13 Best Practices To Observe for Recruiting Top Talent
High performers empower others. According to one study, they can even influence their colleagues to be 15% more productive. But what sets top talent apart, and how can you identify these key players during the recruiting process?
Recruiting top talent is about convincing the best candidates to join your team. The right employees drive business success but finding them is easier said than done. In fact, a Robert Half report showed that 86% of hiring managers found it challenging to meet their demand for talent.
As an HR professional, knowing what to look for in candidates and how to attract the best ones to your organization is crucial. This article discusses the challenges of recruiting top talent and the best practices for doing so.
Contents
What does recruiting top talent mean?
Challenges HR faces in recruiting top talent
13 best practices for recruiting top talent
Inspiring company strategy examples of recruiting top talent
FAQ
What does recruiting top talent mean?
The term “top talent” refers to individuals with the skills, experience, and personal qualities companies can leverage to achieve their goals. However, an organization’s unique purpose and culture will dictate what it deems “top talent”.
Along with technical expertise, top talent demonstrates intangible assets such as integrity, perseverance, creativity, big-picture thinking, and initiative. Recruiting aims to build a workforce that can help the organization reach its objectives. This means hiring people who can not only do the job but are also the right cultural fit.
Focusing on recruiting top talent can have several positive impacts. These include greater employee efficiency, productivity, innovation, and retention, improved company reputation, and an increased competitive advantage. As such, a targeted recruiting strategy is necessary to attract and retain top talent.
Challenges HR faces in recruiting top talent
Recruiting top talent is a rigorous endeavor, often due to external factors. These include:
- Economic conditions
- Technological advancements
- Shifting job market dynamics
- Stiff competition from rival organizations
- The need to adapt to changing candidate expectations
- Issues related to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB).
Other challenges stem from internal circumstances, such as:
- A lack of time and resources for recruiting and assessment
- Subpar compensation packages
- Underdeveloped or negative employer branding.
13 best practices for recruiting top talent
Having a strong recruitment strategy and observing specific best practices can help you land the best employees for your organization. The following 13 tips can inform your recruitment strategy and increase your chances of recruiting top talent to your company:
1. Proactively source talent
Waiting for inbound applications won’t get the results you need, especially in a tight job market. Take proactive steps to find and engage with top-quality candidates by ensuring you:
- Stay updated on industry and employment trends and tailor your candidate sourcing strategies accordingly
- Invest in new recruitment methods and platforms to remain competitive in talent sourcing
- Collaborate with educational institutions to offer internships, apprenticeships, or co-op programs to build relationships with future talent
- Represent your organization at industry events, conferences, and job fairs to network and meet potential candidates
- Initiate community outreach to attract diverse local talent by participating in local community programs or sponsoring events that match organizational values
- Strengthen your employer brand and use social media to promote it.
2. Make use of employee referrals
Your employees can also help you find the best talent. They know what it takes to succeed in the organization and who among their contacts would be good candidates for the company’s job vacancies.
Encourage employees to tap into their networks and refer potential top talent to HR. Create an employee referral program that rewards employees whenever the organization hires any of their referrals.
We’ve developed a sample employee referral program and provided steps on how to develop your own program. Additionally, AIHR has its own employee referral program, which starts with completing and submitting a referral form to recommend someone who could be a good fit for an open full-time position.
Any employee outside the Leadership, HR, and Recruitment teams can submit this form. If a referral turns into a successful hire who completes their one-month trial period, the employee who recommended them receives a €1,000 referral bonus.
3. Build a talent pipeline
You may come across top talent before the organization has suitable vacancies for them; this is where a talent pipeline is useful. It’s essentially a database of viable candidates from candidate pools, networking events, referrals, etc., and you can immediately consider them for upcoming positions.
At the same time, keep in touch with boomerang employees, i.e., high performers who left the organization in good standing. They’ve likely developed valuable experience elsewhere and could be ideal for a new position or a more advanced role than they previously had.
Cultivating good relationships with highly qualified individuals, even when your organization has no suitable roles for them, means that when one does open up, you have access to a broader talent pool. These candidates will also be more open to opportunities from your company.
4. Foster Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB)
The more diverse the candidates you attract, the more likely you are to find top talent. One of the reasons is that candidates nowadays often seek employers that include DEIB in their policies.
