employer brand Archives - Everpool Recruitment

Today’s Property hiring landscape is complicated. While new talent is always entering the market, skill shortages present significant issues to hiring managers and business leaders.

While numerous factors can influence your chances of recruitment success, from working with a recruitment companyto building a strong employer brand, it’s important not to overlook the value of creating the ideal job offer.

The right offer, demonstrating the full value of working with your team to a candidate, can make or break your hiring process.

Here’s how to craft more compelling job offers in the current candidate-driven market.

The Candidate-Driven Property Market

Over the last few years, the Property hiring market has grown increasingly candidate-driven for several reasons.

First, the needs of employers are evolving. The rise of new technologies, regulations, and requirements in the workplace has left business leaders searching for more skilled employees.

As competition continues to grow in the industry, more employers are competing for the same candidates, with many receiving multiple job offers.

Secondly, candidates are becoming more strategic in choosing where to work. With multiple options, including remote roles and development opportunities, candidates now have more freedom to select the role best suited to their priorities and needs.

These market dynamics have led to an environment where 83% of HR professionals struggle to recruit quality candidates. Crafting better job offers is just one of the ways you can boost your chances of attracting the talent you need.

How to Craft Compelling Property Job Offers

Crafting job offers that appeal to your target candidates ensures you can improve your chances of an individual accepting a role at your company. The last thing you want is to go through all the work of interviewing candidates to have your ideal employee tell you they’ve decided to accept a better offer elsewhere.

Here’s how to craft more powerful job offers in a candidate-driven market.

1. Research Your Target Candidates

When companies create new products and design marketing campaigns to promote those solutions, they research their target audience. This ensures they can develop solutions that appeal to the customers they want to reach. The same strategy should apply to your recruitment process.

Learning what matters most to the talented team members you want to recruit ensures you can craft the ultimate “employee value proposition” for candidates. Find out whether your ideal employees are more likely to value flexible work opportunities or unique benefits.

Look into their priorities regarding development, DEI in the workplace, and team dynamics. Surveys, interviews with existing employees, and discussions with your Property recruitment company can help you identify the needs of your candidates.

2. Offer Competitive Compensation

While today’s Property employees value more than just a significant salary, they expect to be paid what they’re worth. This is particularly true in an environment where economic uncertainty and cost of living issues affect us all.

Use salary benchmarking to ensure you’re offering candidates the remuneration that makes sense based on the value they’ll bring to your business. Consider the additional financial benefits you can offer your employees on top of their salary.

For instance, depending on the structure of your business, you might offer access to regular bonuses, commission payouts, or profit-sharing options. Be clear about your limitations when discussing salaries with your candidates, and let them know how regularly you’ll be willing to review and negotiate their financial package.

3. Experiment with Benefits

Even if you can’t offer your candidates a higher salary than other competing Property companies, you can still convince them you’re offering a better deal. Around 41% of employees say they’d switch to another job for better benefits, whether that’s more paid holidays, access to free wellness programs, or even equity options in the business.

Look at your compensation package holistically, and ask yourself how much you can “add” to the mix by offering retirement plans, private health insurance, and other perks.

Unique benefits, such as access to mental health support, flexible work schedules, and paid courses, can also make your business more attractive to top talent. Think carefully about the benefits that will appeal most to your target candidates, and be ready to adapt to the different priorities shown by various generations of potential employees.

4. Prioritise Work-Life Balance

According to a report in People Management magazine, 56% of employees are willing to accept a lower salary in exchange for a better work-life balance. No matter how much your Property candidates love their role, they still want to ensure they have time to focus on their well-being and health.

Offering flexible work opportunities, such as remote work, flexible hours, or a four-day work week, can be an excellent way to show your candidate you’re committed to improving their work-life balance. If flexible options aren’t feasible for your company, look for alternatives.

Consider allowing employees to adjust their schedules when necessary so they can still manage other important responsibilities in their lives.

5. Highlight Career Development and Growth Opportunities

In the Property industry, every employee has a vision for their future. When they join your team, they want evidence that you will help them achieve those goals. This is why offering extensive development and growth opportunities is crucial.

When presenting a job offer to a candidate, discuss the progression paths that might be available to them in the future and answer any questions they have about potential promotions. Tell them about the training and development opportunities you offer, whether it’s access to online courses and certifications or mentorship programmes.

