How to Effectively Attract Top Talent in a Low Unemployment Market

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, the unemployment rate in the United States has hit a record low of 3.7 percent. While this has been wonderful for American workers, it also means that it can be a challenge for employers to find and attract top talent.

Let’s discuss how to recruit better talent in this low unemployment atmosphere.

Get creative with your outreach.

You need to actively recruit prospective employees. This means going beyond a simple job posting. In a competitive market, these additional steps will help you connect with additional prospects:

• Engage with candidates through social media by creating posts and communicating on LinkedIn and/or Facebook. 
• Engage with candidates in person. Nothing can beat a face-to-face interaction. 
• Go to job fairs as well as local meetings related to your field and network regularly. You never know who you’ll meet. 
• Let friends and family know when you plan on hiring - ask them to help spread the word. 
• Ask your own employees for the names of people who might be a good fit for an opening, and offer incentives to them for referrals.
• Consider other, non-traditional forms of communication, that might help you stand out. According to Jobvite’s 2019 Job Seeker Nation Report, an estimated 64 percent of workers applying for new positions said that they preferred to receive a text after applying for a job, as opposed to receiving an email or phone call. 

Although all of these additional steps will work, recruiting activities can be extremely time-consuming and can wreak havoc with a busy executive's calendar.  Many PEOs can offer Talent Acquisition services that can not only remove the time burden of recruiting new employees, but also recruit talent in a way that is legally compliant and represent your company very well.

Make sure your benefits are competitive. 

Hires will want to look at your complete benefits package when considering an offer. More than half of employees say they would be at least somewhat likely to take a job that had a great benefits package, even if it had lower compensation, and 79 percent say that they view a competitive benefits package as an important piece of their decision-making process.

Look on sites like LinkedIn and Glassdoor to get a better idea of what your competitors offer. This will help you remain competitive in the field and avoid potentially losing great candidates because others offered better benefits.

If you’re in a position where you can’t offer competitive benefits, you should explore the options that a PEO can provide which will allow you to compete with larger companies by being part of a larger employee network. 

Speed up your hiring process. 

Make sure you do not lose any prospective hires because your hiring process takes too long. With the number of candidates applying to multiple jobs, you want to make sure that your first choice hears from you before your competitors. This will keep them from moving on to work with someone else, simply because they had not heard from you, yet.

Throughout the process, focus on transparency and communication with your prospects. Let them know where they are in the process and when they can expect various decisions to be made. Do not let them feel as though they have been left in the dark or unsure about when they will hear from you next.

Build a great work culture, and show it off. 

Attract great employees, and keep your existing ones, by creating a strong work culture. You want a company culture that will win candidates over and keep existing employees. Showcase your work culture when people come in for interviews, and make it readily apparent on social media and your website. 

Your culture should make it easy for people to visualize working with you. Your employees should feel passionate about what they do and happy with their jobs on a daily basis. Focus on maintaining an environment with strong communication where people feel respected and listened to. 

When it comes to recruiting top talent in this tough job market, you have to think outside the box. Candidates, who have more flexibility regarding the companies they work for, want to find an employer who will sweep them off their feet. To do this, you need to be proactive in your search for the best prospective hires, know that you have created a competitive benefits package, have a quick and streamlined hiring process, and present an attractive company culture. These recruitment tips will encourage the best candidates to apply for your open positions.