Attracting and Retaining Talent: The Five Most Important Questions

To attract and retain the best talent, everyone on your team must be able to clearly answer these five questions. Your answers must be competitive with the other choices a potential new team member has.

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D. Brown Management
January 26, 2018 3 minute read
management recruiting retention Talent
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This is not a marketing exercise. Everyone on the team must be able to talk excitedly about specific stories that support these answers.

Talent: 5 Questions to Ask: Why work at this company? What is exciting about your projects? Why work for the hiring manager? What is attractive about the area? How will this employee be materially better after 2 years?

 

The talent shortage in construction and especially for the most experienced roles will continue to decline through 2030. The macro view on the US talent funnel for construction requires both creativity and discipline from contractors who wish to continue growing profitably. 

 

The Five Basic Questions for Recruiting and Retention

  1. Why work at this company?
  2. What is exciting about the projects we build?
  3. Why work for this hiring manager?
  4. What is attractive about this location?
  5. How will the potential new team member be materially better after two years on this team?

The majority of your team must be so excited about these answers that they are talking to their friends, family, and other connections regularly.  

The answers from yourself and your team must resonate with candidates for recruiting and with current employees for retention. 

The answers must be communicated effectively including transparency, clarity, and frequency. They must also be communicated broadly both internally and externally to cast a wide net. 

The answers must be better than they would have been two years ago or else you aren't making progress. 

The answers must be at least as good as answers from those that you are competing with for talent. This won't just be other contractors of the same type in your area. 

Without this solid foundation, you will never optimize your results from recruitment marketing or from recruiters (internal or external).  

 

Don’t underestimate the value of aligning your team around these questions when it comes to attracting talent. Get some outside input as to whether your answers are truly seen as valuable and are differentiators to the talent. Like working through your Market Strategy, this is a highly leveraged activity and well worth having a 3rd party help you rigorously facilitate the process.  

The Talent Value Stream (TVS) is part of the Contractor Business Model addressing all aspects of aligning people to support strategy and operations. The Talent Value Stream for contractors must evolve with each stage of growth.

Please contact us to learn more about our approach to helping contractors evaluate their Talent Value Stream in context of their strategies and business plans then developing an improvement roadmap. 

 

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