Ask your candidates what they want to achieve in the future with their roles, and work with them on developing a plan for success.

6. Showcase an Incredible Company Culture

Around 88% of job seekers believe a strong culture is crucial to their career success. However, the factors that identify a strong company culture are always changing. Today, candidates are increasingly focused on diverse, inclusive, and equitable cultures where businesses support, respect, and assist people from all backgrounds.

Many Property team members also seek collaborative environments where employee cooperation and relationships are valued and championed. Look at what matters most to your target candidates, and find ways to demonstrate the value of your company culture.

For instance, you might share information about previous employee achievements on your website and social media. You could introduce potential employees to team members and allow them to share their insights into working with your company.

7. Optimise the Candidate Experience

One of the most crucial factors to focus on when looking for ways to improve your recruitment process and acquire more talent is candidate experience. The nature of your hiring process, from how easy it is to apply for a role to how often you communicate with candidates throughout the journey, can influence the success of your offer.

When recruiting new team members, focus on delivering an excellent, intuitive, and personalised experience. Make sure you answer your candidates’ questions quickly and keep them informed throughout the decision-making process.

If you delight candidates throughout the candidate experience, you’ll forge stronger relationships, boosting the chances of people accepting your job offers.

8. Present the Offer the Right Way

Finally, a strategic approach is important when presenting a job offer to a Property candidate. Outline all the information your candidate will need to make the right decision, discussing salary, benefits packages, responsibilities, and opportunities.

Look for ways to personalise the offer to the needs of each candidate you consider based on their specific priorities. For instance, some employees may be enticed by the opportunity for remote work, while others are more interested in the free courses you offer.

Concentrate on communicating the total value proposition of what you’re offering, providing an insight into what each candidate will get from working with your business.

Crafting irresistible job offers is crucial to ensuring you can acquire the best talent for your Property team. Simply offering the right salary isn’t enough. You need to think about everything from the individual priorities of your ideal team members to the benefits you can offer, their path for development and growth, and the candidate experience.

Working with a recruitment company will improve your chances of success. When reviewing job offers, a recruitment team can introduce you to the factors that matter most to candidates and give you ideas and strategies to improve your candidate experience.

Consider seeking professional support that will help you constantly refine and optimise your approach to recruitment.

Recruiting new employees for your Engineering team might seem simple enough, but the process is full of complicated challenges, particularly in the current market.

Talent shortages are everywhere, candidate expectations are evolving, and the impact of a poor hiring decision is growing, costing companies not only money but also their time and reputation.

A successful recruiting company requires a careful, calculated and considered approach based on understanding the challenges you’re likely to face in the quest for the ideal candidates.

In this article, we’ll cover some of the most common hiring mistakes Engineering companies are making this year and what you can do to overcome them.

1. Hiring Too Slow

A gap in your Engineering team can be extremely detrimental, leading to lost opportunities, diminished team morale, and poor productivity. Unfortunately, even though many hiring managers know this, they delay the recruiting process.

In today’s competitive landscape, where the best talent is in high demand, a sluggish hiring process can be detrimental to employers in numerous ways.

Firstly, prolonged hiring timelines can result in missed opportunities to secure skilled candidates, as talented individuals may accept offers from faster-moving competitors.

A slow hiring process can tarnish an employer’s reputation, making it appear indecisive or disorganised to potential candidates, which may deter future applicants.

Delaying hiring decisions can hinder a company’s ability to innovate and adapt to market changes, putting it at a significant disadvantage compared to its competitors.

Working with an experienced Engineering recruitment and implementing a structured process can help you identify the right people for the role while reducing your chances of making the wrong decision.

Before diving into the recruitment process, ensure you have a clear plan. Determine how you will evaluate candidates (focusing on skills to reduce bias). Think about how you’ll manage the screening process and conduct interviews.

2. Neglecting The Impact of Your Employer Branding

In today’s skills-short environment, it’s more important than ever for companies to “sell themselves” to the ideal candidate. The top Engineering talent will likely have plenty of opportunities, and you can’t always rely only on a competitive salary to convince them to choose you.

In addition, focus on presenting yourself as the “ideal employer” with a brand that conveys your focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, supporting employee development, and nurturing an exceptional company culture.

