4 Tips for Using Tech to Attract Top Talent

It's common knowledge that recruiting someone can cost thousands of dollars.

The process of finding the right candidate and then vetting, hiring, and onboarding them can add up fast.

With such a high price tag, it’s important that companies find and hire the right person on the first try. This usually means aiming for established, top-talent candidates. The only problem is, if you want to hire the best of the best, there’s going to be fierce competition.

With that in mind, here are a few of the best ways that you can use technology to help attract the right candidates to your company.

1. Put Your Employees in Control

Technology can make a dramatic difference in how a business operates. It can make things easier, increase efficiency, and boost productivity. 

However, tech can also serve the simple function of helping certain people gain access to information that they might not have been able to easily access in the past. 

For instance, most remote work technology is designed to help the members of a team access meetings and communication-related activities, even when they’re working from home. Document-sharing tech organizes digital resources in a place where anyone (on-site or off-site) with granted access, can see them. Even things like small business 401k tech have improved to the point where you can easily view your retirement info online at a moment’s notice.

Before you start investing in frilly tech that is expensive and often unnecessary, start with the basics. Look for the small-yet-impactful tools that give your employees control in ways that might not have been possible a decade ago. This might seem small, but it’s the little details like these that can make all the difference in giving off a good impression for a potential hire.

2. Make Things User-Friendly

Along with accessibility, you also want to consider usability. When you purchase tech, is it something that your employees can use? Can they do so easily or does it create a headache that they have to learn?

The user-friendly aspect of your tech is something that applies to your existing staff. However, it can also make a difference when you go to hire new talent, too. 

If you have clumsy, difficult-to-use systems in place, it can be a turn-off. And the thing is, this can happen in multiple ways.

For instance, on the one hand, if you don’t update your technology — both hardware and software — regularly, it can create situations where tech can’t do what it’s supposed to do. When that happens, your outdated tech becomes a liability rather than an asset. On the other hand, if you buy tech that is super advanced and up-to-date, but it doesn’t answer a genuine need for your staff, it just adds another layer of complication onto what they already have to do.

Review your current tech. Is it user-friendly? Where can it be improved? Even something as simple as implementing an IdP (identity provider) to streamline your login procedure can help your tech attract rather than turn off new employees.

3. Expedite Onboarding

There’s nothing that can dissuade a recruit from joining your team more than a sloppy onboarding process. Picture this. You finish an interview and decide that you want to hire a candidate. You send them an email with an offer. They respond that they accept and then ask for next steps. 

If your reply is “we’ll figure that out later,” it’s going to be a bit unsettling for a new employee looking to start out on the right foot. Even if you respond with a confident answer that leads them to a long and tedious onboarding process, it’s going to put a bad taste in their mouth right from the get-go.

Instead, turn to tech as a way to expedite and simplify the onboarding process. There are many HR tech options out there that make onboarding a breeze. Some systems enable the digitization of documents. Others are great for e-signatures.

By using tech, you can automate much of the onboarding minutia. You can also put the rest of the work in the hands of the new employee and let them fill out streamlined documentation on their own and at their leisure.

4. Offer Cutting-Edge Perks

At this point, you’ve greased the wheels for your new candidate. You’ve ensured that your existing tech is user-friendly and puts your employees in the driver's seat. You’ve also streamlined your onboarding process to make it as easy and pain-free as possible.

Only now should you look for splashy ways to use tech as part of your recruitment process. There are many ways to do this. For instance, consider getting a payroll option that gives your employees the ability to withdraw cash from their next paycheck early. Using remote tech to let employees work from home is another great idea.

The specific tech that you use will depend on your situation. The important thing is that you find tech-related perks that won’t just help your employees (although they should definitely do that, too.) Look for the ones that will attract people to work for your particular company in the first place.

There are many ways to attract talent to a company. With the recruitment wars heating up, though, it’s important to have a plan in place. Using tech as part of your recruitment strategy is a great way to gain an edge over your competition. 

So, review the suggestions above and then look for real, tangible ways that you can apply them to your own recruitment process. That way you can attract (and retain) top talent, no matter how stiff the competition might be.