The Great Resignation is upon us. At a time when the world is struggling with increasing costs of living, one would think that employment, and being employed, would be at the top of the list for importance in one’s life. Call it what you want, the reality is that the workplace as we knew it before the pandemic of 2020 now has a very different look and feel, and employers are grasping for ways to attract and retain qualified individuals.

Heartland Bank is not totally out of the woods regarding the current hiring crisis. The bank is, however, empowering its Human Resources staff to research, evaluate and contemplate all options to win over those job shoppers and career seekers – because at Heartland, your career is an adventure, and your adventure can be your career!

With a respectable percentage of the staff accumulating over 10 years of service, Heartland is not at all used to being in the competition space when it comes to recruiting associates. Rather than a backlog of associates wanting positions at the bank in the early years, the bank now finds the need to employ strategies to bump up referrals with associate incentives, focus on social media presence in the HR space and offer attractive benefits that match the local financial employment landscape.

“I do think it’s different. The loyalty to your job has changed, “said Stephanie Marshall, vice president and talent acquisition manager at Heartland. “If you’ve stayed at a job more than a year, why have you not moved?” Is it because you enjoy your position, or is it that you have no determination to better yourself and progress in your career? Stephanie deals with this dilemma daily relating to the prospects she interviews as she works to supply hiring managers with the most appealing candidates possible.

Although job hopping even within Heartland presents challenges for backfilling positions, Stephanie admits, “You don’t want to stunt someone’s growth.” One of her questions during the interview process is always, “Where do you want to be several years from now?” She asks the question with full realization that it means she could very well be interviewing for the same position in as little as a year. As the bank grows and new positions are added, along with career progression, Stephanie’s work never slows.

While traditional job fairs and websites like Indeed are still commonly utilized, LinkedIn and TikTok are Stephanie’s tools of choice with videos receiving an overwhelming response and logging views totaling around 5,000 to 6,000 each. Virtual and in-person job fairs have been successful, and she’s hired from them, but she is very cognizant of overkill – with both the job fairs and her videos. As a result, she relies on one last method for recruitment and is very proud to share the figures from in-house associate referrals. To date, she has processed 190 associate referrals and hired 29% of the candidates. The retention rate of those 54 associates is 82% - an impressive figure with the current challenges in the HR landscape.

Is Heartland for you? From the interns to the executives, the feeling is mutual. Heartland is a community bank in every, true sense of the word and strives to uphold and embrace the definition on a daily basis. By providing value in all relationships from clients to customers to associates, Heartland boasts that relationships matter with the success to back it up. Check us out, and let Stephanie know that you’d like to come on over the Heartland!