Here's 5 key points that I believe are critical to attracting the best candidates:

1) Have a talent pipeline – you should always be developing your pipeline of potential employees. The key here is to continually attract people to connect with your business through social media and other forms. Think ex-employees, referrals (from when you weren’t looking), people you meet during networking and unsuccessful previous applicants. We work with clients to help them create a talent pipeline, we believe that recruitment should be an ongoing process that gets easier, not harder.

2) Have a great employment brand and culture – this is critical to attracting the right candidates. Most companies or business owners would profess to have a great company culture and probably for the most this is true. There are some great teams out there who do some fantastic work and have fun along the way. The issue we have recently come across is the fact that this is all held behind closed doors and the public perception of that organisation from a potential employment point of view is quite different.

3) Have a great role/offering. You need to really put yourself in the candidate’s shoes and think what they would want. Good candidates don’t make the jump for no reason, the role has to be a great one, opportunity for progression and development, flexibility maybe.

4) Utilise multiple mediums to target your key market. This is something we believe at one eighty we do quite well. We are constantly on the lookout for new ways to advertise or attract the best candidates. A few years ago it was LinkedIn, we still get a great response from specific industry associations, maybe a billboard across the road from your competitor? The key here is to not rely on one method – one Trademe advert in isolation will not work!

5) Control your message. Be wary of using too many recruitment agencies. The message you send to the market is of massive importance, if you have 5-10 agents out there talking about your business, but not delivering the correct message, the results could be hugely detrimental to your whole organisation. We suggest using one external recruitment provider.

We hope these tips have been helpful in your ongoing recruitment requirements. Just remember at one eighty we do this all day everyday – and we are pretty good at it too!

Mike