Ways to Attract, Retain Talent

At CITY, we know that our people are our biggest assets; therefore, we understand how important it is to have a recruiting, hiring, and retention process that helps us attract and keep the right people.

Attracting the right people includes having the right people doing the recruiting and hiring. The people who currently do the recruiting for CITY, are people who, most importantly, believe in and understand CITY’s vision, mission, and values.

For CITY, bringing on new team members is not a direct human resource responsibility, and we have taken a unique approach to combat the current employment market.

Part of the reason talent acquisition at CITY falls under the Marketing and Communications department is that we can use a joint force with the marketing team to attract top talent.

“We have spent a lot of time building our marketing campaigns to attract new customers to partner with CITY and we decided to use the same approach to attract new employees,” CITY’s Director of Communications Emily Hauber said. “It was a very natural switch for us. In order to market to customers and prospective customers, we have to have a good idea of what makes CITY special. We took that information we already had and started sharing that information with prospective employees.”

At CITY, we call our department the marketing and communications department because we believe that this team helps bridge the gap between prospects, customers, employees, and future employees.

From building the initial recruiting relationship to the onboarding Human Resource process, the connection doesn’t end with the hiring process. Since the recruiting, human resource, and marketing team work so closely together, we believe it is important to conduct “stay interviews” and check in on new hires frequently.

Stay interviews are held to help acclimate, connect with new employees, and get feedback on how their job is working out thus far and what, if anything, could be improved. We want to make sure that what we praise about CITY during the interviewing process is in fact true. With new people and company growth, this is an important check and balance.

We have found that maintaining positive relationships with the recruiter and building positive dynamics with the human resource team from the beginning contribute to higher retention rates and employee satisfaction.

“Recruiting is about more than just getting people in the door. The HR piece of it is staying connected with employees after their first day and being another point of contact for them, someone they might feel more comfortable talking to since they’ve already had so much contact with me,” Recruitment Coordinator Tracer Rankin explains.

By having the structure we have in place, we are empowered to find the right people who fit our values, onboard them with clear communications, and continue to build a relationship to ensure satisfaction in their work.

“CITY has a vision for the company and the only way to achieve our goals is to attract the right talent to get us there,” Emily explains. “We have an internal motto to hire on culture and then train on skill. For those that are the right culture fit and have developed skills, then it is important to put those people in the right seats. Finding teammates that fit the culture and complement each other skillset is the difference between good companies and great ones.”

To learn more about how CITY starts the initial recruiting process, visit www.CleanAndSimpleCareers.com