To sell something effectively, you need to know your customers’ wants and needs. The same is true of talent retention and recruitment.
Is it time to rethink your approach?
Between furlough, redundancies and cancelled or rescoped projects, lockdown was an uncertain time for everyone, leading to an inevitable focus on selection when hiring. Thankfully, many UK industries have seen remarkable recoveries resulting in a boom in demand for talented consultants.
But as we know, staff shortages are a problem. In July, the UK reached one million job vacancies – an all-time high. And where consulting firms have traditionally been able to bank on nabbing the talent they need, assuming a 10% salary increase will seal the deal, in some cases that now appears the bare minimum expectation. Talent wants more from opportunities. And they hold all the cards.
After all they’ve been through, job seekers are becoming more discerning. Which means talent processes developed during the pandemic are likely no longer fit for purpose – consulting firms may no longer have the pick of the bunch; they now need to convince potential hires that they are the best place to work.
How do consultancies do that? Sales and marketing techniques.
In a recent interview for WIRED, John Goulding, CEO of Workvivo, put it well - “We’re seeing organisations, who have great working cultures, attract new talent. People who hadn’t previously considered moving jobs are expecting flexibility… It’s the companies which meet those expectations which will be the winners.”
But meeting those expectations is only half the battle. Organisations also need to articulate how they’re meeting them and reach the right talent pools with those messages. Recruitment now depends on effective employer branding.
What do we mean by ‘employer branding’?
Businesses spend time, money, and resources understanding their customers and working out strategies to attract them and maintain their loyalty. Employer branding applies these same marking principles to people management.
Building and maintaining a reputation for being a genuinely great place to work is key to winning this race for talent. To do that, employers need to understand what “a great place to work” looks like to their employees. According to a recent piece of research by McKinsey, when asked why their former employees had quit, most employers cited dissatisfaction around salary, work-life balance, and overall wellbeing. However, though these issues were important to employees, they were not the most important factors. The primary reason given by employees (54% of those surveyed) was that they didn’t feel valued by their employer.
So, businesses need to be clear about how they value their staff and how they weave that into their recruitment processes and employer branding. By effectively communicating the benefits that talent is looking for, businesses will build engaged talent pipelines, leading to a much better conversion rate when making offers.
How can we help?
If your consulting firm’s employer branding could use some sharpening, we’re here to help. Our personalised approach to talent and extensive consultant network means we know what people are looking for from their next opportunity. We can help you demonstrate why your business is somewhere they could imagine a future.
Get in touch with the Alvarium Talent team to see how we can help.
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