Top Ten Ways to Attract Top Talent in 2018

We are in an increasingly competitive environment when it comes to attracting top talent. A Fortune 500 article indicates there are five million jobs companies are looking to fill in 2018.

The days of a recruiter requiring numerous interviews to hire someone are gone.


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Many companies look to unorthodox and progressive ways of finding talent for jobs that need to be filled right now.

For all the talk about robots and AI taking jobs—there are current jobs that are open for warm-blooded humans.

As competition increases for talent, the ways to attract talent and think about talent are rapidly changing. Here are ten ways to attract top talent in 2018:

1. Social media is THE place where people are searching for jobs. People are researching and looking for 'banter' about companies. With a race for talent, job seekers have the upper hand because they have multiple job options available.

2. Video is the medium that helps job seekers determine the culture of a company, the brand reputation and more. Is your company maximizing video to communicate your companies 'attractiveness' for potential employees?

3. Look in places that may not be obvious to find cultural fits for your companies. For example, an HVAC company I worked with put up a recruiting booth at a hunting and fishing conference and successfully recruited new employees that were a great fit for the company culture.

4. While seeking new talent, stay focused on engaging your current top talent—poachers are standing by! "Right now the job market for professional, leadership, and new technology jobs is white hot," says Josh Bersin, a principal at Deloitte Consulting and a longtime HR thought leader.

5. Revisit your policies and see where you can afford to relax. SHRM (Society of Human Resources) states that companies are relaxing their drug testing as some drugs are being legalized.

6. Diversity is the biggest opportunity for talent—industries are looking to hire skilled and trained women, minorities, military, and other-abled persons to fill jobs.

7. Revisit your educational standards. Companies are relaxing educational requirements in favor of skills such as adaptability, resiliency, and ability to handle multiple disruptions in the workplace. "The reality for many positions, across most organizations, is that education has no influence on actual performance," says Tim Sackett, head of the HRU Technical Resources Staffing Firm.

8. Hire for human skills first and digital skills second. Every industry is now digital, and the biggest skills needed are the ability to collaborate, create, and communicate successfully with teams.

9. Start looking for young talent. Educating young workers about your industry and the opportunities is critical. Waiting until students are looking for career opportunities can be too late—post information about your company on Instagram, share opportunities and ideas for young workers on YouTube, and visit and speak to students in elementary schools about your company.

10. Sell potential talent on your ‘story'—mainstream media today is all about the opportunity for workers to self-actualize through being a hero—create stories about your company, and share stories of workers in a ‘you can change the world by working with us'—story is the emotional hook to engage new talent in the work that your company does.

Bonus tip! Your biggest competition for talent isn't another company, its people who are choosing to freelance or to entrepreneur—look at freelance sites and solopreneurs to pitch projects and work opportunities.

The race for talent is going to increase in the next few years along with the speed of automation, robotics, and AI—for every job replaced by technology, a new one will be created BY the technology. Finding top talent now is a future-ready imperative for all businesses.

This article was originally published on NextMapping.

Cheryl Cran is a future of work expert and the founder of nextmapping.com, a future of work research and consulting firm that helps leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs be future-ready now. She is the author of six books, including her new one due out at the end of 2018 titled, "NextMapping—How Great Leaders Inspire People to Create the Future of Work."

Opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of WITI.