Learn how to create an effective strategy to attract the best talent to work at your company.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Skills gap: identify the size and location of your candidate pool to ensure the skills and experience required are available in the market. Use LinkedIn Talent Insights or Boolean search.
- Limiting the pool: stipulating minimum years of experience or a certain degree/certification can exclude talented candidates. Instead, consider transferable skills and the potential for an individual to develop into the role. Defining essentials vs “nice to haves” can demonstrate your flexibility, while definitive language can cause potentially strong applicants to self-disqualify.
- Ignoring competition: be aware of your key competitors’ offerings. How does your offer compare? Consistently benchmarking salaries, ways of working, market position and career progression can help you to remain competitive.
- Expected timelines: review your current team, capacity and access to hiring tools. Manual processes, headhunting and limited team availability can typically slow new introductions.
Employer branding
- Careers page: use your careers page as a sales pitch to prospective employees. Highlight your company’s purpose, employee value proposition (EVP), benefits and ways of working. You should also feature employee profiles, and use pictures and video to humanise your company.
- Content marketing: consistently post engaging content (two to four per month on LinkedIn) to highlight your company’s culture, values and career opportunities.
- Employee advocacy: encourage employees to share job postings, company content and positive experiences on social media channels.
Low-cost or free channels
- Head hunting: request connections and send messages to your network on LinkedIn. Be transparent about your intentions and target qualified individuals for optimal success.
- Referrals: make the most of your employees’ connections by incentivising them to refer qualified profiles and leverage their networks to find your next hires. Referral drives with increased incentives during peak hiring times can be particularly effective. You could also consider gamifying the process by using leaderboards.
- Partnerships: meet with universities, apprenticeship providers, career centres and bootcamps for access to recent graduates. Engage with alumni associations for access to their network of qualified talent.
- Pipeline talent: record any potential profiles and companies that you identify so that you can nurture them for future hiring opportunities. A good applicant tracking system (ATS) can help to manage email sequencing, searching and tracking.
- Communities: join online groups, forums and slack communities. Encourage your hiring team to be active and engaged, and to advertise roles when appropriate.
- Events: attend industry conferences, meetups and networking events. Advertise your attendance online, participate in talks, provide opportunities for potential candidates to meet you and be proactive about follow ups.
Paid channels
- Job boards: reach large audiences on LinkedIn and Indeed, or leverage specialist boards to reach certain industries and demographics. When creating a job posting, consider the level and expertise you seek, as well as the ideal candidate’s motivations and preferences. If you have a unique selling proposition (USP), such as a remote-first culture, include this in your advertising.
- Social media ads: target specific demographics and interests on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, X, TikTok and Instagram. Sequencing is crucial to maximise the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
- Talent marketplaces:
- LinkedIn Recruiter and Recruiter Lite can highlight potential candidates who are open to work.
- Hackajob and Haystack connect employers to technical talent who are active in the market. Candidates are often ready to move quickly for the right role, but prepare to invest time on the platform to see return on investment (ROI).
- Agencies are particularly useful when facing challenges such as capacity, urgency or niche hires. Focus on partnerships with industry and skills experts, and delegate your workload to justify spending.
Track, analyse and continuously review
- Track key performance indicators: monitor metrics like time to fill, time in stage and candidate quality. An ATS is useful here.
- Integrate tools: connect your ATS with other tools like LinkedIn and job boards to streamline processes and capture comprehensive data for your analysis.
- Channel effectiveness: compare the performance of different channels (eg. job boards, social media and referrals) to identify which are most effective. Consider the quality of candidates by reviewing which yield interviews and placements.
- Identify areas for improvement: use data to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies or underperforming strategies or tools.
- Make data-driven decisions: implement changes based on your analysis. Continue to test and optimise for effectiveness and efficiency.
