If you live in Kansas City, you know it’s one of the best-kept secrets in the country. And if you’ve tried to attract talent from outside the metro area to KC, you might have found that it’s a little too well-kept! All that is changing, however, as more and more people are discovering Kansas City—Travel and Leisure just included KC on their Top 20 Most Cultured Cities list, and more and more online articles are singling out the metro area for its affordability and job growth. As result, Kansas City businesses are now able to compete with those located everywhere from New York to Silicone Valley, so long as they know how to draw in the most talented workers in the field.
It would be nice if the best talent in the country was already in our neighborhood, but that isn’t always the case. Gold-standard engineering firms like Burns & McDonnell, Black & Veatch, and HNTB are nationally ranked because they recruit the best employees in the business from around the country. A respected contract recruiting firm in Kansas City can take care of the heavy lifting of cross-country recruitment, but there are also a number of little things companies can take care of internally to make sure that top-tier talent is intrigued from the very beginning. Here are but a few of the basics:
- Make sure your job descriptions are concise, clear, and easy to understand. That goes double for describing your company culture. This ensures a better fit for your potential hires.
- Detail your company’s triumphs in the field, and the potential for personal success that your employees enjoy.
- In addition to the description of the job itself, play up the quality of life in Kansas City. Make relocating to the area an enticement if and of itself.
- Consider the benefits of allowing remote work, at least partially.
- Provide perks such as employee parking spaces.
- Keep the initial application process quick and painless.
- If a potential hire makes it to further rounds of interviews, consider giving them a single point of contact in HR. That way they can build a rapport with someone at the company before they are even offered a job.
- Once it becomes appropriate to discuss, be clear and direct about salary and benefits.
- Make it obvious you are respectful of their time.
- In this increasingly connected world of media-savvy professionals, do everything you can to be a great employer with effective managers and a solid work environment. This will generate the sort of word-of-mouth praise that money can’t buy.
- Make a connection at your local Chamber of Commerce and ask them about marketing ideas—they know the metro area better than anyone and are always looking toward economic development, and how best to sell the city to new arrivals.
Austin Nichols Technical Search isn’t just the most trusted Kansas City recruiting company; we’re also the best. We offer direct hire and contract recruiting for engineering, technical, and manufacturing positions. We have been in business since 1988, and are committed to helping our clients stay ahead of the game by acquiring top industry talent through direct hire and contract recruiting.
