Education, training and mentorship are some of the easiest ways to promote professional development opportunities. Most companies need a culture where employees receive training and career development opportunities. It helps them do their jobs effectively, learn new things to get promoted and take up greater responsibilities.
What is training & development? And how you can use it to attract and retain talent.
Training and development opportunities are initiatives employers take to train and upskill their employees. It, in turn, helps them improve their employees’ performance at work. Also, it attracts fresh graduates and inexperienced but talented candidates.
Follow the below steps to build a culture with ample professional development opportunities.
1. Share your company’s purpose
Companies that communicate the purpose and demonstrate them efficiently attract top contenders. Young talents are more likely to consider opportunities where they can see their work creating an impact and driving business.
Share with your employees the purpose of your company’s existence. How the product and service you sell impacts your consumers.
2. Cultivate growth mindset
People with fixed mindsets tend to believe they cannot gain skills and intelligence over time. Hence, you must have a team where people have a growth mindset, believing they can earn skills through hard work, strategies and training.
Create an environment where criticism is a positive thing and challenges are opportunities for self-improvement. Offer freedom to adopt different learning tactics. It will help them strengthen their problem-solving skills and develop a growth mindset.
3. Offer learning opportunities
While on-the-job training is the most effective learning opportunity, many companies provide their employees with e-learning facilities to study things that could help them do their jobs better or add extra skills.
Also, making mistakes is the best way to learn and improve. Hence, develop a culture where you embrace imperfection so people don’t hide their weaknesses but overcome them.
4. Encourage promotion and advancement to top performers
When you have people in your company who are individual contributors with the potential to lead others, you must put them on a track to expand their competencies. Facilitate additional degrees or certifications required for those leadership positions. It will help you ensure that talented people stick with you for a long time.
5. Facilitate cross-functional work opportunities
Working in a cross-functional team, you get to see business challenges from every angle. You network with people working towards different business objectives and possessing different skills. Thus, you can better understand the challenges of a business overall and come up with solutions that work. You will have the opportunity to move to responsible roles and get promoted to senior leadership positions.
How to use learning and development benefits to attract talented candidates
Investing in employees’ career development and promoting it in your recruitment marketing strengthens your employer branding. Companies have started using training and development opportunities to attract candidates in the following ways.
1. Mention learning and development opportunities in job descriptions
Job description with learning and growth opportunities gets many applications. If you provide enough opportunities for your employees to learn new things, add new skills and bag good opportunities, why not mention it in the job description?
To make job descriptions attractive, along with impressive office perks and health benefits, recruiters mention L&D benefits to attract candidates to apply for their jobs.
2. Share career transformation stories on LinkedIn and other social media
Share the career transformation stories of your employees on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Young talent actively engages in activities on Linked and other social media sites to look for opportunities to learn and implement. Therefore, an impressive career transformation story will likely grab the attention of a large number of talented candidates.
3. Highlight on your career page how you emphasise learning and development
Candidates visit your career page to explore the range of benefits you offer your employees. Consider using the career page to highlight learning and development opportunities. It will positively impact candidates’ decision to view jobs and apply.
Learning and development programs are the best ways to strengthen your existing workforce. It helps them learn new skills and implement new strategies. It provides candidates with an incentive to join your company and helps retain the current workforce.
