by Jessica Stielau   

Getting candidates excited to work with you takes telling a great story. If you’re not sure what part of your story resonates with candidates talk to your current employees.With unemployment rates hitting a 50-year low, it’s pretty consistent across the board – hiring is HARD right now. Not only do you have to deal with full employment, but your company has to find a way to rise above the noise and beat out your competitors.

Let’s face it, job boards are CROWDED, companies are facing off in bidding wars, and you’re probably among the myriad job posters noticing inbound candidate flow dropping off the face of the planet. Heck, your favorite hack/tech night is probably packed with more people than usual mentioning their hiring challenges and asking around for anyone who could be a fit. There’s no more apparent time than now to grasp the difficulty of finding talent as we hit the peak of this candidate-driven market.

Don’t worry, there’s still a way to #WinYourTalentSearch.

We have four ways for you to break through the noise and position your company in a way that can draw talent, regardless of their pre-arrangements or existing engagements:

via GIPHY

1: Share your mission.
What is your company doing that will make the world a better place? Every company has or is figuring out a mission statement. Talk amongst your team and identify or further emphasize what yours is. Then evangelize that message out to everyone publicly.

Inviting more people to learn about what you do and why you’re doing it helps channel the most cost-effective form of marketing: word of mouth.2: Storytelling.
Getting candidates excited to work with you takes telling a great story. If you’re not sure what part of your story resonates with candidates, then talk to your current employees. Why did your current colleagues join your company? Find out what affected their decisions and emphasize these reasons to current (and future) candidates in every conversation, email, job posting, coffee meeting, interview, etc.

3: Have a PR and marketing plan . . . for prospective employees.
You likely have a marketing plan for people who want to buy your product or partner with your company, so why not one for prospective employees? There’s never been a better time to connect with tech media (we all know someone who knows someone at “insert well-known blog here”) or create your own! This could be something as complex and planned as a feature on TechCrunch Cribs, as consistent as managing an engineering blog, or as simple as asking your employees to update their social media feeds with “come work with me!”

4: Get out there.
Now’s as good a time as any to plan your events. Submitting talks at conferences is a strong starting point, and helping sponsor a conference is awesome if you can afford it, but don’t forget about reaching out to your alumni networks, or hosting a product talk at your office. Inviting more people to learn about what you do and why you’re doing it helps channel the most cost-effective form of marketing: word of mouth.

Final thoughts

Hiring is tough in this environment. Candidates are often pitting companies against each other in all-out bidding wars. There’s no doubt the market will eventually swing back in the opposite direction, but we’re not there yet. Until then, companies have no choice but to position themselves as effectively as possible. Sometimes this means aggressively directing resources in order to acquire the right talent that will keep your company on-track and en route to that BHAG.

In this market, what you need is top-of-funnel flow into your talent pipeline. If you’re looking for bottom-of-the-funnel strategies for selling your company to a top candidate once you have them, then check out our blog post on that topic.

If you need help implementing a tried and true outbound engagement strategy for top-of-funnel flow, feel free to contact us for more information.