A Glassdoor survey found that 76% of job seekers and employees take into account workforce diversity when evaluating employers and considering job offers. Ensure that recruitment efforts:
- Reach multiple demographics (try niche job boards)
- Feature your company’s DEIB policy and encourage under-represented candidates to apply
- Advertise job postings that cater to diverse backgrounds
- Avoid unconscious bias when reviewing résumés and interviewing candidates.
5. Offer competitive compensation and benefits
Candidates typically prioritize attractive compensation and benefits when considering job offers. Even if they don’t base their decision solely on pay, they still want to make what they think they’re worth. They also want to improve — or at least maintain — their financial situation and lifestyle.
Companies that offer competitive pay, performance bonuses, valuable benefits, and perks that support wellbeing have an advantage when competing for top talent. A transparent recruiting process that shares the details of these incentives will generate more interest from prime candidates.
Develop your sourcing and recruiting skills
Recruiting top talent can be tough, particularly when it comes to difficult-to-fill positions. You’ll need to develop a strong talent pipeline to tap into.
In AIHR’s Sourcing & Recruitment Certificate Program, you will learn how to successfully source candidates using different sourcing channels so you can build a robust talent pipeline.
This online, self-paced Certificate Program will also teach you how to improve employer branding and use recruitment marketing, rewards communication and negotiation, and recruitment analytics to your organization’s benefit.
6. Enhance your online presence
Top talent typically conducts thorough research on potential employers. Making the most of your organization’s online recruiting presence can help you connect with a broader array of talent who will see you in a positive light.
Here are some ways you can leverage social media to disperse employer branding content:
- Post on multiple platforms to increase visibility and reach more candidates
- Post consistently and share industry updates, employee stories, job opportunities, and business accomplishments to gain credibility
- Promote your company culture and values using employee testimonials and positive candidate feedback
- Engage potential talent with career advice and tips on how to navigate your company’s recruiting process
- Be intentional in networking with influencers and promising candidates
- Personalize connection requests and post sincere comments.
7. Conduct structured interviews
Interviews are pivotal in finding top talent. This one-on-one interaction gives you deeper insight into who candidates are beyond what you’ve seen in their résumés.
Structured interviews provide an organized, consistent approach for evaluating prospective hires. They allow you to ask interviewees the same pre-determined set of questions in the same order, evaluate them on the same criteria, and then compare them to one another.
Scientific research has shown structured interviews to be the best selection procedure for predicting job performance, as they level the playing field, reduce unconscious bias, and reveal standout candidates.
8. Prioritize cultural fit
It takes more than skills and experience to be the right fit for an organization. Even the most talented employees may not perform their best or last long if they don’t feel at home in a company.
An organization’s mission, values, and beliefs influence its culture. Define these, communicate them to job seekers, and look for them in candidates. You can ask interview questions similar to these to determine a candidate’s cultural fit:
- What do you like and dislike about working in a team environment?
- What aspect of your work gives you the most gratification?
- Was there ever a time when you chose to go above and beyond your duties to help a customer or colleague?
Answer questions about your organizational culture honestly. If applicants like what you tell them, they’ll be more inclined to join your organization and assimilate quickly. If they feel the culture is not for them, you can avoid hiring a poor cultural fit.
HR tip
Look for candidates who suit the company culture but also have attributes your organization may be missing. For example, if a workforce is mainly made up of people over 40, a few hires in their 20s or 30s may be a good idea. These “culture adds” can bring a fresh perspective to enhance organizational culture.
9. Provide clear job descriptions
Vague, overly long, or inaccurate job descriptions are confusing and won’t appeal to your target audience. Give candidates a true representation of the job so they know what to expect and won’t feel misled.
AIHR, for instance, includes a “day in the life” snapshot that gives candidates a clear picture of what a typical day looks like for each open role. This enables them to imagine their work day and what they can expect if they join the company.
A well-written job description typically includes:
- A well-defined job purpose
- A detailed scope of the role’s responsibilities
- Specific skills and experience requirements
- A professional tone with straightforward, inclusive language and no jargon
- Salary range and benefits.
