In my previous article, I shared insights on what matters to high performers and what hiring managers need to do to address these requirements. However, if you are interested in attracting these high performers, you also need to know what influences them and what their decision-making process is so that you can reach them at the right time and with the right message. 

What influences high performers.

1. Your employees and their careers are your case studies.

High performers make informed decisions and before joining you, they will do their research to ascertain the following:

• What type of work environment you have?
• What is the quality of the work that you do?
• How your current or previous employees are developing their career.
• How open you are to new ideas and career progression.

This is why you need to create (mental) case studies of how your current team is operating, treated, trained and advancing. 

Whether you like it or not, we live in the 21st century where internet & social media platforms such as Seek, Glassdoor and LinkedIn have provided professionals with the opportunity to see what type of talent your business attracts and what career path lies ahead for those you hire. They can also easily find out how your employees describe working with you. So if you have any hidden skeletons in your closet, it is time to address them. 

Unfortunately, if you are working in an environment with toxic leadership, you might be able to protect your team temporarily, but eventually, you are likely to be worn out and have difficulty maintaining a strong work environment. In that case, I would recommend that maybe you should look for new opportunities yourself. 

“ The fish rots from the head down ”

2. Brand reputation 

There are some specific brands that have developed a strong brand of love amongst their audience which gives them an edge when it comes to attracting high performers. However, the majority of the brands do not fall into that category. As a result, when a high performer hears about your brand, they will have a look at your online and offline presence. 

You can have the coolest office, culture and training programs in place, but if your website is from 1999, badly designed or confusing, you leave a bad first impression. What’s even worse is if you have social media accounts that are not reflective of who you really are. As recruiters, our job is to be the PR representatives of our clients and can easily communicate with our network what your business is actually like and bypass this requirement, however, if you are hiring directly, you need to lift your online presence to attract those high performers. 
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3. Your brand ambassadors. 

Above all your employees are your brand ambassadors. I know I am repeating myself here but I cannot emphasis how important it is to look after your current employees. Once they leave, they can either be your advocates or your worse critics. In my experience, people are more likely to share their negative experience with their peers rather than their positive experience. It is time to reflect, analyse how you are performing and implement changes that can help your existing team.

In my next article, I will talk about the high performers’ decision-making process and how to approach them in each step of the process. 

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions or questions, do not hesitate to shoot me an email via houman@creativerecruiters.com.au.