Invest in building your employer brand in various ways. You might start with an active social media profile on LinkedIn, where you share thought leadership content, highlight your employees and demonstrate your accomplishments.

Ask your team members to contribute to your branding by sharing testimonials about their experiences with your company.

3. Relying Solely on Traditional Recruitment Channels

In a skills-short Engineering market, business leaders need to be more creative about how they search for candidates. Simply posting job listings on your website or a job board isn’t enough to attract the level of talent with the skills your company needs.

A logical strategy is working with experienced Engineering recruiters to tap into their network of candidates.

Many employers don’t realise that recruiters are mapping the Engineering market for the best people daily, so you or your internal talent team don’t have to.

4. Overlooking Soft Skills and Cultural Fit

While technical skills and valuable Engineering qualifications are undoubtedly essential to choosing the right candidates, they’re not the only things worth considering. First, it’s more important than ever for organisations to consider the value of transferrable soft skills.

Around 93% of employers say assessing soft skills is critical to choosing the right candidate. Skills like exceptional communication and teamwork will be valuable in any role. Resiliency, agility, and adaptability are becoming increasingly crucial in a dynamic and ever-changing industry.
If you haven’t read our blog on recruiting agile employees, you can read it here. [Add a link to this month’s agile blog.]

Alongside soft skills, evaluating how each hire will fit into or contribute to your company culture is important. Employees with the same values, priorities, and principles as your existing team members will more easily migrate into their new roles. This can improve employee morale, reduce turnover and increase productivity.

Add behavioural and cultural fit assessments into your hiring process, and prioritis choosing candidates that have the right blend of hard and soft skills, and core attributes.

5. Neglecting Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion are key in today’s Engineering landscape. Not only do employees prefer companies that demonstrate a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, but prioritising these factors will also help you build a more effective team.

Diverse teams and inclusive company cultures drive greater innovation and creativity, enhance employee satisfaction, and help your businesses unlock new opportunities. Unfortunately, many Engineering employers struggle to nurture diversity and inclusion, thanks to unconscious bias and poorly structured hiring strategies.

Work with a recruitment company to mitigate these issues, using strategies like blind resume screening and diverse interview panels. Consider how you can appeal to a broader selection of candidates with unique benefits and support programs/programmes that support well-being. Prioritising diversity and inclusion will increase your talent pool and help you build a more creative and resilient workforce.

6. Failing to Prioritise Candidate Experience

The candidate’s experience is one of the most important factors in the hiring process, determining how likely candidates are to accept a job offer. A strong candidate experience helps to shape and augment your Engineering employer brand, particularly in a world where candidates regularly review companies online.

Consider how quickly your team follows up with candidates and keeps them informed throughout the hiring process. Ensuring you write clear and informative job descriptions can improve the candidate experience. Plus, creating comprehensive onboarding and training programs for new hires will help ease them into your company culture and transform them into advocates for your brand.

Overcome Common Hiring Mistakes with the Right Support

Ultimately, there are many hurdles to successfully hiring the ideal Engineering employee. If you want to avoid the mistakes listed above, you need a proactive approach to optimising your recruitment strategy.

All the listed strategies will help expand your talent pool, boost your chances of making the right hiring decisions, and pave the way for success.

The right recruitment can help you enhance your employer brand, diversify your recruitment channels, screen candidates effectively, and foster diversity and inclusion. Plus, they can improve the candidate experience for every professional you interact with.

In today’s candidate-driven Engineering job market, attracting and retaining the right talent is more challenging than ever. Candidates have more options when selecting the ideal role for their specific needs, and their priorities are changing.

This means business leaders and recruiters need to take a new approach to connect with potential employees if they want to overcome the challenges of a major talent shortage.

Recruitment now has a lot in common with effective marketing. Just as companies need to establish an effective “go to market” strategy to engage buyers and demonstrate value to customers, they also need a similar approach to intrigue top talent.

A strong go-to-market (G.T.M.) strategy framework paves the foundation for a powerful product launch, gaining customer trust and differentiating a brand from its competitors. A similar “G.T.M.” approach to recruitment can help companies target the right talent, strengthen their employer brand, and build deeper connections with employees.

Here’s how to embed a go-to-market strategy into your Engineering recruitment process.

