How to Attract Talent for Economic Growth

Recruiting in an Employer’s Market? Stay Humble—and Stand Out Today’s job market? It’s an employer’s market. Great talent is in demand, cautious about changing roles, and rightly so. Many are staying put in stable jobs, and candidate experience has become more valuable than perks alone. So if you’re trying to win talent, don’t lead with swagger—lead with substance. 1. Don’t be arrogant. Candidates are wary of empty promises. Research shows nearly 53% face misleading hiring practices, and 47% want clear salary info up front. When you over-hype perks without transparency, you lose trust—and lose them. 2. Know your unique differentiator. What makes your workplace truly different? Is it: A skill-first culture (not credentials‑first)? By 2025, hiring is shifting to recognize practical skills over degrees. A genuine Employee Value Proposition (EVP) that extends beyond salary, growth, values, flexibility, community—that’s been shown to attract more committed hires? 3. Articulate a real EVP. Your EVP isn’t just buzzwords. It needs to answer: “Why should a talented professional leave a stable, safe job to come here?” Share specifics: Career acceleration: mentorship, transparent feedback loops, skill‑building budgets. Purpose woven in: “We X through Y.” Be concise and authentic. Culture markers, such as mental wellness days, remote-first, and open-source mindset, should be supported by data, including turnover rates and survey results. 4. Prioritize candidate experience. 66% of applicants accept offers because of a positive hiring process; 26% reject offers due to a lack of communication. That’s right—how you treat people now can be the deciding factor. Keep them informed. Clear, timely communication beats flash perks. Give them feedback—even if they don’t get the job. 79% would apply again if they got constructive insight. Make the process efficient and respectful: avoid long application forms, impersonal chatbots, or drawn-out rounds. 5. Embrace realism, not spin: Many top performers see switching jobs now as a risky move. If your narrative overpromises—saying “join us and skyrocket without effort”—you’ll be ignored. Instead: Be honest about where you’re headed as an organization. Show them someone like them thriving inside your team. Offer a clear roadmap of what career progression looks like. *Ask why it matters. *Lead with humility. *Avoid hype, default to openness. *Highlight real differentiation. *Invest deeply in candidate experience. *Communication and feedback increase acceptance rates. *Offer clarity, not fantasy. In today’s employer market, it’s not about waving the biggest carrot—it’s about walking the walk. If you’re genuinely fostering growth, transparency, care, and purpose in your organization, say it clearly, show it consistently, and candidates will listen. Let’s elevate recruitment together. Aspire Talent Advisory!

What do your *HR practices* and *market share* have in common? More than your CFO might think... Here's the data that's changing how boards view HR. Our research at Top Employers Institute shows that strategic *people practices* can be effective levers for business growth, with some correlated to market share gains of up to 15%. We measure 2,400+ employers on 300+ HR best practices annually. Here are 5 HR practices that we find are most correlated to fast-growing market share: 1) Aligning with purpose: consistently using a purpose scorecard to align actions with your company's "why" is correlated to 12% higher market share growth. When you lead with purpose, growth follows. 2) Leveraging recruitment analytics & obsessing over candidate experience: using data to optimize your talent attraction strategy can boost market share is correlated to 15% market share growth. Analytics-driven recruitment is a serious competitive advantage while measuring and optimizing every touchpoint in the candidate journey (pre, during, and post) is correlated to 12% higher market share. How you treat candidates is a reflection of your brand. 3) Empowering internal influencers: when business leaders actively promote your employer brand on internal social platforms, it correlates to 11% higher market share growth vs orgs that don’t. Employees are your most powerful brand ambassadors. 4) Building talent communities: Cultivating candidate communities both *internally* and *externally* leads to 9% higher market share. Proactively building talent pipelines gives you a head start on growth. 5) Prioritizing leadership development: Defining and tracking leadership development KPIs is correlated to 11% higher market share growth. Investing in leadership bench strength prepares you for growth. The most stunning insight here is the *range* of people practices that can drive market share, from employer branding to people analytics to agile performance. It's an important reminder that in today's economy, your people-practices can make or break your ability to grow (especially if you’re at a large multinational organization). So if *market share* matters to you, you may want to consider doubling down on these people practices. At Top Employers Institute we exist to build a better world of work. We certify HR excellence for 2,400+ global multinational employers representing every industry and 124 countries helping them do 3 things exceptionally well: 1) Benchmark, measure, and track progress on their HR practices year-over-year; 2) Enhance their employer brand in key markets; 3) Improve HR Leader’s relationship with the board by correlating HR practice improvements to key business outcomes (like rev growth, profitability, & shareholder value gain). Question for you: which of these 5 practices do you find most or least surprising? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

Growth is the solution to attracting and retaining employees. One of the biggest frustrations for small and medium-sized business owners is the ability to find and keep qualified, hardworking employees. We know that our business needs good employees. We could also use some quality talent around us to take some of the pressure off our key talent (usually the owner). Big businesses have big recruiting budgets. They can send people to employment fairs at big-name universities to attract the next wave of superstars into their internship programs. They can afford to pay headhunters to fill positions of need with overqualified talent. In addition to the money they can spend on recruiting, they can afford to pay better wages, provide better benefits, and offer perks. This is where many of us will stretch to try and compete, but we still struggle (and sometimes regret the comp packages we are paying if we win). Your SMB has one advantage that no big business can compete with: your ability to grow. Big businesses can get in front of more candidates and offer better compensation, but they also view their employees as cogs in the machine. While employees can move up the organization, the number of positions at the next level keeps getting smaller and smaller. Eventually, most employees become expendable because there is a new, younger crop of employees that costs less behind them. This is, in part, why you see a lot of lateral job hires in corporate. It might take a large business a decade or more to double in size. Your small business can double in size multiple times over the next decade. This means an employee at your growing SMB can advance as the company grows. Fast-growing startups confirm this. These micro-businesses can attract overqualified talent to their teams because these hires believe they can advance with the company. A similar rule applies to your SMB. If it is growing, employees will want to work for you because they will advance as your business advances. They may be accepting a job with a $10M company today, but if they know it will be a $50M company in less than ten years, they see a path to advance their career much faster than grinding away in the bureaucracy of a large company. And you appreciate them more than your larger counterparts. If you want to attract and retain better talent, create a company that can provide them with an advantage they can’t get in a corporate job. We don’t need to grow like a unicorn startup, but a company on a noticeable upward trajectory will get noticed.