Attracting high potentials: What do they look for when selecting a job?

Almost all companies are subject to daily competition. If you want to be better than your competitors, you need to have top employees who can easily cope with new challenges and innovations. However, turnover is particularly high at the higher levels in the hierarchy. If staff changes frequently, this can have a negative impact on your working atmosphere and may also affect the company's success. It is therefore important for companies to have as many high potentials as possible. However, it is not easy to recruit such employees for your company. This is because high potentials can usually choose between different jobs. Find out what a top performer is, which working environment is attractive for high potentials and how to recognize high potentials.

High Potentials Definition - what makes a high potential?

High Potentials is a synonym or the English word for "high potential" and refers to a junior employee who offers a higher value to your company due to their skills and personal characteristics. As a rule, the high potentials age is low, because they are almost always university graduates who have a diploma or a master's degree. They have usually already attracted positive attention due to their special achievements, which means that you can also expect a high level of motivation.

High potentials think in an interdisciplinary way, are able to lead employees and take on responsibility. They also have a particularly high willingness to perform and special skills. High potentials are the best of the best and, as the name suggests, have a particularly high potential. They do not necessarily have to be High Potentials German, but applicants from abroad can also be quite interesting. The characteristics of High Potentials are:

• Load capacity
• Motivation
• Flexibility
• holistic, networked thinking
• mental agility
• Social and self competence
• Leadership

Recognizing high potentials - how do I recognize high potentials?

In order to recognize high potentials, you must be able to identify this potential already in the applications. As a rule, you can recognize such applicants on the basis of outstanding school and academic performance, and high potentials are usually among the best in their year. In addition to their academic and professional achievements, such applicants are often distinguished by their involvement outside of work, for example in a club or in an honorary position.

If a resume shows the typical characteristics of high potentials, you should get to know these candidates personally in an interview and, of course, ask the usual standard questions and review the previously mentioned criteria. However, you as a company must also meet some requirements. These include, for example, making sure that the description of the job is as realistic as possible, because this is the only way that ambitious applicants can decide for or against the job on the basis of this information. If, on the other hand, you promise things you can't deliver or exaggerate, you may gain a new employee, but you'll probably lose him or her again pretty quickly.

Recruit high performers and create the right working environment

Top performers are among highly competitive candidates, so your recruiting process should be quick and meaningful. If you leave yourself too much time between the individual steps in the application process, a promising candidate may decide to go to another company. This is because, as a rule, such high potentials can choose their employers. If the application process is too complicated or the feedback is too late, this deters applicants.

Check in advance which factors are important to young talent. This is not always the highest possible salary. Instead, graduates and students would like to be able to develop themselves further. For example, a suitable working environment is more important than a fair salary. Accordingly, you as an employer must be convincing. For example, high performers from Generation Y are looking for a fair and supportive working environment. For this reason, you need to implement various measures to retain employees or attract new high potentials. You can do this best if you know what such top performers look for when selecting a job.

Working hours should be family-friendly and flexible, but further training opportunities are also very important. Any overtime should either be compensated or offset. Despite all ambition, a good work-life balance is very important to high potentials. A high potentials program on offer enables employees to develop further. The following work environment is attractive to them:

1. Working hours are family friendly and flexible
2. There is a special high potentials program for continuing education
3. Compensation or compensation for overtime
4. Offer of a home office
5. Ways to interrupt the work
6. Performance-related bonuses
7. Direct participation in the success of the company (employee participation)
8. Monetary advantages
9. Career planning support
10. Personal work environment (formality)

Attracting and retaining high potentials step by step

You need a good strategy to identify and attract high potential employees. After identifying and attracting them, you should strive to promote the high potentials and also retain them. After all, it is significantly easier to retain an employee than to find a new special talent.

1. identify and attract high potentials

You can convince high potentials to choose you as their employer by meeting some requirements. These are, for example:

• Realistic job descriptions: employees will only stay with you for a short time if you either over-promise or deliberately withhold important information.
• Fast application process: if you take too much time in selecting potential candidates, if you do not have a good organization and approach to the application process, you will lose many applicants.
• Good onboarding: After the employment contract is signed, you should ensure good onboarding. Talented and ambitious employees are happy if they have access to all the necessary programs right from the start, are provided with a well-equipped workplace and the organization is orderly. That way, the new employees can get started right away.
• Successful branding: You have little chance of winning over high potentials if you don't have good branding. In the battle for future top Generation Y employees, a good work-life balance, an appealing corporate culture and the option for further development are the most attractive.

2. promote high potentials

Employees who excel in their work and are considered future leaders want to be continuously promoted . The urge to develop comes from the top employees themselves. After all, they are constantly on the lookout for new challenges and perspectives. Therefore, you should know how to promote high potentials.

Various special high potentials programs are offered for this promotion of junior staff. Typical measures include further training, coaching and trainee programs. Successful HR developers use mentoring programs in which high potentials are assigned a personal coach to help them master day-to-day tasks.

3. bind high potentials

Once you have found employees with high potential, you should strive to retain them. You must try to retain interesting employees by creating prospects. One good way to do this is through employee stock options. In doing so you give employees a direct directly in your value creation and the resulting company success. If profits are distributed or if the company is sold, employees participate in this. This can lead to a very large cash inflow, especially for employees who were hired early on.

Provide regular feedback and check with your employees to see what their goals and wishes are. From this, you can derive projects and plans and determine the employee's future career. In this way, you increase the employee's loyalty to your company. But other benefits also ensure that your interesting talents stay in the company permanently. These are not only monetary incentives, but also a distinctive corporate culture, fair working hours, the offer of a home office or other measures that we have discussed in the previous sections.

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Disclaimer: The contents of the information offered at esop-direkt.de do not constitute legal advice. If you require a legal review of your individual case, please contact our specialized team: beratung@esop-direkt.de‍