Future Focus – Attracting New Talent

If you’re working in manufacturing, or contemplating a career in the sector, you are part of an industry which employs 2.7 million people (with average earnings of £33,592). This industry also accounts for £192 billion of output and accounts for 44% of total UK exports. (Source: Make UK/Santander)


With this acceleration, and volume from e-commerce rising, the need for new and highly skilled workers is expected to be substantially higher than two years ago. Of course, increased demand also means increased competition. So you will need to embrace innovative approaches to talent attraction and retention to stand out and attract the talent you need to thrive.

Making your new employees feel valued

New hires do not want to feel like outsiders in their own company. Helping applicants to understand your business’s direction and culture and how they will fit into the company, will help them to purposefully contribute to their role, your team, and organisation. The nature of the work they do, for example carrying out responsible duties, with development and identified career paths, will not only boost your employee motivation levels, but will deepen the emotional connectivity your new employee feels for your organisation. Why would you want to leave when there is such a pull? Without exception, team, motivational and cultural fit are areas which should be explored at the hiring stage to minimise poor organisational fit. With competition to recruit the best talent high, the costs of losing your valued employees, either voluntarily or involuntarily can be expensive and time consuming.

What skills and competences should you look for?

Individual Competencies:

Knowledge and knowledge updating, independence, accountability, the level of emotional control, i.e., keeping focused and calm during a crisis, are some key examples.

Managerial Competencies – these can apply as Personal Leadership Competences

This includes the ability to lead, inspire and motivate others, as well as self, and the ability to delegate and to manage performance effectively.

Analytical Competencies

Decision-making, analytical thinking, spatial awareness, risk-assessment skills, judgement and problem-solving are examples. Sometimes, psychometric tests are used to assess this, alongside business simulations, case studies and role plays. You should only use the latter further down the selection process as costs can be high. These will help you explore the intellectual capability of employees – the level of thinking, decision-making and problem-solving required in these roles.

Interpersonal Competencies

Social competence are really important in modern workforces, such as your employee’s ability to build rapport with others and negotiate and influence others. In addition having virtual communication skills and online collaboration skills is critical right now. These factors will help you to understand the level of team fit too.

Be clear about the harder-to-explore innate skills

While functional skills can be easily tested, there’s a need for innate skills, or inbuilt traits, to come to the fore. Resilience, perseverance, and being trustworthy are sought after traits. Interviewers will need to probe into how candidates have adapted from the challenges of the past 2 years, and how they are taking that learning into the future. These are harder to assess and are harder to change.

Before you start your recruitment exercise

So, before you even begin your recruitment exercise, think about how your organisation’s brand reflects the type or business you are and what type of people work for you. This will help pull in the right candidates into your recruitment activity. Make sure you carry out a focused role analysis to highlight technical skills needed and the range of personal attributes you’re looking for. How will you be able to assess candidates for these skills and characteristics during the recruitment and interview process? It’s important to make sure you the people you recruit will support your core business values. Starting your recruitment from a good base, will help the process run smoothly and save time in the long run.

Appointments Personnel have been supporting businesses with their recruitment for over 20 years, to find out how we can guide you through the process give us a call on 01782 338787 or contact us.