Employees with specialized skill sets have a lot of choices when selecting a company to work for. With competition for these valuable candidates being so high, companies have had to reconsider their recruitment strategies. It is no longer enough to simply offer a generous salary and a comprehensive benefits package. Companies must also convince candidates that the culture of the organization is conducive to their workplace preferences and personal principles.
If you have been struggling to recruit candidates that meet your needs, your company culture might be part of the problem. Ask yourself these questions to determine if your company culture is an asset or an obstacle to the recruitment process.
Do You Promote From Within?
No one is eager to take a job that offers no opportunity for advancement. And if your organization routinely turns to outside hires to fill upper-level positions, it can create a sense of malaise within your organization that projects outwards to your recruits.
What is Your Reputation Within Your Industry?
If you are seeking top talent, you are probably not the only company contacting highly-skilled recruits. If your company has a bad reputation within your industry, regardless of whether it’s valid, you should expect that recruits have heard about it.
Do You Get Complaints about Your Company Culture?
How do your current employees feel about the company culture? Do you get the same complaints over and over? Has anyone ever cited the culture as a reason for leaving their job? There can be a wide gap between perception and reality when it comes to company culture, so it’s always worth it to take a hard and honest look at the feedback you’ve received in the past.
Does Your Organization Have Open Channels of Communication?
Recent graduates from top engineering programs are not interested in top-down, need-to-know workplaces. They want to feel integrated into the company and have their input respected. If your company culture lacks open channels of communication, it might dissuade candidates from accepting a position.
Do You Offer Flexible Workplace Options?
Even in the field of engineering, there is plenty of room for flexible workplace options. Companies in a wide variety of industries have begun allowing employees to work remotely, take half days, access maternity and paternity leave, and utilize virtual offices. Employees are looking for alternatives to the traditional Monday through Friday, nine-five schedule, and if you don’t offer them, you might have trouble filling your vacancies.
Defining your company culture can be a challenge, and changing it is even harder. But once you realize how big an effect it can have on your staffing initiatives, it’s clearly a subject worth investigating. To learn more about effective recruitment strategies, and to get assistance attracting top talent, partner with the experts at Selectek.