What is a Go-to-Market Strategy? The Basics

A go-to-market strategy is a tactical plan companies use to determine how to bring a new product or service to their target audience.

It’s an exercise that outlines the steps a business should take to engage a potential customer, differentiate themselves from the competition and increase sales.

With a strong go-to-market strategy, business leaders determine why they’re launching a product, their target market, and how they will convince consumers to buy what they’re selling.

Similarly, in the Engineering recruitment world, a go-to-market strategy outlines the key information businesses need to capture, engage, and retain the right talent.

Business leaders answer questions such as: “Why are we hiring this professional?” and “What value can we bring to employees?” This gives them the guidance they need to position their roles more effectively in the competitive talent market.

Moreover, a go-to-market strategy can help companies consider any issues candidates might experience with a role, such as a lack of clarity around responsibilities or a complex interview process.

Here’s how companies can approach Engineering recruitment with a “go-to-market” mindset.

Step 1: Align Recruitment Goals to Business Goals

As mentioned above, when organisations establish a go-to-market strategy for a product, one of the first questions they ask is why they’re launching this new solution or offer. Similarly, when you use a go-to-market strategy for Engineering recruitment, you’ll need to define why you’re looking for a specific employee to fill a gap in your team.

The first step is developing a clear understanding of the current business goals. For instance, you might want to expand your Engineering company into new markets in the years ahead and need new talent to help you identify and serve the right customers.

Alternatively, your goal may be to innovate and evolve, using new tools and strategies to improve team productivity and efficiency. Defining your goals will help you understand what key attributes and skills your new Engineering employee will need. It should also ensure you can provide your candidates with clear insight into their roles.

Crucially, aligning business and recruitment goals also means you’ll be able to identify how you will evaluate your candidate’s success after they join your team.

Step 2: Identify your Employee Personas

Once you’ve established your goals for your go-to-market recruitment plan, the next step is deciding what kind of Engineering employees you want to attract.

A key component of creating a go-to-market strategy for a product is defining who the ideal buyer will be.

In the recruitment world, you’ll need to understand the key attributes and characteristics of the candidates you want to attract. Think about the essential soft and Engineering skills your new team member will need to have and what their educational background should look like.

Think about what kind of people are most likely to thrive in your existing Engineering company culture, what their personality will be like, and what values they might have. You could even create a candidate persona, which you can use to inspire and guide your team when creating job descriptions, interview questions, and onboarding strategies.

Step 3: Building Your Employer Brand

When bringing a new product or service into the market, companies must determine what benefits and values they can offer above and beyond their competitors. In today’s competitive Engineering recruitment space, you must also take the same approach to engaging candidates.

Ask yourself and your team what sets your company apart from other organisations with similar roles available to candidates. If your company is relatively small, you might not be able to compete in salary, but you could offer other benefits by providing flexible working opportunities or access to more training and development options.

Look at your “employee personas” values and ask yourself how you can build a brand that appeals to your target candidates. This might include focusing on things like:

Unique opportunities: Do you allow Engineering employees to work remotely, choose their hours, or get involved with training initiatives and mentorship programs?
Corporate Social Responsibility: How can you appeal to your candidate’s ethical values? Do you have a strong focus on diversity, inclusion, and equity? Do you take a sustainable business operations approach or give back to charitable organisations?
Company culture: What are the core components of your company culture? How do you ensure your team members feel supported in your team?

Step 4: Creating Your Outreach Strategy

In a typical go-to-market strategy, companies need to build a “market strategy”, which involves thinking about how they’ll position their product and connect with consumers. You can take a similar approach in an Engineering recruitment-focused G.T.M.

Start by thinking about the messaging you will use and how you will highlight the unique components of your employer brand in your job descriptions and social posts.

For instance, alongside listing job descriptions on your website, work with an Engineering recruitment company to create a job description and leverage their ability to promote your vacancy into the market and within their database and connections.

Step 5: Prepare for the Interview Process

Finally, you’ll need to think about how to connect with candidates once you are in an interview situation. As companies use offers, discounts, demos, and promotions to increase conversions, business leaders use interviews to assess candidates and provide talent with an opportunity to evaluate their company.

