A company is only as strong as its employees. With that said, if you want to run a successful business, you need to surround yourself with the right people. You need to implement recruiting practices that will not only attract the top talent but also give you more leeway when negotiating salaries.
In this article, we’ll explain what qualities to look for in an employee and how to attract the best prospects to your business.
What Makes a Person “Top Talent?”
When we use the term “top talent,” most people think of workers who perform better than the rest. However, this is just one thing that separates good from bad employees. Top talent presumes numerous other qualities and, specifically, consistency over a longer period.
So, when hiring a new employee, these are the things you should pay most attention to:
Motivation
If you’re a young brand, you want to hire as many motivated people as possible. These individuals are hungry for knowledge and opportunities, and will do everything to prove themselves to you. As such, they can become the building block of your business for as long as you compensate them properly.
Reliability
No matter the business you’re in, honoring deadliness is probably one of your biggest concerns when dealing with clients. By hiring reliable employees, you’ll have a squad that will meet any demand on time. Reliable staffers are well-organized and detail-oriented. The best thing yet is that you can give them tasks that most other employees would fail at.
Flexibility
Top talent commonly exhibits a high degree of flexibility, in terms of tasks and roles. These individuals are usually curious and open-minded, making the best out of any opportunity. Hiring flexible people is especially vital if you’re in a dynamic field where customer needs and trends shift on a monthly basis.
The great thing about top talent is that they don’t require as much hand-holding as other employees. You can give them just about any task and expect that they’ll do their best. Because of that, they’re great for growing teams where employees have to become decision-makers of sorts.
Having lots of high performers on your team gives management more time to focus on strategic planning. As such, your company can evolve on all levels ensuring faster growth and increased profitability. At Growth Hackers, we hired and evaluated “top talent” profiles for our own growth marketing team by focusing on consistency signals over time, and those hires delivered much faster campaign execution with significantly fewer revisions within the first 90 days.
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How to Find and Attract Top Talent? | Top 9 Tips
Finding elite prospects isn’t as easy as some people might think. You can’t just create an account on LinkedIn and start recruiting guys who fit the role. Instead, you need to set the basis for long-term brand development that will streamline the process.
Keeping that in mind, these are the best ways to attract and find top talent!
1. Create a Recruitment Strategy
The best way to streamline your hiring is by having viable digital recruitment strategies. So, before you start headhunting for top talent, you need to answer the following questions:
- What type of person do we need?
- How will that individual fit the current culture?
- Does the person fit our long-term plans?
- What can we offer that no other company can?
- What are the best platforms for recruiting?
Your strategy has to work on micro and macro levels. It needs to be a plug-and-play method you can reuse for multiple recruitments. Most importantly, it needs to account for any fluctuations in the job market. At Growth Hackers, we worked with a B2B SaaS startup that was hiring reactively without structure, but after introducing a plug-and-play recruitment strategy aligned with long-term goals and market shifts, we improved hire consistency and reduced failed hires.
2. Establish a Positive Culture
Having a good reputation will open new opportunities during the recruiting process. Authoritative and respectable brands have no issues finding top talent. In fact, they usually get so many applications that it becomes a challenge to sift through all the candidates.
A good reputation also makes it easier to onboard employees through recommendations and will help your SMB be more resilient. As everyone would like to work with your company, your current staff will likely share with their friends whenever there’s a new opening. Furthermore, as we’ve just mentioned, good culture also allows you to negotiate lower salaries.
However, positive workplace culture doesn’t appear out of the blue. You need to work hard to create such an environment by preventing any type of harassment and discrimination. Growing at a fast pace also helps your cause, as this will make it easier to attract ambitious top talent that wants to grow with your brand.
3. Create Unique Value Proposition
For example, in business, you need to offer something that will separate you from other companies in your vertical. You need to create a unique value proportion that will go beyond monetary compensation and health plan. In other words, you need to create an offer that goes beyond basic legal requirements and industry standard.
Here are just a few ideas of things you can offer to top talent:
- Stipends
- Insurance
- Reimbursements
- Profit sharing
- Product and service discounts
- Stock options
- Personal development
- Professional development
- Health and fitness
- Extra days off
- Car and equipment
- Travel perks
You can tinker a lot with your offer. Ideally, you should provide benefits that won’t cost you too much or that you can deduct from your inventory and resources. Profit sharing and stock options, in particular, will not only lure top talent, but will ensure they perform at a high level.
At Growth Hackers, we helped an Ai startup move from competing only on salary and standard benefits to offering a differentiated value proposition with profit sharing and growth perks, resulting in higher offer acceptance and stronger long-term retention.
