Use a Systematic and Strategic Approach in Today's Competitive Market
To find people in today’s competitive market, it helps to “win the day” by employing a systematic and strategic approach. It must be viewed as a competition, so it helps to have that systematic and strategic mindset.
What I mean by systematic is, company hiring managers should develop and use a regimented and expedited process. This approach will help remove gaps in the recruiting-steps process, making it more efficient. Otherwise you may lose people who you want and need, but who you lose because of the time it takes to hire them.
So, timing is a very important element and, then strategically speaking, you want to make sure that you’re sourcing candidates from a broad-sourcing spectrum. You will quickly know that you have really honed the design phase of the job specifications when you can make a decision quickly.
Again, knowing what you are looking for is really critical because then you can quickly spot “who” during the screening process. Time is the element.
Retain Talented Employees
First of all, retaining talent is more and more important in today’s economy because of the high demand for highly-qualified personnel. Effective compensation and quality benefits programs play a significant role in attracting and retaining qualified individuals for these highly-skilled jobs. It’s quite the package when you consider all the components---including compensation, benefits and the work environment.
But today, it’s also important that people experience a sense of feeling engaged, challenged, appreciated and rewarded in ways beyond these components. It’s well worth the time for businesses to talk about and really think through how they intend to show appreciation. In addition, it’s important that businesses decide how to align people’s strengths with challenges, so that they work on what they do best---which will increase the likelihood of the highest results.
Professional Development Helps Retain Valuable Employees
Returning to the retention issue, it is important that people are challenged. Employees want to grow and develop. They also want to take what they’ve learned, apply it and then be challenged to grow some more. This is the engagement that I’m talking about, which allows you to retain the best and, more importantly, allows you to really benefit from the investments you make. We are talking about the investments in training that, when combined with challenges, will reward you and your business as the person improves and reaches peak-career performance.
I believe that people learn better in shorter intervals and with topic-specific sessions----these learning sessions will also apply to what they’re doing at the time. I find that Web-based training, that offers choices for specific topics, is an important learning tool today.
In summary, it is very important to have a training support system that:
- is both broad-based and developmental;
- helps people reach their maximum potential; and
- further develops those skills while providing on-demand support.