Attracting and hiring top talent can be the difference-maker between company success or losing out on the best candidates to your competitors. Get noticed and attract talented professionals to your company with these tips.

1. Provide Value to Candidates

First, determine what makes your organization an ideal place to work for the candidates you’re trying to hire. As we detailed in a recent whitepaper, today’s candidates want:

• Flexible work environment (remote or hybrid) and flexible schedule
• Reliable and effective tools for digital collaboration
• Learning and development opportunities
• Inclusive work environments with positive workplace culture
• Work-life balance support, with benefits including:
• Health insurance
• Retirement accounts and employer matching
• Childcare and parental leave
• Tuition reimbursement
• Competitive pay that meets industry standards

As an employer, it may help to research what competitors are offering so you can match or exceed those benefits. Also, look at what your target candidates want from a workplace environment and company culture, so you can cultivate those values and develop a strong company mission.

Read reviews of your business on sites like Glassdoor to understand how current and past employees view your company. Survey employees internally to understand what you can improve upon and what may be holding you back from being a top place to work.

2. Improve Your Reputation

Analyze how the public perceives your company. You may want to regularly monitor:

• Mentions of your company in the news, using a service like Google Alerts to stay on top of trending publications
• Mentions of your top executives in the news
• Reviews of your business on local review sites like Yelp and Better Business Bureau
• Mentions of your company on social media sites like Twitter
• What customers are saying on your brand social media pages, like Facebook

Work with your public relations department or professional, if you have one, to improve sentiment for your business. You may want to make efforts to contribute positively to the community, either by sponsoring work teams at volunteer events, or by making charitable contributions on behalf of the company.

If there are negative articles about your business or your leadership online, you can improve your business reputation with more positive press. Some ways to use content marketing for reputation management include:

• Offer to be a guest writer for reputable, established blogs and websites. Ask for a link back to your company website.
• Publish a press release announcing positive news or a development about your company.
• If there is false information online about your company or employees, contact the webmaster where the information is published. Explain the issue and ask for the inaccurate publication or mention to be removed.

On review sites and social media, you can build better online relationships (and potentially get negative reviews removed) by acknowledging people’s posts and responding professionally. Ask a reviewer or poster to have a private conversation away from the public page so you can address their concerns. Sometimes, this type of customer service motivates reviewers or posters to remove their initial negative post about your business.

3. Implement Outreach Strategies

Once you’ve developed your organization as an attractive place to work and you’ve improved your reputation online and in your community, you can conduct outreach to find top candidates. You might use strategies like the following.

Work with a Recruiter

A recruiter who specializes in the industry you’re hiring for may already have established relationships with top talent. You can tap into their pipeline and task the recruiter with bringing relevant candidates to you. The recruiter should position your company in a positive light, so that candidates will want to apply and engage with your business.

Use Social Media

In addition to having a presence on popular social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, create a professional business profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world’s largest social networking site for professionals, with more than 800 million members. Create a company page that includes job postings. Train your staff on how to create their own LinkedIn profiles. When you have openings, they can share those with their personal networks, as well.

Engage Your Employees

Your current employees can be great referrals for your business. They know your company, your values and your benefits. They can communicate those to people in their networks. Promote open positions to your staff internally via email and/or on an employee communications board. You may consider offering a referral bonus for successful hires to motivate your employees to help with candidate outreach.

Need Help Attracting Talent?

If your business is looking for talent to join your organization, AccruePartners talent acquisition firm can help. We specialize in talent for accounting, finance, digital, information technology, creative, marketing, human resources and corporate support. Contact us for a free consultation.