Despite this being a rather odd time in history, talent attraction didn’t change.
It was always difficult to find top talent.
In fact, the later portion of that – attraction – is something most companies have hardly considered. When pressed against a wall to find talent fast, one option often utilized was and is outsourcing to get an inside lead on potential candidates not easily targeted through generic job advertisements.
The truth is, there are many companies out there that have the “post and pray” method down on lock: Post the job ad and pray someone great comes through.
The difference with successful recruitment agencies, headhunters and search firms is the relationship building and marketing to the potential job seeker. They keep a database of candidates according to the roles they are seeking and jobs they have applied for, they communicate with them often, in short, they treat the candidates like humans. This is their edge and why they are heavily utilized because recruitment firms are experts are marketing in a light that is extremely human-centric. Even if they can’t control their client’s practices and culture, they can control their message that essentially entices new people to apply.
The reality is: people have always been interested in and still apply to a company that puts people first. However, it goes further in the present landscape.
Right now there is a microscope on companies and social media has allowed for some interesting perspectives on employer branding. Who a company is, how they treat their employees, pay them, take care of them, is now in the limelight. This limelight is having a massive push back in terms of attraction and retention in the workforce.
So here we sit, in the midst of a pandemic and companies are having to shift plans rapidly. It was hard to secure staff for these roles prior to our new found normal, now it is causing companies to have their treatment of their workforce looked at a much more closely.
LINK: Home staff walk off the job in Markham
So what needs to change? Likely, it comes down to the rigid nature of practices that are simply draconian in nature.
Perhaps, it’s work schedules that are linked to early death rates. The intense nature of the job – or the emotional and mental stress that comprise of a job well done. The reality is, most of these practices and policies were not very human-centric.
Link – Night work early death
Link – Work stress raises risk of premature death
An example:
Imagine a facility that has a specific job role that has been recommended, repeatedly, to have a robot complete the task due to the ergonomics and speed the machine operates on.
The company does this – they purchase the robot – with the minor issue that when it brakes down there wasn’t anyone close by with the knowledge to repair it.
Shortly after receiving said multimillion-dollar robot, it breaks. So it sits in a corner, not being used because it is broken, while humans are doing work that literally causes permanent back pain due to the angle of the table and also at a pace so rapid it would make your head spin. The amount spent on that broken robot, the loss incurred, is nothing compared to the utterly dehumanizing nature of that job role. Not to mention the cost of many individual’s mental health who were told they couldn’t keep up, couldn’t perform a simple task, and were let go due to it.
Any would-be money lost from the lack of product had production been reduced to make it a more human job role, will never amount to the cost of that robot, high turnover and/or work-related injuries.
So when a company like this has a job role open, be it during a pandemic or not – the true nature as a company is what brings them talent, and retains it.
Currently, when looking for people to apply to open job roles, know their lives could be in danger of exposing themselves to our new invisible pest – COVID-19, and this makes that application much more difficult to hand in. However, police and military have attracted top talent by having a deep-rooted understanding of what their version of top talent is looking for. With that understanding, they are able to market effectively to them and make a call to action that inspires new applicants. This is exactly why they have a line-up of talent – despite that talent understanding the danger involved with the job role.
Talent attraction at the core will always have more to do about your belief as an employer, company or group than it will about “just finding a new employee”. It comes from within, from employer branding and how your workforce adopts into that.
“To win in the marketplace you must first win in the workplace.”
– Doug Conant, CEO of Campbell’s Soup
Do you think talent attraction has changed drastically since the age of coronavirus?