At SRS, we help you find and retain the top talent in the legal and IT industries
What’s your first response to the question, how to keep top talent? If you believe it is solely about offering them more money or prestige, consider this recent ranking of the top law firms in the country. The ones rated as the best for compensation or prestige didn’t even make the top ten.
Although compensation is an important factor, it is not always the determining or sole factor in what helps you retain your top talent. Here are five things that your top talent seeks beyond compensation:
Top Talent Seek Opportunities for Personal Growth
Learning opportunities can keep talented hires engaged in the firm’s work and mission. While especially popular in the IT departments, learning opportunities can also help retain employees in other areas. For example, one law firm in Australia provided the opportunity to learn Mandarin.
Recognition and Respect are Essential
Great employees continue to prove themselves every day. They help set and maintain the productive rhythm of the company by stepping up when needed and mentoring others. When you have top talent, it is obvious so why not, reciprocate. Recognition and respect from leadership helps to solidify the bond between your company and its great employees.
Top Talent Seeks a Leadership Team They Can Trust
Like all long-term relationships, trust is a factor. Fairness is a factor. Caring is a factor. Great employees stay because they can trust that leadership has their back. They can trust that leadership will make the best decisions for the company. They trust that when things go sideways, leadership will get the company back on course.
Stability Attracts Top Talent
A law firm with the right amount of stability can benefit the top young talent. It is essential to find the right balance between removing bad employees and allowing too much turnover. A successful organization has senior talent in place to help nurture young employees into a path towards leadership.
The Best Employees Share Your Company’s Vision and Strategy
Even in the hierarchical military chain of command, providing a clear strategy will help you retain the best people. The talented want to see their roles in your firm’s strategic plan.
But before you can link employee values and personal goals with your firm’s, you must find out which talent is the best fit. To do this, the “Harvard Business Review” suggests not just looking for ability but also aspiration. At Strategic Recruitment Solutions, our goal is to connect our Client Partners with the best active and passive candidates searching for a high-end career. Our experts can help streamline your executive recruitment strategies and assist in managing the entire interviewing and hiring process.
Strategic Recruitment Solutions has been matching top companies with top talent in the Gulf Region for more than a decade. We focus on Legal and IT Recruiting and have industry-expert recruiters that can offer the kind of insight and guidance that helps grow companies and careers. We have offices in New Orleans and Baton Rouge and are ready to help your business identify professional candidates for the legal and IT industries.
When you are ready to add to your team, consider partnering with us. We can help you recruit and retain employees now and in the future. Call us today at 888-366-6508.
“War is Hell.” William Tecumseh Sherman wrote in a letter to the Mayor of Atlanta warning him that his war plans make it necessary for the inhabitants of the city to “make their exodus in any direction as easy and comfortable as possible.”
We know the devastation Sherman caused in his march through Georgia and, of course, the burning of Atlanta. And what does this have to do with the employment market? It is not a stretch to say that firms are facing a War on Talent – fortunately it is completely bloodless; but, the effect will be quite painful, chaotic, and expensive. So what can you do to protect your company?
John Sullivan, a recruiting expert says firms, “should begin planning for this next round of talent wars, because once the intense competition begins, there simply won’t be time to catch up and the lengths competitors will go to in order to steal away talent are bold, creative and sometimes downright tacky”.
Let’s look at some of the crazy things SOME Information Technology companies do to attract the A team! Can you say, KaBOOM?
Seriously???
Some Silicon Valley industries in social media, gaming, and oil and minerals are good examples. A recruiting firm sent 150 cookie baskets directly to key employees at Zynga, a social game developer. It was a legal, bold move designed to create buzz and alert employees that outside firms wanted them. Another low tech but effective move by Zapacer, a cloud security firm, involved driving a van advertising positions around the building of its target competitor. Although not as bold but certainly quirky and creative was the recruiting hook used by Hipster, a start up company in Silicon Valley, which offered new hires “$10,000, a lifetime supply of Pabst Blue Ribbon, ‘authentic’ skinny jeans, striped bow ties and a pair of Buddy Holly glasses.”
I’m sure you can you imagine that activities like these combined with the persuasive abilities of a professional headhunter have the potential to completely ravage a company’s top talent.
NO WAR IS GOING TO BE WON BY CONSERVATIVE ACTION – BOLDNESS AND INNOVATION ARE REQUIRED. (ere.net)
So how does this affect your company? “For firms to keep top talent they have to be ruthless about innovation – if they aren’t prepared to back employee ideas, they will lose those employees to a start-up, to a competitor or to disinterest.” (Rob Enderle)
It is up to managers, HR departments and ultimately the culture of the company to provide a climate that demonstrates flexibility and a willingness to create a dynamic innovative work environment. Business author Andrew Winston notes in his seminars that “millennials don’t have any loyalty.” Younger employees would rather work for companies that share their beliefs than to stay at a company for many years. This cultural shift toward innovation-not just sustainability gives small and medium businesses an advantage, in that they can move more quickly to embrace change. This shift, combined with a willingness to remain sensitive to employee’s expectations (and that doesn’t mean just salary) is what will keep the talent in a company.
Improving communication can be a relatively easy starting point at which to look, and it doesn’t cost a company anything but a little time and an attitude of genuine concern. Communication is multidimensional involving verbal and non verbal aspects. It is the nonverbal that is the most fascinating and some would say most important – surely the receptive communication skill of LISTENING will help to maintain a stable pool of talent that is not easily “raided.” Human Resources, are you listening to your employees? Employees, are you being heard?