Constructing an effective interview process is essential to boosting the power of your Engineering employer brand. Ensure you have a plan to eliminate common issues like bias. This could mean training your interviewers and providing them with scorecards to help them focus on specific attributes. Your recruitment partner can facilitate all of these processes.

Provide interviewers with step-by-step guidance on evaluating each candidate, and consider the questions your would-be employees might ask you in return. At the same time, remember to think beyond the interview to the full onboarding process.

How can you give your candidates a good first impression of your company?

Commit to constant, transparent communication, and look for ways to empower your staff members with the right training and support from day one.

The Go-To-Market Strategy for Engineering Recruitment

A go-to-market strategy is a powerful tool for businesses bringing new products and services to their customers. However, many of the components of these strategies can also be applied to the recruitment world. Taking a go-to-market approach to hiring can help you target the right candidates, differentiate your company from competitors, and engage the best talent.

With the help of an Engineering recruitment company, you can build a full go-to-market strategy designed to fill the gaps in your team, improve your employer brand, and strengthen your connections with existing and future employees.

At Everpool Recruitment, we specialise in assisting engineering firms in acquiring top talent. With a track record of successfully placing thousands of candidates, we understand the unique needs of the engineering industry. If you’re looking to enhance your team with skilled professionals or explore new opportunities, contact us today at 0151 556 2090 or email us at info@everpoolrecruitment.com.

The hiring market in the Fashion industry has been candidate-driven for some time.

Countless companies are now competing for candidates with critical skills to help their organisations thrive in a challenging economy. This means talented professionals have more freedom to select positions that align with their priorities and values.

Positioning yourself as an “Employer of Choice” (E.O.C.) in Fashion is critical to reducing the costs and complexity of the recruitment process, as well as accessing the right talent.

How do you develop a reputation as the “ultimate” business to work for?

Here, we’ll look at some of the most valuable strategies business leaders can use to position themselves as an employer of choice.

Attracting Top Talent: Why It Matters Now

Rampant skill shortages and increasing competition for talent have led to a complex recruitment environment for Fashion companies. Up to 80% of businesses in the U.K. are having trouble persistently filling roles, and the issue extends worldwide.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that there are currently 9.5 million job openings in the U.S. and only 6.5 million unemployed workers.

Simply put, the number of talented professionals in the job market is dwindling, and these candidates are becoming more discerning about which companies they choose to work for.

Employees now expect organisations to offer a combination of diversity, equity, inclusion, a supportive company culture, a commitment to the environment and sustainability, and exceptional growth opportunities.

All the while, they’re still searching for flexibility and compassion from employers.

This trend will only continue as Gen Z enters the workforce, prioritising ethical behaviour, wellbeing, and workplace perks ahead of higher salaries.

Hiring the wrong candidate isn’t an option, with a poor hire costing companies from 30% of a hire’s first-year salary up to £240,000 for senior hires. This means companies must invest more heavily in positioning themselves as the ideal employer for their intended workforce.

Becoming an employer of choice:

Increases productivity and profitability: Well-supported, satisfied, and happy staff members are more productive and profitable.
Companies with a positive people-first company culture achieve four times higher profits than their competitors.
Simplifies recruitment and retention: Passive candidates and top talent are more likely to apply for a role with a company considered an “employer of choice”.
Enhances brand equity: A satisfied workforce is likelier to speak highly of their employer, refer new team members to the company, and deliver excellent results.

Key Strategies to Become a Company People Want to Join

Becoming an employer of choice in the Fashion space requires a multi-faceted approach to addressing the needs and expectations of your candidates. Several strategies in today’s hiring market can boost your chances of attracting and retaining talent.

1. Cultivating a Strong Company Culture

Culture is increasingly crucial to top talent in the Fashion landscape. Employees want to work with a supportive, empathetic, and flexible company. According to an Inc.com survey, winning companies consistently demonstrated a more significant commitment to building a culture that delighted and engaged employees.

Building a strong culture in the current environment involves:

Concentrating on employee engagement: Look for ways to consistently engage employees, delivering feedback, recognition, and rewards for their work. Enable consistent collaboration and communication between teams, and invest in team-building exercises.
Offering flexibility: 93% of candidates say they want a flexible role. While remote and hybrid working might not be an option for every Fashion company, there are other ways to offer flexibility, such as giving employees more ownership of their schedules.
Supporting work balance: Wellbeing and work balance are crucial concerns, particularly for younger Gen Z employees. Encouraging team members to use their paid time off or allowing them to manage their work schedules around their lives is becoming increasingly essential.

