Are your recruitment efforts struggling to find any interesting candidates?

If your recruitment is struggling to find the perfect candidate, the chances are that you’re also struggling to look an interesting employer…

I hear many business owners complaining about the challenge of finding the right new team members – yet the talent certainly exists. The real challenge is attracting the talent to YOUR particular job! And I have some suggestions to help you here.

Start thinking about your recruitment just like you think about your marketing – it’s as simple as T.O.C., which is well known to any of my clients! This stands for:

Target

Offer

Copy

Your marketing is Customer-centric, yes! But is your recruitment Candidate-centric?

We’re looking to attract the largest possible pool of candidates to then run them through a de-selection process. Yes! It’s a candidate de-selection process rather than an employer selection process – but more of that in a later blog…

Back to creating that large pool of candidates using T.O.C…

Target

Who exactly are you targeting to be your next employee? As in a marketing scenario, this is the most important step to consider. Remember to hire on attitude rather than skill, because it is so much easier and quicker to fill any skills gaps than to try to change someone’s attitude! So, get clear on what values and attitudes you are wanting to see in your new team member – presumably the values which reflect the culture of your business – so your company values would be a good starting point. What other characteristics do you need – Self-starter? Flexible? Fun? Attention to detail? Organised? Creative? Be very prescriptive here! The clearer you are here, the more likely you are to attract your ideal person.

There will, of course, be certain technical and/or functional skills that the candidate will need to be proficient at – but be strict with yourself here. What is the lowest level of skill that is absolutely necessary for someone to have at the start of the job? Remember you want the largest pool of candidates to find the person with the best attitude and culture match, so you can’t be eliminating too many based on technical/functional skill sets. And finally, challenge yourself on what experiences they really need – emphasis on need? If they have the required minimum skill set, do they absolutely need experience within your specific sector as well? Or with the right attitude, will they be able to take the benefit of their skills developed elsewhere and transfer that to your sector – with the added benefit of having a broader perspective!

Now that you’re much clearer about what you’re looking for, we can move on to shaping an offer which will attract them.

Offer

So, what are you going to be offering this ideal candidate? Let’s go back to our marketing analogy. Here we’re really asking: What benefits are they receiving in exchange for applying their skills, experience and a great attitude to your business? And by the way, money forms no more than 10% of someone’s decision to take or stay in a job – there are many more important things you need to be offering.

What are the real benefits for someone working in your team, in your office, and in this particular job? What can you offer to stand out from the crowd? Think:

  • Career development support
  • Personal growth
  • Flexible working
  • Fun atmosphere
  • Latest tech to work with
  • Great teammates
  • Stretching assignments
  • Creative environment
  • Top tier clients

These aspects hold more sway than traditional pay and benefits (which are taken as a given) and are much more difficult for your competitors to replicate.

But here’s the catch – you have to deliver. If you can’t deliver against it, don’t offer it! You’ll just be lining up a high employee turnover rate once they discover it was a load of hot air – which is expensive, time wasting and reputation-damaging…

Copy

With your target and offer clear, you now have all the information you need to start writing your Copy, whether that’s a job advert, a Facebook post, or your conversation with prospects. The opportunity here is to communicate what you’re looking for and the offer in return, in a way which will appeal to your target candidate. If ‘fun’ and ‘creative’ is part of your brief, then make your words and visual look fun and creative… Looking for someone who brings order and structure, then make sure you have a clean layout with clear information. If you need fluency in French, then write it in French! Use the headline to shout about the biggest benefit of working in this job, for your business. Don’t waste the headline space for your company name – unless you’re a highly aspirational career brand.

We have a saying ‘Communication is the response you get’. Think about that for a moment. Because recruitment is brutal in giving you feedback on your communication. If you’re not getting the applicant response that you’re looking for, then you’re not communicating to your target candidates in the right way, or with the right offer – for them. Try, try again until you get the response you want. The candidates are out there, you just need to fish for them in the right way…

If you’d like to learn how to be more successful recruiting new team members, without forking out thousands of pounds on recruitment fees, then click here to arrange an exploratory phone call with Helen at ActionCOACH Chilterns.