The modern job market is highly competitive, and businesses need to constantly remain at the cutting edge of recruiting tactics to attract top talent. One avenue that businesses should explore is the use of mentoring programs to attract the best potential employees out there. Sounds hard, but the good news is that by optimising mentoring programs to be geared towards high-calibre candidates, businesses can look to gain a competitive advantage in attracting top talent from the start.
This is Part Two of our series on Mentoring for the 6 Stages of the Employee Lifecycle.
Employee Lifecycle Stage 1: Talent Attraction
Attraction is the first and foremost stage in the employee lifecycle model. The experience with your organisation starts the first time someone has contact with your employer brand. Seeing as 69% of corporations in the US alone are struggling to attract top talent—a staggering increase from 14% in 2010—it’s important that your first touch with potential team members makes a positive impression. This is why companies need to make changes if they want to succeed in the emerging talent market.
And what’s one way you can do this? By making mentoring a part of your talent attraction strategy.
Understanding the Impact of Mentoring on Attracting High-Caliber Candidates
Having mentoring opportunities available to employees has a positive effect on businesses’ ability to recruit top talent. The most impressive candidates require more than good compensation packages. Their decision to join an organisation is often based on the professional development opportunities they can gain from the role. The availability of a mentoring program demonstrates to potential new hires that the business is invested in their professional growth. This then assists employers in distinguishing themselves from competitors.
Mentoring programs also help create a positive work environment and a sense of community. This, in turn, contributes to increased collaboration and productivity, as well as a greater sense of job satisfaction. And what’s great is all of those things are highly valued by top talent and definitely do not go unnoticed upon interacting with your employer brand.
Unlocking the Potential of Mentoring to Attract Top Talent
Show prospective employees that with your organization, they can access a platform to improve and showcase their skills and work in an environment that fosters development. You can do this by designing your mentoring programs around providing opportunities to learn from experienced professionals in their field. Such an environment is attractive to potential candidates as they see it as a workplace that can serve their skills development and career guidance needs.
Leveraging Mentoring Programs to Create a Competitive Advantage
Employees actively seek mentoring opportunities nowadays. That’s because decent pay simply isn’t enough anymore. Employees want personal growth and development opportunities too. So even if two different businesses offer the same salary, one may attract better, more motivated candidates simply because they provide additional value in the form of development opportunities.
Additionally, mentoring programs can help foster a sense of loyalty and commitment among employees. As a natural consequence, this also helps with spreading the word about your awesome working environment. And as we all know, strong word of mouth is the best way to get people interested. It works for talent attraction in a similar way to retail as people tend to consider other people’s opinions more than what a brand or an employer tells them.
Using Mentoring Programs to Attract Top Talent
For a mentoring program to help attract top talent, you need to design it with the needs of the your target demographic in mind. Rather than building a generic mentor-mentee structure, customize your materials and provide data-driven feedback loops. This helps build relationships and encourage accountability within your program.
You also need to ensure you’re making it known that mentoring is available to employees. Mention your mentoring program in all of the content you have promoting your company so that it’s the first thing prospective new hires see. Talk about it in company interviews on podcasts, social media, promotional videos, and guest blog posts. Get the word out that you’re invested in growing your people. Make sure you also include it in any job postings and anywhere else that’s dedicated to enhancing your employer brand.
If you’re interested in learning more about how your organization can benefit from embedding mentoring into all stages of the employee lifecycle, download the webinar kit for a series on this very topic.
Join Mentorloop’s Head of Sales for EMEA, Jess Benham as she discusses the benefits of embedding a culture of mentoring in your organization to support all 6 stages of the employee lifecycle.
Are you ready to see the impact a mentoring program can have on your company?
Mentorloop’s Enterprise solution fits into large organisations’ employee experience design at every stage.
Built with enterprises and large associations in mind, Mentorloop Enterprise takes your mentoring program to the next level with powerful algorithmic matching, customisations, single sign-on and more.
Learn more about Mentorloop Enterprise today.
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