10. Use assessment tools
Pre-employment assessments provide data and insights that allow you to impartially and efficiently choose the most qualified candidates for your organization. You can consider using the following assessment tools:
- Cognitive ability tests
- Work samples and simulations
- Personality assessments
- Job knowledge tests
- Emotional intelligence tests
- Behavioral assessments.
11. Engage with passive candidates
Passive candidates are highly qualified employed individuals who are not currently job-hunting. Pursuing them gives you access to proven performers and a chance to convince them to join your company.
This requires developing relationships with them via in-person networking, social media, or email, and takes long-term effort, patience, and personalized communication. Here are some steps to take when engaging with passive candidates:
- Create passive candidate personas for open roles
- Do online research for professionals who match these personas
- Attend conferences and other industry events for networking opportunities
- Contact passive candidates through email or social media to learn about their career goals
- Let them know the organization is interested in them and values their skills and experience
- Invest time in passive candidates — try to schedule casual meetings and follow up with them periodically.
12. Improve time to hire
If your company’s time to hire is too long, you will lose top talent to other employers. Zippia has found that top candidates stay in the job market for only 10 days. In contrast, The Josh Bersin Company has reported that the average time to hire is 44 days.
Promptly moving forward with strong prospects increases your chances of bringing them on board, so it’s important to streamline the recruitment process. Here are a few ways you can do so:
- Implement an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to structure and automate recruiting tasks
- Use software to help create and conduct pre-employment assessments
- Track the progress of each recruitment stage so you can spot delays and find out their causes
- Use an online scheduling platform to arrange video interviews
- Communicate regularly with candidates to ensure they receive relevant updates in a timely manner.
13. Continuously evaluate and refine recruitment processes
One of the best practices for hiring top talent is to always look for ways to improve the recruitment process. Providing a rewarding candidate experience keeps sought-after talent engaged and interested and persuades them to move on to the next stages.
How to attract top talent to your company
Here are some additional tips for drawing top talent to your organization:
- Expand your career page to include helpful information for candidates (FAQ) and ways to showcase your company culture.
- Rethink work experience requirements. Younger workers and recent college graduates with strong potential can easily learn on the job.
- Don’t lose out on top talent to a cumbersome application process. Make sure it’s transparent and hassle-free to increase the number of complete applications you receive.
- Think of candidates as customers and look at the entire recruiting process from their perspective. This will help you meet their expectations.
- Encourage internal mobility and promotion. Strong performers can shine even more when they have the chance to display their professional qualities in new roles.
Inspiring company strategy examples of recruiting top talent
Organizations that approach recruitment creatively often win over top talent. Here are three examples of companies that have customized their recruiting process and become successful at top talent acquisition:
Example 1: Netflix
Netflix emphasizes transparency about culture fit. At the beginning of the hiring process, every applicant receives a document explaining the company’s core values and culture. At the next stage, a recruiter speaks to them on the phone and assesses their potential for embracing the company culture.
Example 2: Google
Considered one of the world’s best employers, Google finds top talent by looking beyond those who already have the required education and experience. It offers an online, self-paced Google Project Management Certificate Program that teaches the skills entry-level project managers require.
Once they’ve completed the program and received their certification, candidates can apply for a role at Google and prove their eligibility through their coursework.
Example 3: Unilever
Unilever has been using AI to screen entry-level applicants since 2016. Instead of uploading their résumés, candidates can simply submit their LinkedIn profiles to apply for jobs. They then take game-based and other tests to assess their aptitude for the roles they applied for.
If they move on to the next stage, applicants record video answers to preset questions on a platform that can analyze aspects like body language, intonation, and keywords.
To sum up
Recruiting top talent isn’t just about spotting the right skills — it’s about being proactive and strategic. To land the best candidates, focus on cultural fit, diversity, and building a strong employer brand. Employee referrals and structured interviews can also be immensely helpful.
At the same time, offering competitive pay and fostering an inclusive culture can make your company stand out to top talent. Ultimately, it’s about understanding what motivates top performers and aligning your recruitment strategy with company goals.
FAQ
Top talent recruitment is the process of finding candidates with the right blend of skills, experience, and personal qualities to make them committed, high-performing employees.
Hiring top talent involves casting a wide net to source candidates and providing a positive candidate experience. You should also thoroughly assess candidates for the desired skills and culture fit and offer the type of compensation and work environment they want.
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