Recently I presented to 40 business leaders for Victorian Leaders on my thoughts around how small medium sized businesses can attract the right people in a talent short market. The focus was on the start of the job search process, and how as a business you can stand out, or be in the mix, as they just start thinking about looking for a new role. Interestingly I spoke after Peter Leahy, who had looked at the importance of different vehicles in delivering value to a business. Suffice to say people is key to the ability of a business to be able to create value.

Before going into what it is that job seekers are looking for in the current market, I asked the business owners and leaders to bear two things in mind:

1. The labour market is like any other in that it is impacted by external factors, and it fluctuates and corrects. Currently it has moved 180 degrees to be very candidate led, after COVID where it was employer led. There is an argument that the market is now starting to correct and move more toward equilibrium.

2. What is right for one business, is not necessarily right for another, and it is essential that you understand your business, what you stand for, what your story is and what is important to you.

With that in mind, and carrying out straw polls through out the talk, we discussed what is important to candidates, where they find information and how many avenues businesses can use to find the right person.

The key points that we covered were:

What job seekers are looking for, and backed up by results from a poll we did, covering:

o  Purpose

o  Money

o  Job security

o  Flexibility

o  Location

o  Work from home vs office based vs hybrid

Other points that came up were progression, rewarding work, people, company ambition, learning, recognition and reward, diversity and inclusiveness, ability to be able to play to their strengths, mental health support, office culture, working relationships.

• Where potential employees look for the information they want, includes places such as:

o  Your website

o  Your EVP

o  Glassdoor

o  Social media including LinkedIn and Facebook

o  Networking

o  Mystery shopping

o  Google

o  Networking events and groups including University groups

o  Interview processes

o  Job descriptions.

There has even been instances recently where prospective employees have sent an application form to companies, for the company to complete and then apply to the candidate!

• What is important for a company is how easy the information is for a potential employee to find. How easy is it for them to discover and understand your purpose? Is your EVP easy to find? Do you have clips of people from your organisation talking about what they like, and maybe even what frustrates them? In an age of transparency, how transparent are you to potential employees?

With that in mind, it is worth talking to your existing employees about what they like about working for your business, and what frustrates them. That will give you a great starting point.

The market is changing, but what was covered is applicable in any market. If you understand your business and who you are, know what is important to you and understand what people are looking for, and make information for your business easy to find, then you’ll be a step ahead in the race for talent.

Last week, I was lucky enough to be able to present to Victorian Leaders, covering my thoughts on how businesses can deal with a talent short market. In a short period of time the market has turned from one that was very client led, where the candidate supply was very high, to a market where demand is high, but the supply of candidates is as low as it has been in over 10 years.

With that in mind, the workshop that was presented to the owners of primarily small and mid-sized businesses, looked at what they could do in terms of process and interviewing to ensure they are in position to attract the right talent for their business.

From the workshop, here are the top 10 takeaways:

1. The market is talent short at the moment, and that is across all sectors. If not now, then soon, it will be one of the biggest challenges to economic growth continuing, and businesses being able to grow.

2. With the in mind, it is important to look at your recruitment process, evaluate whether it is a purely reactive process, or one that is proactive and allows you t stay ahead of the market.

3. Look at your process and ask:

• When does my process start?
• How long does my process take?
• How do we source people?
• Do we know what we are hiring for?
• Do we have what we need inside the business already?
• Do we know what potential employees want?
• Do we know our story? What is the opportunity?
• Is the recruitment experience positive for all applicants?
• Do we have partners that we trust to assist us with the process if we need it?

4. Look at how you can put time aside to speak to potential people when you are not recruiting.

• How can you talent map or talent pool the right people, and ensure you have the time to talk to the appropriate people about your story?
• Look at how you can use a variety of means to ensure your story is being told, from online and social media to internal recruitment teams, direct recruitment, staff referrals, partnerships with educators or other bodies and relationships with recruitment partners.

5. What will you do if you can’t find the right person?             

• Where can you be flexible? What is nice to have and what do you need?
• What can you train and what can’t be trained?

6. Remember that the right person will be a mix of the right attitude, the right fit and ‘some’ of the skills you want. You want there to be a skills gap, so there is room for your new employee to grow, but you don’t want to compromise on attitude or fit.

7. When you’ve got the right people you need to ensure your conversations are an engaging two way process. You need to be able to tell your story and give the candidate the chance to tell theirs. Don’t think of the conversation as ‘question time’, but rather ‘story time!’

8. What does your story need to be? It needs to believable, evocative, useful, emotive and contagious, and demonstrable. This is your story, the story of where you work and the opportunities it can provide so you need to be passionate about it. Think about the opportunity, not the job!

9. Now let them tell their story, that you can prompt with questions. Consider how it relates to your story, and whether you connect with the story. Does it work with the skills, fit, and attitude that you require? Does it allow for the diversity and inclusiveness of thought that every team needs? Do you know what you need in your team? Is it a story with examples? Do you know what you want in an answer?

10. Finally let them ask you questions. The questions someone asks will tell them a lot about them and what is important to them. Do they match what is important to you? This is a great chance to clarify your story and to personalise it even more.

Finally, always ensure that the process is a positive one for all involved it, the candidate who gets the role, as well as those who do not get the role. Every person in the process is someone who can help tell your story to who they know.

At Project Resource Partners, we want to be able to help our partners tell their story to an audience of active and passive candidates, to increase your ability to find the right people for your business. If you need help spreading your story to a wider range of business transformation professionals, then contact me:

Andrew Bath
Director 

Level 7, 360 Collins Street

Melbourne VIC 3000

M +61 419 607 662

E abath@projectresourcepartners.com.au