Hunting for talented staff members for your business can be a headache — but it doesn’t have to be. In this guide, Fullstack breaks down the best practices for finding great staff.
Finding and hiring great staff is critical to the long-term success of any business. While retaining quality staff members by providing them with a positive working environment is important, ensuring that you’ve chosen the right person for the role from the start is the most important element of the hiring and retention process.
Identifying and hiring the right people means posting the right job listing in the right place, and sorting through a large amount of applicants in order to filter out the very best potential employees. Hiring statistics published by LinkedIn, however, reveals that simply posting job ads is not the most efficient method of hiring great staff members.
LinkedIn Talent Solutions data demonstrates that the number one way in which potential employees find new roles is through referrals — not through online job listings. Companies are able to expand their talent pool by over 10x by recruiting through their employees’ personal networks.
In addition to leveraging the networks of existing employees, there are a number of other practices that can be used to identify and hire quality staff members. We’ll proceed to break down the best practices for engaging and hiring new staff members in order to ensure you’re working with the best people possible.
Where to Look for Staff
The most common challenge faced by a business looking for great staff is summed up in the question “where do I find great employees?” Businesses headhunting talented new staff members are able to leverage a broad spectrum of platforms in order to present job opportunities to potential new hires.
Posting job opportunities on a company website will provide interested job seekers with a first point of contact, which can then be shared directly to social media. There are hundreds of different job listing platforms online today that can be used to publish job listings.
Depending on the role you’re hiring for, you may want to engage the services of a recruitment or staffing agency, or engage existing employees in order to leverage their individual professional networks. Incentivizing existing staff members is a powerful highly effective method of encouraging existing employees to assist with the hiring process.
How to Attract Great Staff
Determining how to find great staff when operating in a region with a small talent pool or in niche industries can be time consuming. Networking with existing staff members or posting job listings online opens up a wider pool of potential employees, but it’s important to consider the factors that attract staff to your business.
- You can attract great staff to your business by:
- Offering a positive company culture that engages staff members
- Offer attractive incentives such as health benefits or gym membership discounts
- Leverage social media in order to promote your company vision and culture
- Personalize your job listings with a unique tone that represents your business
- Consider executing social media advertising that targets professionals in your industry
- Engage with local universities in order to identify new talent before they enter the job market
The Importance of Social Media
Social media is a popular way to find great staff, playing an increasingly important role in the job market. International specialist recruitment agency Robert Walters reveals the growing importance of social media in a detailed social media recruitment impact white paper — over 85 percent of all job seekers maintain an active LinkedIn profile, for example.
When considering job listings, 75 percent of job seekers will seek information on an organisation via social media, with a further 66 percent using social media to gain insight into the company culture of an organization before applying.
In addition to LinkedIn, job seekers also use Facebook to engage with potential employers. Data published by Link Humans reveals that roughly 20 million individuals used social media to find their current role, with over 80% of all job seekers surveyed stating that they would prefer to view job opportunities posted via Facebook.
Facebook provides employers with a dedicated hiring platform — Facebook Jobs. In addition to providing employers with a highly visible method of publishing job opportunities, Facebook Jobs also allows businesses to gain insight into the social media presence of potential employees as part of the screening process.
Where to Post Online Job Listings
There are many online employment platforms live today, but the Australian job market is centralised around a small pool of job sites. Seek is the largest job listing platform in Australia, catering to both small business and large-scale enterprises with a broad range of filtering options. Seek is a paid platform, however, with posting costs ranging from roughly $200 to $600 based on features.
CareerOne, another paid job listing site, allows businesses to post open roles and select from a range of scalable pricing options. The Australia-specific arm of international job board Indeed boasts over 10 million visitors per month, and allows businesses to post free job listings to find staff.
In addition to sites such as Seek and CareerOne, there are a number of employment platforms that provide businesses with the ability to connect with specific types of employees. GradConnection, for example, allows businesses to connect with students or recent graduates based on criteria such as field of study or university.
How to Screen Job Applicants
- When hunting great staff, it’s best to follow a standardized process that ensures only talented employees make the final cut to the interview stage:
- Post your job listing on a variety of platforms, leveraging existing employee networks, social media, and major job board websites
- Write and in-depth job listing that emphasises the strengths that you expect candidates to possess
- When listing jobs, include a questionnaire that engages potential employees with five difficult questions about the job in order to ensure applicants are invested in the opportunity you’ve presented
- Perform a fifteen-minute phone interview with candidates prior to inviting them to a face-to-face interview to narrow down the pool of potential employees
- Engage new hires through a paid trial period before commencing a formal employment contract and making a final decision on your hiring process
Hiring the best people is essential for your business to reach new bounds. If you’re currently hiring new staff and are seeking guidance around the requirements your business must fulfil, reach out to Fullstack today.
