Your Marketing Content Targets Specific Buyers. Does Your Recruiting Content Target Specific Candidates? 

To make your sales and profit objectives for the new year, you need to hire eight new people (five entry-level, two five-to-seven-year types, and one 10-year plus person). Of course, given your experience in recent years and the lurking Great Resignation, you can expect two to four people to leave. Thus, your total hires will be ten to twelve. 

This hiring need (or your actual numbers) may seem overwhelming in today’s recruiting environment. Furthermore, your internal and external recruiting resources may be limited.

What can you do to address recruiting needs today and in the future?

Target Candidate

You cannot sell your products or services to everyone. In marketing, you are encouraged to identify your ideal customer as closely as possible. You want to gather as much information as you can about this prospect. You want to answer their questions and solve their problems.

Similarly, you want to develop an ideal candidate for open positions or anticipated openings in recruiting. The development of this candidate persona may involve several target candidate descriptions to accommodate your variety of roles.

However, many of these people will have similar qualitative characteristics making them ideal hires and hopefully long-term contributors to your company’s success.

Create your ideal candidate

The composition of your target candidate can start with the identification of strong performers in the organization. Discussions with supervisors, managers, and HR personnel should enable you to identify the individuals who will serve as role models for the type of people you would like to attract for future openings.

Once you identify these top performers, you can develop a candidate persona from the traits described by their supervisors. You may also want to interview some of these people to understand their backgrounds, interests, goals, etc. They may also be able to enlighten you about other individuals or sources of individuals that may provide target candidates. 

Some of the topics you may explore with them include:

• Why did you select our company?
• What factors were different than other organizations?
• What were the most important things you were looking for during your job search? 
• What do your friends looking for jobs consider essential in their searches?
• What associations, periodicals, information sources, or research did you rely on during your job search, and which are important now?

As in marketing, the profile of your ideal candidate may change with time, but the core description should be relatively constant.

Don’t Recruit the World. Recruit Your Ideal Candidate

You can’t attract everyone to your company, and you probably don’t want many of the people out there because they don’t have the quantitative or qualitative characteristics you seek. 

To help minimize off-target hires, go where your ideal candidates are. Appeal to these people by:

• Sharing information about your company.
• Providing access to or a copy of “Why We Are a Better Place to Work.” 
• Including testimonials or case studies of existing employees from the candidate’s location and circumstances.

This information may exist on your website in your Recruiting or Careers section. However, additional targeted content will raise awareness of your company as an outstanding place to work. It will set you apart from many other employers. It will encourage more viable candidates to come to you, and it will reduce your time and effort chasing an enormous universe of people who may or may not be able to make a difference at your company.

Attraction Replaces Acquisition

Hiring the wrong person or not filling a key position can devastate a company or department. The impact far outweighs the cost of recruiting and training the person.

Set your company apart and focus your recruiting time and resources on people who will bring you the most success. Create more awareness of who you are and what you offer to the right people. 

You will experience more success in this challenging recruiting environment by attracting selected candidates and encouraging them to learn more about you. And you will spend less time and money on candidates that will not make a difference in your organization’s long-term success.