To Recruit the Best, You Must Know What You Need

By Tess Curle Taylor, PHR, CPC

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In every recruiter’s experience, there's a fine line between advertising for the candidates that you need and hiring the candidates you really want. Oftentimes, as recruitment pros, we focus too broadly on skillsets instead of on the unique qualities that desired candidates bring to the table. Or we hire based on a gut feeling alone. It can be all too easy to hire based on crucial needs and forget about taking the time to select candidates who are the perfect fit for the company culture and objectives.

Getting Closer to a Great Hire 

To hire well, one must be able to go beyond the immediate needs to look to the future needs of the organization. This requires understanding fully what you need in candidates who will stick around for the long term…long enough to gain a positive return on the time invested in this process.

Do you really know what you need, or are you falling into the trap of simply filling assignments with warm bodies?

Here’s how to determine this:

  • Are your time to placement rates more important to you than candidate retention rates?
  • Do you often find yourself placing the same types of candidates into jobs over and over again?
  • Read your job advertisements – are they speaking to the core of organizational growth and succession?

Getting to the root of what you need in candidates takes time and practice, but it can result in more successful hires. This, in turn, increases your ability to spot a great candidate. To accomplish this, there is a process.

#1 – Develop clarity about the assignment requirements.

A vast number of assignments and job types have changed over the years, leaving certain requirements behind and adding new ones. Take the time to consider what the organization needs each assignment to include as part of the whole team structure. Connect with floor managers to make a complete list of the desired skills, tasks, personality, and backgrounds that are based on previous historical successes for that assignment.  

#2 – Create an ideal candidate profile.

Once you have established a clear and accurate job requirement list, you can begin to create a candidate profile of what the ideal employee “looks” like. What skills, experiences, and personality does the candidate have? What type of professional will fit the team and culture? What social networks do they participate in? This may seem somewhat uncomfortable at first, but going through this exercise helps you to know you are on the right track with potential candidates.

#3 – Write a clear and targeted job description.

It’s common to work with a job description that’s overly vague or watered down. Some recruiters resort to this for fear of turning away potential candidates who may possess some of the desired traits. Don’t fall into this habit. Instead, use your job descriptions to build focused job advertisements to attract the right candidates. This brings you closer to the candidates you want.

#4 – Go after candidates on their turf to hit pay dirt.

Now that you have a complete picture of the type of candidate you want to attract, your job is to use your resources and networks to reel them in. Head for the places they frequent and use smart social networking skills to create buzz about your job advertisement(s). Create dialogue with promising candidates and speak their language during interviews. Make them see that you have something to offer them because you know them well.

By using the above strategy, you will go from a half-warm recruiter to a recruiter on fire. Go after what you want believing that you can find it, and the right candidates will respond in kind.

The kind of stuff that Social Hire do...

The team at Social Hire won't just do social media management. Our team work closely with your team to ensure your business sees great value from the service and that your team gets tangible results.

What the Social Hire gang loves is making a difference for our clients, and we don't want to waste your, or our resources on campaigns that aren't right for your organisation, if it doesn't get your organisation the difference you need - we prefer a better approach. When your business utilises social media management, Social Hire get your brand the exposure it needs and offer your business the lift it needs to improve.

Is it important to you to increase the digital footprint of your business by utilising online promotion, but can't work out how to begin?With the professional understanding of our digital experts working in your business, you can begin to see interaction, brand loyalty and enquiries get better without having to take your team out to spend time on ineffective marketing strategies, or spend money on a internal marketing manager with a view to get results that may not deliver!

Our group of specialists are an organisation that helps our clients boost their online marketing by offering social media management services on a monthly basis.

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