Imagine. Your most VALUABLE employee cloned!

Ever thought how might it feel having another great employee in the business and the positive impact it will have on you, your people and your business?

Right this minute many businesses are struggling even to obtain CVs let alone CVs of quality. If this your experience, what would the impact be if you recruited the clone of your best employee? I want to offer some simple advice to help you attract and recruit the right person into your business.

You need to set aside quality time to recruit quality people.

A lot of recruitment is time critical, get it wrong and it's cost critical. So taking the important first step to review your recruitment process at a time when attracting the best candidates is both critical and time well spent.

I would suggest start at the beginning by reviewing what you are doing and how you will present the role. One of the more straight forward questions I often ask when working with my retained clients is 'Shall we first review?" Often the response initially is "Our process has always worked in the past and doesn't really need reviewing." All to often I see companies simply use their internal job description. Listing responsibilities, duties and qualifications only to find, unsurprisingly this is just not working for them. So here's some advice to attract more like-minded, valuable employees.

Is your advertisement and job description working hard enough?

When working on a project the first important question I ask is: 'Does the advertisement and job description need rewriting?' Getting this right is so important in todays recruitment market. If it is too rigid and dry this can narrow the potential candidates you will attract. The sole job of the advertisement and job description is to get a reaction, response and get the candidates to ask questions. I always look at the role and get my clients to ask themselves if they would consider responding to the role and be attracted to the company if their skills matched and they were a prospective candidate?

It's also important to outline comprehensively what you offer as a business. Quite often businesses write an advertisement and job description in 'internal speak', presuming that if the candidate has done this job and has experience in this role they will get it - not so! Internal speak is reflective of your culture, something prospective candidates may not be familiar with or have a lot of experience of. It can also mean you lose impact, something you can't afford to do in a marketplace that's competing for the best talent out there.

Your current employees are your ambassadors

One thing worth considering is an employee testimonial. This is a great way to attract like minded people. Remember appealing to your market is key. What makes your employees want to stay at your company? What qualities, values, culture and environment makes your company so great to work for?

Make sure you highlight the benefits of working at your company and I'm not talking salary benefits alone here. Make sure they are enticing and interesting enough for people to sit up and take notice.

So yes, you might need to start again.

I'll leave you with my 3 Quick Top Tips.

1. Set aside time to review the process

2. Review thoroughly your advertisement and your job description

3. Finally, once you're finished ask yourself; 'Have I included all the great things about this role, the reasons why people love working here and if I saw this advertisement and read about this role would I apply?

Good luck and please let me know how you get on.

Chris Williams