Competing for talent

Finding the right job candidates is more difficult in the current job market, but getting your top picks to accept a job can be even harder. When candidates are considering competing job offers, salary will certainly be at or near the top of their lists of pros and cons for each potential position.

But salary isn’t the only factor. What else could your company offer potential new hires that other companies may not? Here are five possibilities:

The chance to stretch professionally

Your job will be more attractive to candidates if it gives them the chance to accelerate their careers. Will they be working with groundbreaking technology? Will they be given challenging work assignments? If your company tends to hire for talent and potential rather than proven experience, that’s definitely something to include in your storytelling of what working at your company is like.

Managers who have their backs

That old adage about people quitting managers, not companies, has a corollary in hiring. Job candidates want to know they’ll be working for a manager who will support them, remove hurdles for them and help them steer their career to the next level. Encourage your managers to talk with potential candidates about how they like to be managed and where they want to go, not just where they’ve been.

Freedom from meeting overload

How’s the meeting culture in your company? If employees are generally able to spend most of their time working instead of sitting in meetings, that could score major points with job candidates. If the position you’re hiring for requires a lot of meeting time, maybe there’s an opportunity to carve out a day, or part of a day, each week that’s meeting-free. People crave doing the work they were hired to do.

Ability to flex work around life

Offering a hybrid work model is one element of flexibility, but will the job flex around their life during the workday? They may want to coach their kid’s robotics team one afternoon a week, or train for an Ironman in the morning before it’s too hot. They could have a live-in parent who needs their care during the day. That sort of flexibility could be enough to sell some job candidates.

The promise of a sabbatical

This is the sort of perk that can really tip the scales toward your job offer. Companies from Patagonia to The Cheesecake Factory are offering paid sabbaticals, usually from a few weeks to a few months, for employees who’ve been with the company a certain length of time. The idea of a sabbatical can spark the imagination for job candidates and provide an emotional pull for your company.