Attracting Top Candidates Like Your Small Business Depends On It (it does)

In an ever increasing competitive talent landscape it is easy to feel the pressure of finding the right candidate for the job. Especially when you are a small business trying to compete in a talent marketplace where you have to go head to head with well known established, larger corporations. With a 4.1% national unemployment rate, talent pool scarcity and competition is skyrocketing. As a small business, how do you cut through all the noise, get noticed and attract top/relevant candidates?

Who Are You?

Your online presence is who you are. It is what you represent, what the company thinks, it's attitudes and feelings. How are you conveying to potential candidates that you are the best place to work at? That you have what they are looking for? Are you relying on your consumer marketing to drive your talent brand awareness? How does your product marketing highlight why a candidate would want to work for you? It doesn't. Apple for example, everyone knows the name and many love the product, but Apple has made the 'worst company to work for list' for several years all due to poor internal culture (poor working conditions, overly competitive, low approval of CEO, doesn't foster collaboration, lack of values etc...). This means that they are in a constant battle of attrition sinking money, time and resources into sourcing and hiring talent because they are constantly bleeding talent. What are people saying about your company on sites like Indeed or Glassdoor? Take a look at Xerox, a once dominator in their industry, is consistently ranked on the 'worst companies to work for' lists, and is currently sitting on Glassdoor with 2.4/5 ranking with "bad culture" or "no culture" consistently cited in the negative reviews. While they still get candidates, think about how many they lost since '#2 on worst company to work for list 2017' is not exactly a great marketing message to potential candidates.

The 'My Clients Would Never Go For That' Mentality

You would think that this should go without saying but some industries, like Tax & Accounting, massively lag behind the tech curve (in some instances by 10 years). To give you an example of the mindset of a company that is 10 years behind the tech curve, would put us into 2007. The iPhone wouldn't be released untill June, Android wouldn't have a phone released until the following year. Online banking was still was not adopted, Facebook had only recently become available to everyone, and websites looked like this [Click Here] (This was ranked in the top 50 best websites in 2007, doesn't it look amazing? We've come so far!). What does this mean if I am a candidate looking for an accounting job, and I know a potential company doesn't even have a website, and the owner is 10 year behind the tech curve? It means I already know that I am going to be doing a lot of manual work that other companies have already automated, I know that the owner doesn't like change, I am going to be working longer hours, and work for a company that will most likely soon be irrelevant and I'll be out of work, as the 'cloud' is still a scary term, and the vehement belief that no one uses online bank or portals yet still persists. My clients don't want portals, they wouldn't go for something like that (you know that amazing thing that allows you to bank without leaving your house, pay your bills without having to call and wait on hold for 45 minutes, and so much more)!

The Entry Price of Competing

A strong digital presence should be a defaulted standard in today's world (website and social media presence). You don't exist if you're not online. Furthermore, if you're not online, the success of your business and credibility will most likely be called into question (this company must not be very successful if they don't even have a website, is it because they cant afford it?) I would liken this to walking into a new bank that you intended to do business with, however, the bank is furnished with lawn chairs and tables. This would already cause several red flags in your mind! Can they not afford to buy actual furniture? Why? Are they not planning on staying here? Are they credible or will they pack up and leave immediately after they have my money? Now, this step will take creating the right kind of presence in the right places and should be lock step with your marketing. Just like consumer marketing, you are selling the value proposition of working for your company. If you cannot answer the question 'why would someone want to work at [your company]' then your marketing will not be successful.

The Buyer's Journey Fitted to the Candidate Experience

Your Talent Brand Marketing should work in the same way as your Consumer Marketing even though they operate independently of one another. It is equally important to sell your product, but in order to be best in class you need talent that is best in class to drive both your internal culture and drive results. Look at the two most important stages of the Talent Pool Funnel.

• Step 1 - Awareness/Attract: The most important stage. This is the stage that companies spend into the billions to leverage and maintain. Everyone knows what and who Coca Cola is. Everywhere you go there is no shortage of vending machines that prominently display Coke, or billboards along side a highway, radio ads, internet ads, mobile ads, YouTube ads, etc... Despite being 3rd globally for brand recognition and the 2nd most iconic brand they spent $4 billion in 2016 for marketing & advertising. This is because they want consumers to continually see their brand, hear their brand, and feel their brand to the point that whenever someone says 'Pop (or Soda)' they instinctively think 'Coke'! Whenever someone hears a carbonated can open they instinctively think 'Coke'! The repetition brings awareness. From there, psychology tells us that repetition makes us warm up to things, which leads to liking something which leads to trusting something. Which leads to an increased likelihood on engaging.

Think of it in terms of buying a car. When you go to start researching your next car you probably started researching the cars you know and/or like (ones that you are aware of). People don't know what they don't know. If you fit into the typical car buyer persona, you probably immediately think of Ford, Chevy, Honda, Toyota or Hyundai. But did you think of Alfa Romeo? No? (Their advertising is pretty low key and very on/off). They got completely passed up from a potential opportunity because you didn't even know they existed -or- you had already completely forgotten about them since you haven't seen or heard an advertisement for them in so long. Get in front of the people you want to hire, through a medium that they engage with. If you're looking for a software UI/UX design engineer, and your running job ads in print...I have something bad to tell you... Are you clients thinking of you when they start job searching? Why? How do they know about you? How would they find you? And what message is there waiting for them about you?

