Hiring Top Talent in a Buyer’s Market

We all want the best talent for our teams, but finding and retaining talent has become harder, especially this year. With record low unemployment, we are facing a buyer’s market in which the most talented people can pick the jobs they want.

In The Business Journals’ 16thth annual Small to Midsize Business Insights report, business owners said finding and keeping good employees is at the top of their list of concerns for 2018. However, low unemployment isn’t the only factor affecting business owners’ ability to source and hire the best people.

Candidates are looking for more than salary

The Employers Association’s Stephanie Oberg, PHR, SHRM-CP, Compensation and Research Manager says that while organizations are mindful of offering competitive salaries when pursuing employees, those same workers are seeking more than just salary from their jobs. Among those considerations are:

Work/life balance, with wellness programs and flexible-work arrangements being available to them.
Performance management and career development
A signing bonus
A retention bonus tied to performance

The result is that employers need to tend to multiple considerations when pursuing and retaining their most-valued employees.

Another complicating factor is that today’s business owners have multiple generations in the workforce, and each of those generations values different things. That means that when hiring in today’s market, an employer needs to research competitive salaries but then must also layer in options based on the specific needs of each individual candidate.

All positions are not equal

Through a study fielded to The Business Journals’ audience, plus data from The Employers Association, finding quality candidates varies by role. The most challenging roles to fill are:

Sales account executives
Executive assistants
Mid-level managers
Professional staff
Skilled labor force

Considering job tenure is at an all-time low, and that there are challenges to finding qualified candidates throughout various levels of a company’s ranks, employers need to make sure they’re doing all they can to make the right hire. So, don’t jump to fill a position and risk hiring the wrong person.

Bad hires take a toll

We can all relate to the disruption and cost of a bad hire. Bad hires lead to 80 percent of employee turnover and cost two to three times the salary level of the position for which they were hired. Non-financial costs include loss of time, decreased morale, loss of productivity, and a distrust in the hiring manager and company in general.

This is where today’s low unemployment rate factors in again. With a relatively small supply of readily available candidates for most jobs, employers need to make sure they’re taking all the proper and necessary steps to identify the people who can find the most success in those jobs they’re working to fill.

How to hire the right person for the right job

Tim Sorensen, Partner, SelectionLink, with which The Business Journals has worked for 20 years, says talent is the single most important factor to consider when hiring. He defines talent as a person’s innate characteristics and natural dispositions that give them the potential to be outstanding in their role. Sorensen says, “talent can’t be taught, it can’t be faked, and it goes beyond what’s on someone’s résumé to finding out who that person really is.”

Assessing talent for a specific role has been at the core of our hiring practices at The Business Journals. We believe in it so much that we’ve created a hiring tool called SelecTalent to solve the pain point of so many businesses, especially small to mid-size businesses, that may not have human resources departments. It harnesses more than 80 years of combined industry experience—in talent assessment by the experts at SelectionLink.

Finding the right candidate for the right role and offering that person a full rewards package unique to that individual’s needs will help you be successful in your hiring efforts in 2018.