How to Attract Good Employees

First in a Series on the "Seven Stages of Engagement"

There are seven stages of engagement in the employment recruiting and hiring process. Today's recruiting environment, however, reveals that each of these stages is currently broken. Companies need to re-evaluate their hiring processes and apply creative tips for success at each critical stage. This article addresses ways to heal the first stage, which is ATTRACTION.

How Attraction Is Broken

Though hiring well is a crucial component to business success, many companies approach the process without giving it enough thought.

The typical recruiting scenario looks something like this: a staffing need arises, and the hiring manager runs to HR with his hair on fire. With HR's hair now also on fire, a dusty, old job description is unearthed and immediately posted on a couple of popular job boards. Within a few days, applicants are responding, but they are less than stellar.

With so little thought given on the front-end of this process — what it takes to attract the right applicants for a particular position — it's no wonder the applicant bucket is often a time-draining disappointment. Unfortunately, for both the company and the candidate, the "hair on fire" approach to recruiting often results in a mismatch.

Design What You Want or Deal With What You Get

Companies need to spend a considerable amount of time contemplating and answering several key questions:

1) What does the ideal candidate for this position look like?

2) What are the most attractive aspects of this position?

3) What are the most attractive aspects of our organization?

If an employer wants an A-player, he or she needs to think about what makes him or her an employer of choice as well as what makes the position an opportunity of choice for an A-player. The employer must then leverage the job description to brand the company and the position as such.

From Sifter to Suitor

When an employer is clear up front on the kind of talent he or she is looking for and is effectively communicating what the company and position has to offer, then the employer is a suitor. Suitors court the top talent they desire rather than sifting through applicants that may or may not fit the bill. Being a suitor is the key to attraction in recruiting as well as the key to finding the best applicants for a successful, long-term employment relationship.

Stay tuned for the second installment in this series, which explores the second stage of engagement: SELECTION.


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Kim Shepherd is the CEO of Decision Toolbox (http://www.dtoolbox.com), a national recruitment process outsourcing firm. She is the author of the newly released book, The Bite Me School of Management: Taking a Bite of Conventional Business Thinking. The book takes a large bite of out typical corporate culture. The lessons, funny and concise bite-sized servings, can be applied to all industries.