• Step 2 - Interest/Engagement: You put your brand out there for the masses to see. What next? This part is solely driven on the level of your marketing/advertising and how targeted it was to your target audience. Step 1 is only purchasing the car, this step is about putting gasoline in the car to drive engagement. This can only be accomplished if you have a compelling work with us value proposition and an engaging call to action. If you failed to highlight your internal brand culture, the reasons why someone would want to work there (benefits, work/life, challenging/rewarding work, opportunities) then you probably have little to no gas to reach your goals.

The remainder of the funnel:

• Step 3: Application (Apply)
• Step 4: Select
• Step 5: Hire

Your Weakness Is Your Greatest Strength

You are small. That is good. Data from LinkedIn actually shows that candidates are more likely to leave larger companies for smaller ones. The reasoning is not surprising once its brought into the light.

• Less red tape/bureaucracy - SMB are more agile and can make changes quickly
• More Flexibility. A study by Indeed stated that flexibility in work conditions surged 58% in the last 3 years. Lets face it, top talent have kids, other commitments, and other life commitments and events. Large companies tend to be slow, due to bureaucracy and fall victim to the 'this is the way we've always done it' mentality that has driven slow adoption of flexible work arrangements.
• More Opportunities to impact the business/promoted
• Challenging work that they can see the impact/results of

Getting Surgical

Your approach to hiring needs to cast the widest net but in the most targeted way. Several HR related publications state that about 25% of the total talent pool is actively searching. Narrowing down your search criteria for a specific role, and now your left with much less than 25% of potential candidates. Your approach needs to include both active and passive candidates. This way you have access to 100% of the talent pool(available/known) and narrowing down on your search criteria will lead to a much larger selection than just active alone. Engaging with passive candidates can also help build awareness, interest, engagement, and potentially build a talent pipeline if you were able to effectively community your company's value proposition.

Came for the Culture; Stayed for the Culture

You created a funnel of talent. Where are they being funneled to? Your website? LinkedIn? Job Board? Job Posting? Once you have gotten a candidate to engage and they are passing through the funnel, where they land is extremely important. Remember, this is the internet we are talking about, the place with no shortage of distractions. (Fun fact #1: 50% of all your potential web traffic will be on mobile. Is you landing page optimized for mobile? Fun fact 2: if a link opens a new window, you will lose 50% of traffic). Be strategic with where/what page your funnel leads to. For example: if you are attempting to drive a call to action for a potential candidate to apply and the call to action takes them to your website - are you leading them to a page that is giving a compelling reason why they should buy something from you (consumer marketing)? It should be leading to a page that gives them a compelling reason to work for your company. An insight to a day in the life of an employee, insights to the culture. This is what creates an emotional connection that will further drive engagement. Leading to a job posting on a job board? Do you have any reasons or value propositions on why work for your company, rather than just presenting the same old stale details about the position, job requirements etc... that a vast majority skip over? This is not to say to that you shouldn't list the aforementioned, but do it in a way that ties into the culture of the company, what I could expect in working there, why its fun/challenging/rewarding/beneficial etc...

Internal cultures that foster teamwork, communication, growth, continuous learning and training, fun work environments, flexible working, often times are looked at as an expense, instead of an investment that pays dividends. I would even argue that you could look at a strong internal culture as the best defense mechanism for mitigating future hiring costs. When a positive strong culture is front of mind, you attract the right talent and retain them longer. Your culture is their reason to stay. Without it your providing a job not a career.

Get Creative

Creativity is the one trait that that is often thought of as being static. You've probably heard many people say 'I wish I was more creative'. Do they not know that you can learn to be creative? It is your greatest differentiation. By getting creative, you can approach the talent scarcity & competition problem in a way that no one else is or potentially even can. Don't be afraid to be different. The ones that are, are the ones that blend in.

If you are feeling like your traditional talent acquisition approach is good enough I will leave you with a quote from retired U.S. General Shinseki. "If you dislike change, you're going to dislike irrelevance even more."

About the Author: In today’s world with an increasingly competitive talent landscape and the overwhelming amount of data in our digital age it is hard for organizations to stand out through all the noise. Leveraging technology & digital media creatively is the ultimate differentiation in attracting top talent. I coach CEOs, CHROs, Thought Leaders, Human Resources and their Talent Acquisition teams to develop their employer and talent brand to attract, recruit and retain the world’s top tier talent faster and more efficiently than ever before. It is my sole goal that I aggressively pursue that I make people my clients ultimate competitive advantage. To do so I share strategic industry trends and talent intelligence to help build unique road-maps to develop their #TalentBrand and #EmployerBrand to stand out and compete against large established corporations. Because the innate power of information, I leverage #SocialMedia and #SocialSelling to help bring value to my client’s everyday lives. Some topics that I share are: #TalentAcquisition, #SocialRecruiting, #EmployeeAdvocacy, #HRTech, #AI, and #TalentInsights to impact those around me in a meaningful and positive way. In doing so, I help further LinkedIn’s vision to create the world’s first economic graph to bring ubiquitous opportunity to every person around world.

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