Low Unemployment and Job Growth Demands a New Hiring Strategy

When talent is scarce, you need a talent strategy designed to attract people in not weed them out more efficiently. Given this, here are the five prerequisites for attracting and hiring the best people:

1. Advertise great jobs, not a laundry lists of skills and experiences. It's what people DO with what they HAVE that makes them successful, not what they HAVE. Job descriptions must describe the DOING part of the work in compelling terms to attract initial interest.
2. A hiring manager who knows how to recruit top tier passive talent before interviewing them! While most hiring managers are capable of this, few do it. Yet this is the first step in raising the talent level at your company. 
3. A strong recruiter who can find top tier talent and can engage 80-100% of them in a serious career discussion.The best recruiters use a "small batch, high touch" process to define and create the career opportunity. This recruiter competency model will show you how to separate the best from the rest. Hiring managers should only use those that score a Level 3 or better on all of the competencies.
4. A companywide interviewing and selection process that is both accurate and respectful. This is the #1 cause of bad Glassdoor reputations. This is the weak link in most hiring chains. One solution: If hiring managers interviewed candidates as if they where highly competent acquaintances, they wouldn't interview them assuming they were incompetent strangers. Point: forget the stupid and/or demeaning questions that turn off both the best and the rest.
5. Getting 90-100% of your offers accepted within the compensation budget. It takes all of the above to convince the best people your opening represents the best career opportunity vs. the best compensation package. The key is to use an interviewing and recruiting process in tandem that demonstrates your opening offers the candidate a minimum non-monetary of at least 30%. This is the combination of a bigger job, a mix of more satisfying work, a job with more impact and a job that offers faster growth.

Recent U.S. Department of Labor Reports show continuing job growth and the lowest unemployment rate in years. This is a recipe for sharp wage growth, unfilled positions, more turnover, longer time-to-fill and increased cost per hire. Getting on top of these issues requires a shift in hiring strategy from weeding out the week to attracting the best. Waiting is not an option.

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Lou Adler (@LouA) is the CEO of The Adler Group, a consulting and training firm helping companies implement Performance-based Hiring. He's also a regular columnist for Inc. Magazine, SHRM and BusinessInsider. His new Performance-based Hiring self-paced learning course - The Hiring Machine - is now available 24/7. His latest book, The Essential Guide for Hiring & Getting Hired (Workbench, 2013) is now being published in Korea and Japan. It provides hands-on advice for job-seekers, hiring managers and recruiters on how to find the best job and hire the best people.