Effective Recruitment Tips For 2024: How To Prepare For The Future

The workforce of a business is its lifeblood. Every company wants to attract and retain top talent to be able to perform at the top of its game at all times. 

However, the extremely competitive job market makes it challenging to find great candidates and, even more so, to retain them. Employees want to work in inclusive organizations that offer them more than just good salaries. 

In this article, we take a look at tips, tricks, and strategies that help you identify and keep the best and most suitable candidates for job roles in your organization. Keep reading to know more.

 

6 Effective Recruitment Tips to Retain Top Candidates

When it comes to the workforce of an average organization, a 90% retention rate and a 10% turnover rate are considered ideal. However, research suggests the actual turnover rate is close to 57%.

A survey by job portal Monster.com reveals that a whopping 96% of employees were looking for a job in 2023, dubbing the movement as ‘the great resignation’. There are several reasons an employee would want to leave a company, the most prominent being:

• Wanting a higher salary
• Feeling unchallenged in their current role
• Wanting to feel valued in their company
• Seeking a better management relationship
• Craving a better work-life balance

To combat this, companies need to take a look at everything from their recruitment process to their work culture. They need to hire the right people first and then give them a positive work environment to make them stay.

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1. Identify your mistakes

The first step in creating a workforce of top talent with a positive work environment is to identify what you’re doing wrong at the moment. Many entrepreneurs and their hiring teams miss the fact that they need to rectify their mistakes to be able to usher in new and positive changes.

Begin by taking a look at the resignation letter you receive from leaving employees. Decode the reasons they list out to understand their motives. This will help you understand your shortcomings with your employees, which compels them to look for better alternatives.

Employees, on the other hand, should always put forward a well-thought-out resignation letter to their employer to let them know they’re grateful for the association and why they had to take the plunge. Here are some excellent samples of resignation letters to get you started.

Hiring managers can also have meetings with leaving employees to better understand the reasons for their departure and what they shall do to improve. Note down the reasons and identify the top reasons that compel employees to seek better jobs.

For example, if one of the top reasons for people leaving is the pay, you can overhaul your pay structure to give more benefits to employees. Announce the changes you make to let your employees know you see their challenges.

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2. Understand retention begins with recruitment

The next step in hiring and retaining top candidates is understanding that retention begins with recruitment. This essentially means that the applying candidates should get an idea about your work culture and values right from the get-go.

In other words, you need to imbue your recruitment process with your company’s personality. Highlight aspects of your work culture, values, and strategy in the following recruitment process steps to let employees know who you are:

1. Job descriptions — Describe your work culture and how the candidate must fit into it. Describe the way you work to help them understand just what working with you will entail.
2. Recruitment tests — Ask realistic questions that will help a candidate understand what day-to-day work with the company will be like. Add custom questions to understand if they are a good fit for the company.
3. Interviews — Take time to explain your work culture to the candidate. Seek their input on whether the kind of work and culture suits them. Interviews are important to identify if the candidate will fit your company or not.

Doing this helps you identify candidates that will fit your company’s work style and culture. And when they fit your company, they’re less likely to leave it. This is why it’s important to design recruitment with keeping retention in mind.

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How IT company Infrastructure gained a retention rate of 97%

Infrastructure is an IT company that deployed the above-mentioned strategy of designing recruitment with retention in mind. It picked aspects of its work culture and highlighted them in the recruitment process.

This helped candidates understand what they were signing up for, and only those who were interested in a work culture like Nfrastructure’s applied for jobs. Candidates screened themselves out, and the company tested them based on if they’d fit their work style.

The result was employees who understood the company’s work culture and hence, were thoroughly engaged. The more an employee stays with the company, the more productive they’d become. 

As a result, Infrastructure achieved a retention rate of 97%, an almost unheard-of rate in itself but especially in the IT industry. 

 

3. Offer flexibility

A report by Remote Work shows that only 8.3% of employees today prefer to work from the office. Rest all either wish to work from home (63.4%) or in a hybrid model (28.3%).

Most of today’s workforce seeks flexibility in not just the way it works but also in its work-life balance. Try offering your employees the freedom to choose their working hours and the mode of working to give them greater flexibility. 

This will boost their morale and allow them to work at their own pace. It will also build trust between you and them. Most importantly, they’re more likely to adjust with you in the relaxed work environment you offer than search for a new job.

Here are a few ways you can ensure that you offer maximum flexibility to your team:

• Allow them to start and leave times of their own. Let them know that they need to fill a certain number of hours a day or week, and they can choose however they want to do it.
• Give them the option to have compressed weeks, i.e., three-day weekends and 10-hour work days. This gives them more room to explore. 
• Allow them to work remotely and provide assistance to make the experience comfortable for them.
• Offer different types of work environments, such as private or collaborative working spaces.

 

4. Offer competitive compensation

Even though it’s not the only thing that makes an employee consider jumping ship, the pay is still the top priority for them when they look for a new job. Offering competitive compensation packages is an excellent way to attract new talent and make the existing one stick with you.

Begin by reviewing the average salaries and expectations of every job role on platforms such as Indeed or LinkedIn. This will help you decide on a salary package that is satisfying to your employees.

However, compensation doesn’t just include salary. It includes a plethora of things that can together make up a lucrative compensation package. You can even enhance some of these benefits to make up for a lesser salary. 

Some things to include in your compensation package are:

• employee retirement plans
• bonuses
• paid time off
• stock options
• employee benefits package
• family and medical leave
• health insurance
• unemployment insurance
• workers’ compensation, and
• public benefits such as social security

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5. Test candidates thoroughly

When testing candidates with employment tests and interviews, be intentional. Test them on the basis of how they will perform under the unique circumstances of your company’s work culture and style.

Candidates often end up overselling their abilities and experience in their resumes. They may even oversell how well they’ll fit into your company culture as well. Testing them allows you to gauge just how much of a fit they’ll be. 

 

6. Help employees grow

Lack of engagement is a major reason employees leave companies. It’s important to keep them engaged right from the get-go to help them achieve value out of their employment with you. It keeps them motivated and engaged with you while improving their skills and productivity. 

Here are a few ways you can help your employees grow:

• Offer stellar orientation programs that plug them right from the beginning into your vision and what their role will be in the setup.
• Enroll them in training development programs to help them hone their skills.
• Arrange sessions with psychologists to help them with their mental health. 

End Note – Craft an intentional hiring process and keep candidates engaged throughout to retain them better

Employee retention can be a major concern for companies with severe competition in the job market. Being intentional with your hiring can help you attract the right talent and keep it engaged with you to increase retention and decrease turnover.

Identify your current mistakes to improve on them and give your employees a  better work environment. Highlight exactly what your work culture is and what kind of a candidate you’re looking for to attract like-minded people. Offer them flexibility in their work schedule to make them comfortable. 

Let us know in the comments what you think are the best ways to attract and retain top talent.