ATTRACTING THE RIGHT CANDIDATE (PT 3)

We have looked at the many sources of candidates available for free or for a small advertising cost - but without the cost of a recruitment firm. Whatever approach you opt for, a key element in driving your recruitment is to ensure that the vacancy (opportunity) is presented in a way that will make it attractive to prospective candidate. This is what we're looking at this week.

Ensure Your Message Sells the Opportunity

Your goal (with my help) is to recruit the staff who will create a significant and positive impact for your business.

A risk with advertising (through traditional media, online media or through the social and business pages like LinkedIn etc) is that you only attract the people looking for jobs. These are not necessarily the strongest candidates in the market place as a whole.

To be fair, in a downturn there may be some good quality candidates being made available through redundancies etc. That aside, my experience of times of recession is that the strongest candidates are even more likely than at other times to stay with their existing employers for fear of being 'last in and first out' in a new organisation, and there's also often a general lack of confidence that the grass will be greener elsewhere.

This makes it vital that your advertisement conveys a powerful message that motivates a candidate to take action - including changing their job.

Unfortunately the reality is that, like the job specifications discussed earlier, typical adverts lead with a brief history of the company or a summary of what the candidate will be expected to do. This is dull! It will rarely attract the star candidates who can have a really positive impact on your business. (The only exceptions are if the employer is clearly the leader in their field or if it is obviously an extremely attractive proposition. Examples might be a mechanic joining a Formula 1 racing team or a web developer joining Google.)

State The Benefits

Most people are aware of the notions of 'features and benefits', and these apply to a vacancy too. When writing job adverts most people lead with features out of habit and, because it is a habit, it is easier to do so. This is not effective. Lead with the benefits.

A simple way to ensure you lead with the benefits and make your opportunity attractive is to ensure that the statements begin with the future tense, with modal verbs such as can and will. You then follow with features and these will be in the present tense - such as are. Also, focus on the person who will be joining you and not about your organisation.

A simple example from my own industry would be if we were looking for a recruitment consultant:

• We are a 10 year old recruitment company which has been working in the IT and engineering sectors. We are looking to hire an experienced recruiter to grow a desk in a niche market. You will have been running your own desk, be a self-starter and have written over £150,000 of new business per annum.

This is dull and sounds like most of the other job advertisements. Below is the same message but written with a bit more thought to the applicant's view.

• This is an exciting opportunity which will allow you to develop your career and take it in the direction you choose. You will be working with one of the strongest recruiters in the industry and will benefit from close one-to-one training which will ensure that you will learn rapidly and enjoy rapid career progression. You will be assisted via our reputation within our specialisations which will allow you far easier access to these markets, allowing you to build your career and income. You will have demonstrable career growth developed through building strong relationships with high integrity and you will want to learn from the best to be the best in the industry.

I hope you can see that the second example is more interesting and motivating. As a result, it is more likely to attract a high calibre applicant who can make a difference to the business.

It is a useful exercise to check the internet and the job pages in newspapers and read just how few advertisements talk about what is in it for the candidate, instead focusing on their own organisations or merely describing the job in hand.

In order to develop an appealing advertisement talk to your staff about why they joined, what makes the place exciting and/or fun and what encourages them to stay. Ask your clients and suppliers why they work with you. You may well pick up some interesting benefits you wouldn't have thought of by yourself, and it is far easier to use these than to sit down with a blank piece of paper wondering where to start.

Each company has reasons that people join and stay. It might be the management style, the way you interact with clients, the way you promote from within, your training or whatever. In the case of my own companies, it is the entrepreneurial style of the business that makes it attractive to creative sales people who can manage their time well.

Once you have some of the benefits of working with your company, you should look at what happens once the person has taken on the role. People who are going to make a difference to your business are going to be motivated. In order to be motivated to join your business they need to understand that if they produce more than you expect from them, then they will accelerate their progress or they will receive top rewards and recognition.

Which of the following sounds more appealing?-

• An accountant required to take over an existing client base and maintain the steady growth within the accounts.

Or

• An opportunity for you to progress to associate partner within the next two years by taking over an existing client base and maintaining the year on year growth of 5% or more per annum.

They are both the same role but it's not hard to see that the second version is far more likely to attract the high achiever who will make a difference to your business.

Leading with benefits rather than features takes practice but the good thing is, it becomes easier the more you think this way. The differences between making really good appointments versus average or poor recruits are huge . More is achieved, the workplace buzzes, you can trust your team to perform for you and you have fewer personnel issues as the great candidates will not require the hand-holding and support. Learning to 'think benefits' is worth the effort.

Measure Your Responses

Recruitment sources established and attractive benefit-led advert written, a vital additional preliminary step is to make sure you can measure each route to market and each advertisement for efficacy.

A simple spreadsheet will be fine for this, tracking each advert and each medium used. It should detail the number of responses, the number taken forward and the interviews, notes on the interviews through to job-offer, acceptance and start. Each time you tweak an ad or place it through a different medium the response should be tracked separately. This will provide a detailed, simple-to-use recruitment pipeline which, at the same time, allows you to quickly see what has and what hasn’t worked with your advertising mediums and ad wordings, so you can be more effective in the future. This might sound like a small thing, but get it in place before you actually start recruiting or you'll quickly lose the ability to track what you're doing - thus making learning from what you do impossible.

Contact me if you would like help in setting tracking up. It is very straightforward to take on once you have it in place and have used it 'for real'.

Next Time:

How to handle the response and candidate pipeline.