Attracting the Right Talent
Attracting the Right Talent
Selecting the right candidate from a pool of applicants is much easier if the right people have applied, but for this to happen your job advert has to have appeared in front of your ideal candidates and also given them a reason to apply. This is not always easy to achieve, but here are some tips on how you can attract the right people to your company.
Know your ideal candidate
Before you do anything else, work out who your ideal candidate is – what skills, experience, values, characteristics and behaviours do you want them to have? Knowing who you want and what motivates them makes it easier for you to work out where to find them and also how to write a job advert that appeals to them.
Target the job advert
Once you know who your ideal candidate is, target your job advert to them. Start with skills and experience; if it is a highly-skilled job, asking for mostly generic skills may dissuade more qualified candidates from applying and likewise, including lots of unnecessary requirements in the adverts for other positions could discourage your perfect candidate by making them think they are underqualified. Splitting criteria up into essential and desirable skills and traits makes your requirements obvious, and gives both you and potential candidates a better idea of what you are actually looking for.
Attracting employees is as much about what you can offer them as what they can give you. Make your advert engaging and the role worth applying to. If your ideal employee is career and opportunities driven, mention career progression possibilities but if flexi-time and the social scene are bigger drivers, focus on those benefits instead. However, be careful not to over sell the role as it could cause you problems later; your new employee will expect everything you offered, and not following through with promises is likely to lead to dissatisfaction and a lack of motivation.
Advertise in the right places
There are an endless number of places to advertise a job nowadays. Whilst putting an advert everywhere will likely give you huge number of applicants, it is also likely to cost you money and there is no guarantee you will get your return. Doing some research into where your ideal candidates are will enable you to target the right people. This can include more general job sites but also industry specific job boards, forums and mailing lists.
Don’t wait for candidates to come to you
With the rise of social media and LinkedIn, you don’t need to wait for candidates to come to you. Instead, search for your ideal candidates and notify them of your company and available positions. Whether they apply or not, making contact and building strong relationships may benefit you in the future.
Build a good reputation
Bad reputations spread quickly and great employees are unlikely to want to work for companies that receive copious amounts of negative feedback. Treating your staff, candidates and clients well will help to build a positive image, but you can also use social media channels and blogs to talk about life in your company, whether generally or more specifically in terms of rewards and benefits.
How e-Talent can help
Once you’ve attracted candidates it’s a good idea to have a system in place to find your ideal candidate amongst all the applications. E-Talent psychometrically tests every candidate and presents you with an ordered list with the best applicants at the top making it much easier to separate the wheat from the chaff.
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