Tag: Best Company to Work For

Recruiting Trends

They say we’re in a candidate-driven market.

They say that the candidate picks the employer, not the other way around.

With the use of social media to advertise your position, comes the added amount of candidates seeking work at your organization. Are they quality candidates? Do you have a quality company? How do you stand out to create the kind of experience that will entice a candidate to come to your organization, apply, accept an offer, refer others, and stay for the long haul?

Make sure that you are truly comparing the resumes you receive to the job descriptions you write.  Make sure that you are in as much contact as possible with your applicants. I know that when you receive hundreds of resumes that this may not be easy, but even a standard response email is better than being ghosted by a potential employer.

Candidate Experience

One of the trends that are really important in recruiting is the candidate experience. This occurs at the beginning of sourcing through the onboarding process. How does the candidate feel about their experience with you? What is their overall perception of your company based on these experiences?

I briefly mentioned above about being ghosted. This occurs way more often than you think. This is not the kind of experience that an applicant wants when job hunting. The applicant tracking systems also have a login and password. So think about the potentially large amount of ATS systems that a job hunter is having to navigate. Sometimes a text message on the progress of an application is appreciated more than an employee having to remember the login credentials for each ATS to find out where they are in the process or if they have been declined without so much as an email. Pay the extra money to set up this type of text programming for your candidates to enhance their experience with you.

What is the importance of the candidate experience?

If your candidate, now employee, has had a satisfying experience they will refer others to your company.

Their great experience along with the culture of your organization gives them the confidence to refer people they know to your company. They expect that you will treat them the same way they were treated.

If their experience is far from satisfactory, the organization could potentially lose a lot of money. Companies with a bad reputation will lose employees, or worse.

Job seekers won’t take jobs with companies that have a bad reputation. The result of this is that there will be limited or no employee referrals. If the culture of your organization is such that no referrals are coming in, then you must reevaluate what your mission is in order to gain the trust of your employees and create the type of experiences that translate to more referrals, candidates, and new hires.

Best to Work For?

We’d all like to say that we are the best company to work for or an “Employer of Choice”. The reality is that the only way to really know or find out if you are is through open communication, employee engagement surveys, and a constant dialogue with your team members.

Communication

You must first build a trust with your employees. In my opinion this always starts with communication. That can mean via an intranet for the staff (provided they all have access to it); a monthly or bi-monthly all-staff meeting; departmental meetings with supervisors, managers, and directors passing along information, goals, and accomplishments; or group email announcements (again, the employees must have access).

If you have diversity in your organization, English will most likely be a second language and need to be taken into consideration when creating an article or group emails for all-staff distribution. You must be sensitive to all employees in the organization.

Meat and Potatoes

The next items are the intrinsic and extrinsic values the employees need to have in order to feel safe in your workplace. We have covered these meat and potato items before but a short list here doesn’t hurt to repeat.

  • Compensation
  • Medical
  • Dental
  • Vision
  • Recognition

Mission and Vision

Does the organization have a clear mission and vision that could be stated by any employee in the company at all levels? If not, then that should be your priority. It shouldn’t be more than a sentence or two and should be verbalized and demonstrated from the executives through the entire management team. You must model the behavior you wish t see from your team.

This mission and vision statement is the foundation of your culture. Look at the tenure of your employees. Are you tapping into their knowledge of the organization? It is very likely that they were here before you and have a lot to say. Give them a safe place to say it.

Recognition

Recognition is a key component towards a good culture and a great place to work. Don’t use it as a tool to tame the troops. Recognition has to be genuine and I have recently read a book on the five “love” languages of recognition in the workplace. Not all of your team members are going to appreciate a gift card. Especially since they will have to taxed for it.

Some employees just want you to personally say “Thank you” to them. Others might appreciate a nod in a staff newsletter or department meeting. Knowing what your team members appreciate is part of the solution to being a great place to work. It means you are paying attention and are invested in them. They see it. They see almost everything you do or at least their perception of what you do.

Employee Engagement Surveys

The best advice I can give is to really make the survey as easy and anonymous as possible. You don’t want your team to answer the questions the way they “think” you want them answered. You want them to give you real, straight feedback. The Good, Bad, and the Ugly. It might sting a bit but this is how an organization that is truly committed to culture change will find out the best they have to offer and the worst. This will make you an employer of choice. Suck it up and do it right.