Hiring Top Talent

Compelling Marketing Statements Can Lead to Employee Retention

Hiring and retaining dedicated and skilled employees, particularly in the retail industry, can be difficult. Finding someone who will work hard, fit in with company culture, and stick around for the long run is no easy task.

In the age of LinkedIn and internet job posting, employers can quickly become overrun with resumes within hours of posting a new position. Weeding through those applicants to find strong candidates becomes a job itself, and in the end, there may only be a handful of potential matches.

Often, employers look at their job postings simply as opportunities for interested candidates. 2019 ALA Conference speaker Barry Deutsch, who is a master executive search recruiter and award-winning author and speaker on recruiting, hiring and job search, suggests a different approach. "Posting traditional job descriptions on generic job boards like Monster, Careerbuilder, LinkedIn, Zip Recruiter and Indeed tend to bring the bottom third of the candidate pool to your doorstep," says Deutsch. "A better approach is writing a compelling marketing statement."

As Deutsch explains, traditional job descriptions are more of an administrative tool. A job posting that masquerades as an advertisement for the company and simply lists the day-to-day tasks of the role and the experience requirements will, as Deustch says, not attract top-level candidates.

"Great candidates don’t care what you want," says Deutsch. "They want to know whether the job will matter to them and whether they matter to your company, their peers and teammates, and your customers." The way to achieve this? Write a job description that captures attention and truly sells the position and company. Deutsch explains that this well start to attract top candidates who apply not because they have to, but because they are intrigued and want to learn more.

In his conference seminar, titled "You Are Not the Person I Hired – Survival Guide to Hiring Top Talent," Deutsch will take a deeper dive into writing compelling marketing statements to attract top talent, which in turn, leads to employee retention. Deutsch will explore the tools that let hiring teams define success up front and take control of the process, which allows them to find the candidates who actually deliver success.

Hear from Deutsch and other top speakers on a variety of topics designed to help improve business success during the 2019 ALA Annual Conference in Phoenix, Ariz., Sept. 15 - 17, at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge. Registration is open now at ALAConference.com. Learn more about Deutsch and read his series of hiring tips before attending his seminar online at linkedin.com/in/impacthiringsolutions/detail/recent-activity/posts/.