1. influence others with your vision
The future of technology lies heavily on the organisation’s ability to improve the quality of lives.
Companies need a highly-motivated, driven and creative workforce to realise their visions. Employers must also be able to effectively communicate the organisation’s visions to create excitement amongst the workforce and talent pool.
As an employer, you need to articulate your vision, “sell” your future and convince candidates to join you in your journey. Rather than expect the employees and candidates to be loyal and deliver long-term value to the business, employers need to properly evaluate their fit within the organisation and the role they get to play in the journey. Managers will also need to live and breathe their organisation vision to be able to influence their employees and candidates to think the same.
2. advertise your company’s technology developments and aspirations
AI, automation, virtual reality and augmented reality have been touted for several years now. Most companies have been exploring the use of big data in their own way.
However, from a candidate’s viewpoint, all these efforts sing the same tune, which sounds similar to “investing in big data to enhance experiences”. Without any concrete evidence of the progress of your research and product developments, it’s difficult to convince and influence a customer, and likewise, your ideal candidate.
People won’t know what they don’t know. When researching for an employer to work for, job seekers will study the company from many different channels, such as news reports, company’s web pages and review sites, and from their own connections. If they are unable to find information about your investments, developments and visions, job seekers don’t have a reason to want to join your company.
Companies that are successful in talent attraction are those that can “wow” job seekers with their tech developments or transformation vision. Leveraging the power of marketing and advertising, companies will be able to differentiate themselves from their competitors, lead the conversation at the frontier, and secure the best talent that the market has to offer.
Samsung and Apple are very powerful examples of this point. Every year, they push their design teams to the limit to create new and unique selling propositions – bigger screens, fancier functions and sleeker designs. Customers are impressed with their innovation in creating something better every time and job seekers would want to be a part of the dream team.
3. integrate candidates into your culture and team
Many employers make the mistake of evaluating their candidates based on a piece of paper. Interview questions are also mostly centered on the job responsibilities based on the candidate’s past experiences, such as their ability to design, code or project manage.
But there’s more to people than what’s on paper. Interviewers must establish the human connection with their candidates. Spend more time talking about the team structure and personalities that the potential employees will be working with. Employers can also share more on the events that the potential employees get to be a part of, such as in-house seminars and after-work activities with the team. If possible, bring your candidate on a walk around the office and introduce them to direct team members on the last stage of the interview. This will ease the integration between the new and tenured employees.
By taking the time to introduce your potential candidates to your organisation during the interview process, you could keep them engaged and excited, and allow them to not focus on just the salary package, but the overall attractiveness of your company.
know the skills your company needs, not the person
Companies should never make business investments and decisions before consulting their human resources on talent management.
If disruption is a goal, then make sure that you already have the right talent to make that a reality. Pausing or delaying deadlines after you’ve already started on the project due to unmet skills gaps would only cost the company more money in the long-run. Since hiring qualified talent is an investment as well, discussions on the type of skills needed for success should start from the beginning.
Human resources teams should also work closely with their business partners to make sure that the job description or advertisement is not a template that has been used and reused. Similar to marketing and advertising efforts, the job description that talent acquisition and recruiters use to speak with potential employees should be customised to highlight the culture and exciting work. These first “touch-points'' are a great opportunity to engage and convince candidates to want to know more about how they can contribute to you.
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