Hitting the Right Mark
Rethink your strategy for attracting candidates, retaining staff
Lori Bruce, MBA Communications Director
November/December 2022
“Work three days a week, get full-time hours.”
That’s the heading from a job opening posted this fall by a Florida Chick-fil-A restaurant that offers a “pod” schedule for employees interested in working just three days a week. More than 420 individuals applied for one position.
In a job market where many employers struggle to find applicants, the response to this job post generated attention across the country. Although the three-day concept may not be feasible for most businesses, it does make employers wonder how they can attain that type of interest among prospective candidates.
Just as vital as recruitment is employee retention. With a vast array of options available for some job opportunities, individuals may opt to leave a job they enjoy for benefits that appeal to their lifestyle.
What must an employer do to attract great candidates while simultaneously ensuring current employees are enjoying their work environment?
Karen Shannon with Ollis/Akers/Arney Human Resources Consulting in Springfield shares tactics for hitting your mark in the current job market.
What are your tips for banks to be competitive to stand out in today’s market?
One thing we must be right now is more open-minded. You can hire a winner, or you can hire a potential winner. Winners are those who come into the job ready to go; they are fully trained and need very little coaching or training. Look at potential winners — people with transferable skills who maybe you had not considered before and hidden workers who haven’t reentered the job market.
We need to be building our talent pipeline every day by applying the very same skill set used for meeting prospective bank clients. Meet with prospects to tell them about the bank and its services to see if they have the competencies that are similar to the job and also align with the bank’s culture. You may not have a position open at the moment, but you’ve already started identifying people and keeping them engaged before you actually need them as a candidate.
What do banks need to know about their potential hires and applicants?
First and foremost, you have to think differently about candidates. Revisit job descriptions and the competencies required for a position. It goes back to hiring a winner versus a potential winner. Rather than hiring someone who has all of the training and maybe certifications or credentials, prioritize the core competencies that are a must have.
For example, those competencies may be building trust and customer focus. Those are non-negotiable, but for some of the other competencies, we may train them. Maybe they don’t have a whole lot of experience related to certain skills, so it may change our thought process about providing the technical training for the position, and we may even fill in some of the gaps related to education. Look at a candidate who is really great with communication. Maybe it’s a candidate where you go to lunch every week and they are just fantastic at engaging with you as a customer, and you can envision them in your bank lobby working as a personal banker or universal teller. It’s seeing some of those core skill sets and helping them gain the other skill sets that’s going to really allow them to excel in your bank.
I also think for interviews we’ve got to focus on past experiences and stay away from hypothetical or future-oriented questions. Past behavior predicts future behavior, and I know that I can predict better how they’re going to be successful or not based on their examples that they provide in the interview process around their past experiences. It can be a core competency around communication or engaging with others that will help me see them transfer into the position at the bank.
Another technique that I like to use for hiring people for my team is for them to have an interview with their potential co-workers. I want them to understand what it is like to work on our team and what’s it like to work with me as a manager. There’s no question off the table, and they find out what it would be like to work for our organization. A standard old-fashioned interview is not going to accomplish that.
How can banks best compete with other industries for talent?
I think it’s finding what is your secret sauce that makes you unique and defining both the tangible and intangible things around your culture. What is it that really makes you stand out? There’s all sorts of things that you can really tout and share that really differentiates you.
Your benefit plan and your opportunities for growth may be significant. Do you have a formal compensation structure in place? For example, do you have in your compensation structure a teller trainee, a teller, a teller I, a teller II? Development opportunities could consist of a certified professional teller program that includes additional compensation and recognition. The compensation structure is a combination of performance milestones, as well as training and development milestones.
I find banking is very rich when it comes to total rewards through benefit plans, compensation, training and development, 401K matches and flexible spending accounts. Identify every component of total rewards that you offer and then assign a value to that so you can use that in your advertising to differentiate.
Consider featuring employees on your website or social media to talk about their roles at the bank and why they enjoy being part of the bank. Show your participation in volunteer activities in your community. All those things that make you unique as an employer help people envision themselves being a part of your bank.
For your current employees, how do you keep them motivated and from facing burnout?
Employee engagement is critical. We know that about 80% of people who are highly engaged are less likely to leave, so you need to have strategies in place to keep people engaged.
I see three things that really have a meaningful impact on employee engagement. One is meaningful work. People have to understand the impact of their work. Help them to see the meaningfulness of their roles and how it contributes to the bank as a whole.
Another component is opportunities to learn and grow. Training and development are critical when it comes to engagement. An employee feels appreciated and valued when their bank wants to invest in their professional development.
The third area, I think, is a positive environment in which we work — an environment where people can collaborate, where they are respected and where they are trusted.
I always ask organizations this question — what would your current employees say about you? Are they out recruiting for your bank? What do they share with friends and family? Would they share this is a great place to work? If your current employees are not your No. 1 seller and No. 1 recruiter of your organization, that tells us something and we need to find out why they aren’t.
What role does LinkedIn have for both recruitment and employee engagement?
Probably the No. 1 professional tool that people use is LinkedIn, depending on the position. As candidates research banks and their websites, they’re also looking at banks’ social media profiles, so it’s important to have activity on social media.
As for job posts, LinkedIn is a beneficial tool to get the word out. I may post a position on our company’s LinkedIn page or even just make a post through my own personal profile, and that post may have 700 hits. It’s really important to get out in front of people today who you may have no other way to reach. LinkedIn is one of the biggest tools we use to recruit passive candidates. When I’m looking to fill a position, I sit down with my staff to come up with the top five people we want to approach. While I may post a position, I’m also looking at passive candidates. They may not be looking for a change, but I’m contacting people proactively who are a great fit in a particular industry or position. Having a multilayered approach helps build your talent pipeline and then attract people when a position opens.
There can be extremely high engagement on LinkedIn. People post about their activity, accomplishments, awards, things like that. When employees share a post on their personal profile that their bank has posted, it tells me that they’re proud of who they work for. That’s just another way that exponentially social media can benefit banks as an employer when your employees are reposting and sharing what your bank has posted. That is a significant sign of engagement and reflects someone’s feelings about working for that particular organization.
Do you see any changes in the New Year in terms of the job market?
I’m actually seeing a lot more activity by candidates. During COVID, it was a time that none of us have experienced in our work careers to have a worldwide pandemic. I think people were very reluctant to make changes because our whole worlds were turned upside down with change that we could not even anticipate.
Now, we’re seeing much greater activity around people applying for positions because they are considering leaving their existing employers. As jobs are posted, people are willing to take a chance and change employers, which is a very positive sign. If people are willing to take that chance, then the banks need to be there to respond and show why they should be their choice.
published November/December 2022 in The Missouri Banker