Attracting Top Talent to Your Illinois Business

Historically, small and medium-sized businesses have faced challenging market conditions due to factors such as skills gaps, economic uncertainty, inflation, and other disruptions.

Over the last few years, Illinois has struggled with unemployment issues, so you could receive a high number of applicants. Since generic approaches to hiring are more likely to result in a pile of generic resumes coming across your desk, you should empower yourself to attract top talent in Illinois to fill your open positions. To accomplish this, you'll need a strategic approach to appeal to the most qualified candidates.

This means you’ll want to consider items such as Illinois hiring strategies, employer branding, competitive employee benefits, and a flexible workplace culture, along with integrating employee recruitment best practices.

1. Build a Strong Employer Brand

It’s important to remember that qualified candidates don’t just have to sell themselves to you; you’ll also need to sell yourselves to them, or else lose out to competitors seeking to hire them. Let candidates get to know your brand and what it represents.

• Tell your company's origin story and its historic journey
• Clearly state your mission and core values in digital and print materials
• Share testimonials
• Place videos on your website and social media pages
• Develop career pages for current and potential employees

The best candidates are attracted to employers with a strong company culture, a good reputation, and happy employees. Essentially, write an authentic narrative of your business and share it with the world to help land yourself on lists of the best places to work in Illinois.

2. Highlight Your Company Culture

Company culture is incredibly important to employees. No one wants to work for a company with a reputation for having a toxic workplace, high turnover, or other negative attributes. They want to work for a company offering positive day-to-day experiences.

To become known for a great company culture, foster attributes such as transparency, inclusion, communication, collaboration, empathy, team spirit, and social responsibility. You can showcase these qualities on your website, through social media posts, in job postings, and during interviews.

3. Offer Competitive Compensation and Benefits

Money is important to most candidates. However, it’s not usually their sole criterion for accepting a job. To stay competitive in the job market, look to invest in:

• Health/dental/vision insurance
• Retirement plans
• Mental health support
• Wellness initiatives
• Bonuses
• Paid time off (PTO)

Investing in appealing employment package options goes a long way towards catching the attention of top candidates. To get a good idea of what to offer in your industry or region, see what competitors are offering and at least match, if not exceed, standard benchmarks. Then promote your perks in job listings and other promotional materials.

4. Prioritize Flexibility in the Workplace

Technology has altered the workplace environment. Today’s employees hold different expectations when it comes to work flexibility options. According to statistics reported by the Economic Policy Institute, a high percentage of workers prefer flexibility in their work arrangements.

For example, 80% of knowledge workers want flexibility with work locations, and 94% want schedule flexibility. Another survey the organization reported on indicates that 81% of workers say flexible hours and schedules are a top priority.

Ways to integrate flexibility into your work landscape include remote and hybrid work options, flexible scheduling, flex-time, and job sharing.

5. Promote Career Development Opportunities

People historically perform better when they can enjoy autonomy and pursue career development opportunities. The inclusion of upskilling, mentorship, and advancement paths will attract growth-minded candidates for your open positions.

Other perks to consider include tuition reimbursement, employee development days, and internal training and leadership programs. Good employees will be inclined to stay where they can grow professionally.

6. Leverage Social Media and Employee Referrals

Some of the best tools to leverage in attracting top talent are social media and employee referrals. By establishing a strong presence and positive culture through social media posts and interactions, you can naturally promote your company as a great place to work.

For instance, you can highlight employee achievements, share internal “behind the scenes” content, amplify openings through LinkedIn and Instagram, and recruit your team members to refer like-minded peers. You can even offer rewards, such as days off, bonuses, and gift cards to employee ambassadors who actively recruit great candidates.

How Payroll Freedom Can Help

Talent attraction should be a strategic priority to attract top talent to your Illinois business. At Payroll Freedom, we can help you attract and hire great employees. Our talent acquisition solutions can empower you to quickly attract, hire, and onboard top talent. 

For example, our customizable Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is designed to help you optimize every stage of the recruiting process, saving time and money while allowing you to focus on other essential aspects of your business. Our solutions can also help you with onboarding guidance and compliance requirements.

Attracting Top Talent in Illinois

To attract top talent in Illinois, you need to establish a strong employer brand, highlight your company culture, and offer competitive compensation and benefits. You should also focus efforts on prioritization of workplace flexibility, emphasis on career development opportunities, and leveraging social media and employee referrals to amplify your reach.

Build a recruitment strategy that attracts top candidates and enables you to keep them.

👉 Explore Talent Acquisition Services with Payroll Freedom