4. Improve Interview Process
A good interview process requires three things:
- Unbiased evaluation
- Creative questions
- Relevant assignments
The process of evaluation should be as impartial as possible. You should never forget that your main task is to filter through various prospects and find the best ones. Among others, assessing soft skill is every bit as important as analyzing their technical proficiency.
Creative questions are necessary so you can figure out how candidates think. Using intriguing questions will give you insight into their mental process as well as whether they’re flexible when presented with a challenge. The last part of the interview should be assignments. You can use them to see how a candidate executes technical tasks.
5. Customize Interviews
Besides simplifying and streamlining the interview process, you might also consider creating customized interviews for the best candidates. As there won’t be many people on your shortlist, this will be more than worth your while.
For example, you can use different list of questions for each person, based on their skills and experience. Similarly, you might introduce certain team members to the interview, who otherwise wouldn’t have been present. Besides improving the process, customization can also speed things up.
6. Write Good Job Descriptions
Job descriptions usually serve as the first point of contact between a brand and talent. By simply reading the post, a person can learn more about your business, professionalism, and what you’re looking for in employees.
Many businesses make a mistake of focusing too much on job requirements and benefits. Instead, they need to convey how it feels working for a company as this is the best way to attract top talent. You need to instill a feeling of safety and acceptance, as no one wants to be a part of a lousy work environment.
Make sure to mention tools and equipment that you use on a daily basis. Outlining your operative processes might dissuade some of the better prospects, but it will also ensure that the optimal-fit candidates apply.
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7. Simplify Application
If you want to reach as many candidates as possible and, specifically, onboard veteran talent, you must simplify your application processes. Besides making the form shorter, you should focus on questions and data that is relevant to the job.
Here are a few tricks that will simplify the application without reducing the candidate’s data:
- Use third-party recruitment platforms that use auto-fills and allow profile creation
- Don’t ask for motivation letter as it usually doesn’t provide much valuable data
- Focus on several critical fields while omitting everything else
- Use one or two “qualifying factors” to shortlist the candidates and perform real vetting during the interview
- Allow application through several platforms and application methods
Simple applications are especially vital for top talent and proven experts. As these guys can pick and choose jobs, they will quickly avoid application for which they have to spend too much time. At Growth Hackers, we viewed the application process like an express lane at an airport for a one of our fintech clients, where removing unnecessary steps and enabling profile autofill increased qualified submissions.
8. Add to Culture
When talking about their recruitment philosophy, most companies highlight they want someone who would fit their culture. That way, they would create a homogenous team that could easily cooperate and coexist. However, many brands have found success by taking a slightly different approach.
Instead of focusing on culture fit, you should prioritize culture add. In other words, you need to find someone who is different from anyone else and who might even seem like a bad fit for the current employees. By adding those with different skills and personality traits, you can stimulate creativity, innovation, while also boosting decision-making.
Basically, you’re looking for someone who would bring something new to the table and introduce new energy to the company. The diversity is definitely welcoming, especially shining over a prolonged period.
9. Treat Candidates Like Customer
Another great trick is treating candidates like customers. Instead of waiting for them to come to you, the company should be proactive in seeking out top talent. Furthermore, you should put yourself in the position where you’re trying to dazzle them, not the other way around.
Here’s what we specifically refer to:
- Seek out recruits through platforms such as LinkedIn
- Pitch prospects with customized messages that highlight their skill and show you’ve read their bio
- Set up a meeting at the time that is most suitable for them (even if it means you have to come to the office on Sunday)
- Use communication platform of their choice
- Talk as much as possible about the company during the interview and focus on perks
- Give them some leeway when negotiating salaries
If you want to snatch top talent that will help build your company, you need to treat them as assets. Schmoozing a person is completely warranted in this situation, so don’t be afraid to go overboard with your offer. At Growth Hackers, we applied a candidate-as-customer approach for a HealthTech scale-up by running highly personalized outreach and flexible interview scheduling, which increased senior candidate response rates and improved close rates on top talent.
Final Thoughts About How to Attract Top Talent to Your Brand
Top-tier talent is much more reserved when looking for jobs compared to newbies. In fact, they will often avoid companies that aren’t a good fit or that don’t provide good financial incentives.
Because of that, you need to create a corporate culture that would attract these experts to your brand. You should also simplify and customize the entire process so that it better fits their preferences while also providing perks that other companies don’t have.
Growth Hackers provides top-rated branding services helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners attract top talent to their brand, increase their productivity, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales.
We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
