In this video, Martha gives her number one tip to attract employees.
Jonathan: Got another interview for you. It’s with Martha. It’s one of five. She’s got a lot of great advice, and she’s got a lot of value. Check out what she has to say.
Martha, in your business, just like in my business, it’s a challenge to find employees, and so many companies I talk to, “Oh, there are no good employees left. There’s nobody out there. It’s impossible.” You seem to have had success, and you’ve built a good team. Do you have one, best tip for us on how to attract and find employees?
Martha: Something that is successful for us is to figure out what your applicant target market is wanting. The way that I started with that, actually, is to ask my current employees, “What attracted you to apply? What is your favorite benefit that we offer?” I just asked them things that they like about the company, and then took that and then really developed my ads around that. One of the programs that we offer is we offer paid days off, based on quality, and they earn them. What makes that special in our company is that most places they’re lucky to earn a weeks paid vacation. At my company, if you are a top performer you could actually earn two weeks vacation your first year. I call it “vacation,” it’s PTO, and it’s six hours at a time.
Anyway, I devised my ads around that benefit, and, my heading is, “How many paid days off do you get a year?” I have my bullet points, and I go through … but, then when they come to interview we explain the process, and we explain how they can use those, take those and, anyway, like I say … I just kind of figured out what do our current employees love? What do perspective employees want? And that’s what I market around. The other thing that I would say is I try to market just like I would to perspective clients. The places, the mediums that I use … you won’t use all the same mediums, but, I’d even consider doing the EBBM’s to neighborhoods where current employees live to market that way. I haven’t done it yet. It’s kind of my last-ditch resort. I just try to think of how am I finding clients? And then, getting creative on how I’m going to find applicants.
Jonathan: I think that’s a really, really good point. Most of us complain that we can’t find enough employees, and that’s our bottleneck, but we don’t apply everything we’ve learned in marketing that we’ve used to build our companies, meaning we’ve applied marketing to the problem of getting clients. We haven’t applied marketing to the problem of getting employees.
Martha: Right.
Jonathan: For most of us, when we’re complaining we can’t find enough people we really haven’t done enough, and so I love that idea. That’s fantastic. To recap what I believe I’ve heard is so you, basically, sat down and you said, “What is the thing that my team is telling me they love about my company? What do they most appreciate? What’s the universal thing that I’m hearing that they were attracted to this company, and they stay here for this reason?” You crafted a program around that and then that became your headline, your leading marketing benefit to potential employees that this is how we’re different than everyone else that you might consider working with, or becoming a team member of. Is that stated correctly?
Martha: Right … that is correct, that’s it.
Jonathan: It’s awesome. Even if somebody’s number one benefit, their team isn’t saying that it’s additional PTO, there’s something else in their company, and they need to find that thing?
Martha: Correct.
Jonathan: And craft an official program around it and then market on that point.
Martha: Right.
Jonathan: That’s fantastic.
Martha: That’s what we’ve done.
Jonathan: I like it, that’s actually, super actionable as well. Great. Thank you, Martha, that’s a great tip.
Martha: You’re welcome. Thank you.
