Top Tips From Real Women About Getting Real With Female Talent Acquisition

“Nevertheless, she persisted.”

The rally cry for Women’s History Month falls right in line with the ongoing female empowerment movement. No matter what’s tossed their way, women continue to push and pull to get the rights they deserve.

This is especially true in the workplace where women aren’t only fighting for equal rights, but also the right to their own unique experiences.

With women feeling more empowered than ever, they’re refusing to accept subpar job offers with mediocre benefits and opportunities. Hiring pros need to understand how this movement is affecting their talent acquisition strategies in order to attract the best and brightest female talent.

Here are a few top hiring tips from powerful female bosses looking to make a change for women everywhere:

Know what female talent values

At FairyGodBoss, we know from our own research that women seek jobs differently than men and that their key drivers for job place satisfaction differ as well. When it comes to female talent acquisition, employers must think about how they are recruiting women and what’s important to female job seekers. We know that women:

• Value work-life balance
• Are more likely to rely on friends and family for finding a job
• Rely more on job review sites

Employers must invest in storytelling and showcase why their company is good for women in order to attract and retain top female talent.

Mary Pharris, Director of Business Development and Partnerships at FairyGodBoss

Partner trust with flexibility

Here at Stories Inc., we have found the traits that attract female talent the most are flexibility and ownership. When balancing a career with their personal lives, allowing remote employees to make their own hours and come and go as they please is critical to many women’s success and satisfaction.

Going hand-in-hand with flexibility is the ownership and trust the company places in the individual. Just because she may not be at her desk for the traditional nine-to-five, doesn’t mean she isn’t getting her work done. The company needs to trust her to be successful and deliver on her schedule.

Lauryn Sargent, Partner and Co-founder of Stories Inc.

Start at the top with inclusion

The office feeling is very important. You have to have an inclusion plan in place but that doesn’t just happen overnight. Making a company attractive to female talent starts at the top. Have the executives onboard and very involved in this process. Females can read right through someone who isn’t sincere.

Techees goes to Women Meetup Groups and makes sure we’re well known in the community. Because of the empowerment movement, a lot of women assume they will be taken advantage of when it comes to salary negotiations during the talent acquisition process.

That is just not the case. We happily handle the negotiations for them so there is no worry. If anything, we have the most power right now — we just don’t all know it or realize it yet.

Brianna Rooney, Founder of Techees.com

Enhance the working experience

Being a woman in business often includes trying to achieve a top management position in a company or in your own business. Nowadays, female CEOs and directors are a small minority —  even though women are thought to have a better personality to manage a crisis because we are seen as more intuitive, understanding, and sympathetic than men.

Facing this reality, we must think about women and gender equality as a necessary and essential resource for our companies. We need meaningful inclusion of women in decision-making, satisfactory work environment, job stability, and the possibility of projecting ourselves into the future as professionals and as women.

Sophie Miles, CEO of QuotesAdvisor.com in USA, Canada and South Africa

Get women involved in your hiring process

I’ll be honest, I don’t think women have been able to truly embrace the empowerment movement as a way to shock talent acquisition. So for those who have built this large personal brand, where companies clamor over their experience, those women have been able to command several different things.

One of the largest attraction strategies is that you need to have women involved in the hiring process and you need to empower those women to express their experience with the company that’s hiring.

These authentic stories (that are not diluted) are what increase the perception of the organization and increase the likelihood that an empowered woman would want to consider the opportunity.

Lindsay Mustain, Founder of Talent Paradigm

Offer success-building opportunities

Room for advancement has been our biggest draw for powerhouse female talent. In my organization, team members have the autonomy to take on projects that they are interested in and passionate about. The opportunity to create your own success has attracted our best female talent.

To attract female talent, host women-centric workshops to engage powerhouse females in the community with your business. Announce open positions within the company, at the workshops.

Candice Simons, Owner and President of Brooklyn Outdoor and j’adore Detroit

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What talent acquisition tips do you have for attracting and hiring top female talent? Let us know!