April 1, 2019

Ready To Launch! Five Steps That Kick Off Your Recruiting

by Mary Newgard

According to LinkedIn and Careerbuilder, in an ultra-competitive job market you have four seconds to get a candidate’s attention. To put that in perspective, other things you can do in four seconds include:

  • Breathe in, breathe out
  • A few jumping jacks
  • Tweet about your team’s loss
  • Speed date (weird, I know, but it’s according to Wikipedia)

Attention grabbing headlines and exciting information in a job description is just the beginning of the process to launch a job search!

STEP ONE: DETERMINE YOUR PROFILE

Build a recruitable profile with firm requirements selected from only 2 of the 3 buckets. Inflexible on issues from all three categories? Congratulations, you’re looking for a purple squirrel.

  1. Experience: What do you want to see on the candidate’s resume and work history?
  2. Source: What competitors, vendors and associations/institutions do you want to solicit people from?
  3. Location: Are relo candidates an option? Will you pay for that? How about remote or satellite office placement?

STEP TWO: DEPUTIZE SEARCH LEADERS

HR and Talent Acquisition teams often describe the internal process as ‘herding cats’. Help them help you by making decisions early on related to this topics:

  • Hiring managers and their decision making authority
  • Market trends and candidate pool conditions
  • Compensation structure and limitations
  • Timeline to interview and hire
  • TCOH (Total Cost of Hire)- budgets for ads, on-site interviews and search fees
  • Applicant intake, data entry, screening and interview questions

STEP THREE: CREATE A SCRIPT

Writing the job description sets all the other wheels in motion. Pro tip on writing job descriptions: Break down responsibilities into percentages. Example: 80% of this job is account management with 10% being new business marketing and 10% travel to conduct on-site client review meetings.

  • Talking Points (About the role and the company. Be on point with your value proposition.)
  • Differentiation (What makes this role at this time compelling?)
  • Interview Scripts (Candidates care about consistency from hiring managers.)
  • Calls to Action (Prompt interview feedback keeps candidates engaged.)
  • LinkedIn Messages/InMails (What content will generate a response?)

STEP FOUR: ADVERTISE

You’ve worked hard to write a great job description. The hiring managers are engaged and ready to get the message out there. Here are two mantras to live by:

  1. Be Everywhere All the Time.
  2. Talk to EVERYONE!

Basically, don’t overthink advertising the job opening. You’ll always get junk applications but you have to focus on sifting through the noise quickly to assess what is and isn’t working.

STEP FIVE: CONNECT & SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Job boards have a lot of great qualities but one drawback is the short shelf life. Your job’s visibility on their sites depend on other jobs and how much companies are willing to pay to boost their ad. Thirty days has typically been when a posting goes stale, but so many companies have openings there are jobs that are on page 8 after 24-hours. Social media is broader than you might think. It includes sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram as well as your company’s website and Glassdoor.

  • Social media engages current employees in the search
  • Social media allows hiring managers to see what’s happening with applicant responses
  • Social media activity dramatically increases employee referrals
  • Social media free advertising (aside from paying for jobs on LinkedIn)
  • Social media is a platform for sharing jobs at the same time you display the company’s culture

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