Right now 80% of UK businesses are struggling to recruit people to roles. If you’re one of those people it must feel like a lot of your time and thoughts are going to solving this, but you’re still not getting anywhere. And the longer it goes on, the more frustrating it is as you and your team have to cover for those unfilled roles.
Meanwhile, you also don’t know who is likely to leave next. There are three in five people looking for new jobs. Perhaps for higher wages, or different working methods, or they might be leaving to start their own business.
What all of this means is re-thinking how you recruit. It’s no long a case of copying and pasting into your usual job advert template and advertising in the same places. To attract people to your role, you need to do just that – attract different types of people to want to work for you. You need to think differently to solve the puzzle.
Job seekers are looking for diversity and inclusion
When people are looking for new roles, 39% of people will not apply for a role if they don’t believe the organisation is inclusive. When people are searching for roles, 58% of people are looking for diversity and inclusion in potential employers. This goes beyond what you might think. It’s not good enough to copy and paste a bland equality statement on your job adverts, people want to see real, tangible examples that you are an inclusive employer. You need to bring those equality statements to life.
To do that means taking a good look at everything with an objective eye and by really interrogating if you are inclusive. As well as looking at who is in teams, people are searching for terms like flexibility, accessibility, autonomy, purpose, values and more. What people want to see is real examples that an employer is truly inclusive and that they could belong there.
You need to tell people a story
And if you are communicating about vacancies you have, what is the story you are telling about the organisation? People are looking for compelling stories about places where they can make a real difference. Most people want to do something every day that means something. So you need to tell people what you do, why you do it, how you contribute to the world, and why what you do matters.
To tell people these stories to reach different types of people means you will have to think about how you tell the story. Are you using video, images, blogs, in fact are you using all your communication methods to do this? A better way of looking at this is to think that you’re always recruiting, you’re always telling a story that people will want to be part of.
Your story needs to engage different people and include them
When you create your communications to recruit people, focus on how to engage people and include them. Learn about why inclusion matters and that will help you with your communication. As well as helping people to feel they can belong, inclusive teams create more new ideas, feel safer and people feel they can be themselves and share their perspectives. How can you reach people with a message about how you do that?
Each stage of the recruitment process needs to focus on how to attract and engage different types of people. This needs breaking down into the steps and different methods of recruitment so you can attract people to your roles. Some of this will require a critical look at what you’re doing now, and yours and your organisations biases and habits that may be putting people off, or causing them to skip to the next role.
We have worked with many organisations on their recruitment and some quick things we can suggest are:
- State a salary, say the pay, you will cut your applications down by around half if you don’t
- Use video content to tell people about you as an employer
- Consider what flexibility you offer people in how you work
- Instead of trying to find people who ‘fit’ think about who you don’t have
- What makes you stand out as an employer truly committed to inclusion?
And for every stage of your recruitment, think about who you don’t have, which perspective you are missing, and which part of your process might be putting people off.
To help you to solve this puzzle, we have an Inclusive Recruitment package. Let us help you become an Inclusive Recruiter, and you can also become one of our certified employers. Email hello@watchthisspace.uk to find out more.
