Attracting & Retaining Top Talent

by Andrew Meehan, Principal Recruitment Lead: IT Infrastructure/Security at Abrivia Recruitment

Gone are the days where it is all about the money when weighing up which role to choose and what company to work for. Candidate expectations have evolved with people now looking for company cultures that are aligned to their values, work like balance initiatives, remote working, and training and development programs. With the war for talent intensifying, organisations need to revisit their offering to ensure they are positioning themselves as an organisation of choice.

Some of the most successful and highly sought after organisations to work for all have one thing in common. They promote collaborative cultures where ones role has buckets of ownership, access to cutting edge technology and systems, and employs a management team that leads by example. Another important point is that the key to attracting and retaining the best in the business is to nurture and train them! When is boils down to the decision making process (taking that the salary is market rate), one of the primary factors is the organisations policy on investing in them as an individual, from both a career progression and upskilling perspective.

Regardless of the level of experience, most candidates would prefer to work for organisations that have formal policies around L/D in place. Some companies have gone a step further and established academies for training. The above are all ingredients for a successful employer brand. In today’s market, human capital has never been so important. Companies that want to grow need to take heed of the recipe for success.

The late Steve Jobs of Apple summed up talent’s importance with this advice: “Go after the cream of the cream. A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players.” Management guru Jim Collins concurred: “… the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.”