As a talent crunch hits companies in an increasing number of industries hiring managers are finding it tougher to hire quality people within budgeted CTC (cost-to-company) levels. "All prospective employees are looking for is more money" is an often heard plaint among recruiters.

The reality however is not as straightforward. People have their own criteria set for evaluating offers. It seems that this list has a fixed priority sequencing. Prospective hires tend to be grouped in terms of what is most important to them, a person may it would be said will look at money first and the company brand will not matter or another person will look at the company brand but only if the money is good too.

I believe that prospective employees evaluate offers on several criteria but what is important is that the prioritization of these is not fixed as is often assumed. The relative differences in competing offers on each criteria impact the importance they will have in the employee's mind while evaluating. Let's say that of several jobs on offer for an employee, one is from a company that is offering a significantly challenging role and the company is known for being a trail-blazer of sorts giving its people the freedom and challenges to shine. The others don't even come close on this count though the money they offer maybe more. In a situation like this even if the employee had started out with a criteria that ranked money or company brand over all other factors, this offer will lead to a re-assessment of priorities. The employee may actually end up taking this offer because it offers something so significantly different from others. It would re-order the importance of criteria on which the person makes the choice. As a corollary, when most jobs seem similar the priority of hygiene aspects like money, employer branding and workplace take priority over other factors.

This is an important insight for companies wanting to hire people over formidable competition. Pick the most important aspect of what you can offer, build upon it to create a large lead over others and then play it up so that this aspect more than anything else is how you are seen by prospective employees. An important spin-off advantage is that you will end-up with people who are culturally similar, which only reinforces the image you tried to project in the first place.

As you go building your "employer brand" it would be useful to project one strong dimension, whether that is they money on offer, your workplace environment or your people empowerment. Just make sure you are seen to represent that above all.