Employer Branding and Hiring Top Talent
Hiring top talent into your business is harder than ever, yes COVID-19 has changed the world and made some high-quality talent available but this is a temporary situation and you need to be building your story now.
The highly mobile workforce means that if you want to not only attract, but keep, your people they need to be aligned to your business and your culture. In essence, their story needs to match yours.
The Art of the Story
If you are going to compete with the top brands, your employer brand needs to stand for something, it needs to take prospective employees on a journey, they already know the Google or the Facebook or the Atlassian story and they need to know yours if you want to compete.
Crafting and communicating your story has never been easier, with the use of video, audio and online publications your story can reach prospective employees before they are even looking. It is however paramount that your story is true to your business and not perhaps what you wish it was.
You need to communicate the history, where the company came from, what event caused its very existence, it needs to be honest about the road that was traveled, and all the bumps and twists (now called pivots) that occurred on the way. When it comes to the present it needs to be even more honest, what is the current scenario, is it battling through current times, is it about to embark on a massive cultural shift, are you about to launch into huge growth plans both locally and overseas, or perhaps launching a new product or market. And lastly, it needs to have a very clear direction as to what everyone is working towards now, what are the short term and long term goals (these might change, but what are they now), and to make it all believable there always needs to be a “why”. Why did that happen in the past, why are you where you are now and why is this the direction you have as a business decided to head.
Lastly, it needs to be consistent, everyone in the business needs to know the whole story, they need to know as this is what builds a cohesive culture and common set of gaols, this is what builds high performing teams and this is the story everyone who asks anyone gets as a response. Make no mistake, this is not an easy task; which is why you need to start working on this today Once you have this you can start to look for talented people whose story aligns to yours, they in fact seek you out and these are the people that joint he business, are invested in the business and will help continue the story. If they don’t like your story, you don’t want them in your business.
Once you build your story, your employees will live and breathe it, they will write the new chapters and they will be the ones communicating it to their friends and attracting that top talent will become all the easier.
About the Author
Steve Grace is CEO & Founder at The Nudge Group, a disruptive force within the recruitment industry, offering a system known as “the nudge experience” aimed at fast-growth businesses, the start-up space (in particular after series A, B or C funding), and transforming businesses resulting in accelerated hiring and change management.
Steve will also be a speaker at the first online InnovateWork event in Australia on May 28.
Enjoyed this post? You may also like this interview: