Recruiting The Best Candidates Today: What You Need to Know

One of the byproducts of the COVID-19 pandemic has been The Great Resignation. This is a labor movement initiated by employees dissatisfied with the companies they worked for. Many of the issues were related to shifts in company cultures, hourly pay or salaries, and rising demands for better work-life balances. It’s opened more doors for companies to be out recruiting the best candidates today as thousands of skilled and experienced professionals make themselves available for new opportunities.

Here are some of the key points related to The Great Resignation:

• – Nearly 48 million people quit their jobs in 2021
• – 44 percent of current employees classify themselves as job seekers
• – The rising cost of inflation is motivating thousands of workers to seek higher pay
• – One out of five workers will take a new job with the same pay, provided they receive other benefits to support their personal health and development

What to do when recruiting the best candidates today

As the economy emerged from the initial COVID-19 lockdowns, companies all over the country began hiring or rehiring workers. It resulted in a hiring spree that provided new opportunities for workers to select companies that align with the values they’re looking for in a business. That means talented candidates are reviewing all of their options as they search for new companies to provide their skills and services.

So what do you need to know about recruiting the best candidates today? How can you make your company stand out from other competitors in the marketplace so that the top talent chooses to join your team? Here are a few helpful ideas.

Incentivize work-life balance with flexible work schedules

Remote work became necessary for survival throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite early concerns that remote work could impact productivity, that didn’t turn out to be the case. In fact, a two year study analyzing the effects of working from home found that remote workers are actually more productive than their office counterparts.

Now, workers are demanding to at least have the option to continue working from home. Many people are adopting hybrid work models, choosing to go into the office for a few days and then work from home for the next few days. The point is that flexible work hours heavily influence a talented candidate’s decision to join a company; make sure your company is on the right side of the remote work debate if you wish to be successful at recruiting the best candidates today.

Build a business case to encourage flexible work hours

The benefits of remote work for employees are fairly obvious:

• – Less time commuting
• – Lower or zero commuting costs
• – Improved time management for household work
• – More time dedicated to mental or physical health

However, the benefits of remote work extend to your company as well. Happier and healthier employees are more productive, which means more work is getting done. Your team could complete new features on a product, develop an entire new sales cadence, or introduce an unstoppable client retention program to boost profitability. All of these benefits can be achieved by aligning corporate values with the things that will keep employees happy and healthy, and keep you recruiting the best candidates today.

There’s also a financial case to be made for remote work. If fewer people are coming into the office, you could downsize the office space you’re renting. All of a sudden, company overhead costs can be reduced to a fraction of what you were paying pre-pandemic.

It will also help you reduce employee turnover rates. According to Forbes, 54 percent of workers say they will leave a job for another company that provides more flexible work hours. Employee turnover results in significantly higher costs incurred by the company due to the amount of time and money sunk into employee onboarding, which can cost, on average, around $3,000 per worker. Don’t give employees incentive to leave because it will affect your bottom line.

Reduce worker stress and burnout with above-market salaries

Another consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic is the impact on inflation. Nationwide, households are reaching the limits of their ability to pay to maintain their homes. It’s one of the reasons why The Great Resignation movement is still so strong; people need more money.

The Willis Towers Watson’s Global Benefits Attitudes Survey looked into the mental health effects of employee stress to help explain reasons for The Great Resignation movement. One of the key findings was the impact of financial stress and how it triggers greater episodes of anxiety or depression. Both feelings can lead to employee burnout, which can trigger resignations and force the business to invest in new hiring and onboarding costs.

Financially unstable workers were also 44 percent more absent from work due to the strain of paying their household expenses. It’s a growing concern for millions of families so help attract candidates who are struggling, or who worry about what could happen financially, by offering salaries in the upper range of what’s in the market. This addresses concerns about pay, helps people keep up with rising costs of inflation, and provides more peace of mind to support greater mental health.

Create talent communities to keep prospective candidates on reserve

If you wish to be successful at recruiting the best candidates today, with the right jobs, and the right benefits up for grabs, you have a competitive offer to attract the most talented candidates in the market. But if you have to source new candidates every time an opening becomes available in the business, you’re devoting more time, money, and resources towards recruitment than you otherwise need to do.

Simplify this process by creating community talent clouds to always have a network of skilled professionals affiliated with your business. Talent clouds are pools of prospective candidates who have been vetted as capable workers that could provide real tangible value to your business. They’re built using AI-enabled technology to source and curate people best suited to your company’s needs.

You can even refer candidates who were in the interview process for one job but were ultimately passed on the role to join the talent cloud. Just because a candidate wasn’t right for one position doesn’t mean they won’t be a perfect fit for another. By keeping them in your talent pool, you’re not starting from scratch; you’ve already vetted them and have some idea of what skills they can provide, which makes it much quicker to hire for future roles.

Connect with the best candidates through subject matter experts

When you use AI-powered platforms like High5 to build your talent clouds, you also gain access to a network of subject matter experts that work on behalf of your brand. High5 has a network of 18,000 subject matter experts to help source, vet, qualify, interview, and recommend talented candidates to your company which will be helpful for you in recruiting the best candidates today. 

The best part of these subject matter experts is that they’ve previously worked the jobs for which they’re sourcing your candidates. They know the day to day experience of a worker in that position, which means they can speak the language during a vetting interview. Your subject matter experts can relate to the candidates and humanize the entire vetting process to help people feel more comfortable and accepted while being qualified by your company.

Not only that but our trusted subject matter talent experts have helped clients save up to 70 percent in hiring costs simply by managing talent clouds. It just goes to show that a little humanity can go a long way towards scaling the growth of your business.

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