidate of your qualities as an employer. Start with a short company pitch and include core values, company benefits, and development potentials in your ads. This ensures value alignment with employees from the very start and gives your employer branding strategy maximum visibility. 

2) Enhance the candidate experience

Every interaction with candidates shapes their impression of your company. Thus, you should make sure that every touchpoint a candidate has with your company - from the job portal to the interview, up to the onboarding process is a positive and encouraging experience. Be sure to align every touchpoint with your employer branding strategy and your core values.

3) Modernize your candidate sourcing

Newspaper ads, job fairs, and web job portals are rather outdated channels to attract and retain the best talents. They may still lead to success but should be supported by more modern ways of networking. Examples of networking opportunities are social media channels like LinkedIn or online industry meet-ups. Another effective way for candidate sourcing is the creation of your own referral program. By giving incentives you motivate your current employees to promote open job positions in their circle of family and friends. 

4) Create talent pipelines

The timing might not always be right. You may stumble across the perfect software engineer while searching for a product manager. A good HR strategy thinks ahead and allows the manager to plan future positions ahead of time. With a talent pipeline in place, you can connect and stay in touch with potential future employees even if they fit job openings that don’t exist yet.

5) Optimize your interview process

Every interview process is a product of its time of creation. Interview stages that have worked 5 years ago might be outdated today. Up-to-date interview processes are characterized by streamlined and clearly communicated stages. Make sure to use the interview process to present your employee brand, your company culture, and your core values. An Interview process optimization might be painful but it´s a very beneficial method to improve a candidate's experience and to attract the best talents.  

  Meeting employee needs is silver, having a solid employer branding strategy is gold. The best intentions are worthless if nobody knows about them. Recruiting process improvement and interview process optimization offer great opportunities to integrate communication of company benefits and core values. If your employee satisfaction is high, your employer brand is authentic and your HR processes mirror your employer identity, you will attract and retain the best talents with ease. Are you looking for ways to attract new top talents? We connect companies and HR freelancers to drive impactful team growth, together.Contact us to find the right way to grow your team.