Additionally, employees are searching for more ethical employers committed to protecting the environment, supporting different communities, and treating people compassionately.

2. Offer Competitive Benefits and Compensation

While many Fashion candidates are looking beyond salary in the search for the ideal role, the right remuneration is still crucial to attracting candidates. A complex economic environment and cost of living issues are prompting many employees to leave their old roles for better income.

A Gallup study found the importance of a higher salary had risen in priority from no four to no one since 2015.

Ensuring your remuneration packages align with or exceed the industry standard will help you attract more loyal, engaged employees.

However, it’s crucial to look beyond direct remuneration, too. Gen Z and X members say they would quit their jobs tomorrow for one with benefits supporting their wellbeing. Consider which benefits are most likely to appeal to your target candidates.

Many standard drivers for many employees are flexible, remote, and hybrid work. However, access to other benefits, such as mental and physical health support or the ability to spend time volunteering for causes they care about, will be valuable to some Fashion candidates.

3. Invest in Employee Development and Growth

A strong employee development program has always been a priority for the best Fashion candidates. Every employee wants to expand their skill set and become more valuable to their employer. More importantly, they want to see a future with your company.

This is particularly true in recent years, as employees continue to worry about the growing issue of job insecurity. With this in mind, invest in your employees’ development and look at opportunities to help them enhance critical hard skills (digital literacy) and soft skills, such as communication, collaboration, and resiliency.

Explore options such as:

Online learning and courses: Online learning initiatives can give Fashion employees more freedom to choose and manage their development path. They can explore a range of courses related to their role in their own time.
In-person training: Empower employees to attend in-person classes or workshops. Allow them to visit events and conferences where they can expand their network.
Mentorship: Consider creating a mentorship program where your high-level employees can provide consistent guidance to newer staff members.
On-the-job development: Create opportunities for team members to participate in additional projects or lead a project. Delegate tasks to them that will stretch or develop
new skills, or build their competency.

4. Embed Inclusivity and Diversity

Fashion candidates, particularly in the Gen Z and millennial landscape, believe inclusivity and diversity is critical to building an enduring company culture. They’re looking for employers who deliver supportive, equitable environments to team members from all backgrounds.

Reports from analysts like McKinsey also show that companies that are diverse, equitable, and inclusive are better able to respond to challenges, find top talent, and address the needs of an evolving customer base.

Communicate clearly with your employees about your diversity and inclusion efforts and how they relate to your organisation core values. Introduce training initiatives focused on diversity and inclusion. Explore cross-team collaboration exercises that encourage people from different backgrounds to collaborate and share perspectives.

You can also demonstrate your commitment by ensuring you’re taking an unbiased approach to hiring. If this is an area you can develop further, working with a specialist recruitment company like us at Everpool can help.

5. Embrace Transparency and Open Communication

Today’s world is plagued by confusion and uncertainty, making it more critical than ever for Fashion employers to demonstrate transparency with their staff members. Employees want clarity, not just when it comes to identifying their roles and responsibilities, but also regarding understanding their purpose and impact on the company.

Open communication is crucial, which means sharing updates (both positive and negative) with your employees about the direction your business is moving in and what it means for them.

Remember, open communication is also about listening.

Gathering feedback from team members about what you can do to give them a better work-life balance or experience will improve your prospects of retaining staff and enhancing your employer brand.

Becoming an Employer of Choice

The shift to a candidate-driven, skills-short market means Fashion companies need to work harder than ever to attract and retain top talent. Developing a strategy to improve your employer brand and value proposition through flexibility, diversity, inclusion, and empathy is crucial.

Perhaps the easiest way to start this transformative journey is to work with a Fashion recruitment company that can guide your business.

The right recruitment company will help diversify your talent pool, guide you through creating an exceptional company culture, and offer insights into the priorities of your candidates.

At Everpool Recruitment, we have been helping firms acquire talent, and Fashion job seekers find their ideal roles. If you want to find out how we can help, call us at 0151 556 2090 or email us here info@everpoolrecruitment.com

Creating Irresistible Job Offers in a Candidate-Driven Property Market

September 12, 2024