3 Key Strategies to Attract Top Talent in Rural Mountain Towns
Bad hires are costly for organizations of all shapes and sizes. The time it takes to create and post job openings, review candidate resumes and conduct interviews plus the expense of advertising your job posts and performing background checks add up to overall lost productivity. The ‘Great Resignation’ triggered by the pandemic has people flocking to new opportunities in droves, putting extra pressure on an already challenging hiring process. Small businesses and startups, especially those commonly headquartered in small mountain towns, cannot afford inefficiency in their recruiting and staffing, and that’s where Mountain Careers comes into play through its specialized offering custom-built to help mountain town employers recruit the highest quality candidates.
3 Major strategies that we advise local employers:
Develop competitive and meaningful job postings
Job postings are the first impression your company makes on potential applicants. What does the company description say about your culture, your work environment, your benefits, and your leadership? What special programs or stipends are available to team members? Are there opportunities for growth within the organization? These are just some of the important questions to think about when putting together your job postings. Check out the Mountain Careers job board for examples of sharp, descriptive postings that we construct with our partnering employers. Once diving into the job description, use creative, engaging language in the overview sections that call attention to why someone should want to work for your company. Do you have a “tech-savvy,” “service-oriented,” and “innovative” culture? You can even specifically call out the top 5 reasons why someone should apply by listing these out in the posting. Address how the new hire will spend their time, citing examples of projects and responsibilities that they will be focused on once hired. Get people excited!
Create and grow your employment brand
Creating awareness about your company and workplace is the ultimate goal of recruiting to attract the best workforce for your company. Building this sort of reputation and credibility may take years to accomplish, but taking a few key steps helps get that process started. Robust employer branding through updated and illustrative websites, social media pages, and brand communications can strengthen your business’s image to the millions of job seekers browsing the Internet for new opportunities on a daily basis. 72% of candidates spend more than 1 hour researching a job before applying. 62% of job seekers visit social media channels to evaluate an employer’s brand. 65% of candidates turn to your company’s website for information while preparing for an interview (Sources: LinkedIn, Glassdoor). Make sure these digital storefronts are polished and inviting. Oftentimes, the best resource for content that adequately conveys the culture at a company is the staff itself. Turn employees into the company’s biggest cheerleaders. Ask them for input through surveys and polls, highlight the benefits that are available to them through internal newsletters, and offer referral bonuses for introductions to prospective new hires.
Create an effective hiring process
A successful hire happens when you bring someone into your organization who adds value, believes in the company’s mission, and plans to grow with your company. To create a hiring process that attracts and hires this caliber of candidates, you first need to bring your team together to outline the job description and the interview process. Remember, the job posting is the first impression candidates have of your company. Make sure all the necessary voices are heard internally so that the job posting is collaborative and comprehensive. What essential skills are needed to complete this job? What knowledge and skills are critical to have, and what can be learned on the job? Consider including information in the posting about timeline, interview procedures, and next steps once interviews are held. Use all of these details to outline the interview questions beforehand. You will lose candidates by being disorganized with your process or even by not moving fast enough.
Everyone wants an “easy button” when it comes to hiring people. But people are complicated and the market is changing rapidly. Having a sustainable and scalable hiring process helps produce high-caliber new team members who become long-lasting assets. Successful hiring leads to successful retention. Mountain Careers offers the only recruiting and staffing tools specialized for mountain town employers. Ready to take your hiring process to the next level? Let’s talk about how to introduce your brand to the over 10,000 talented job prospects subscribed to Mountain Careers’ Job Board!