When attracting candidates, the more you let them know, the better they’ll fit.
Social media is a given for today’s companies. The big sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter all have company profiles from the smallest businesses to the largest corporation. Last year saw a 500% leap in the number of employers who used social media to recruit candidates, and 70% of total employers used social media for recruiting in 2017.
What if we reverse that scenario? Can prospective job applicants find you in such large numbers, and if they can, will what they find let them know everything they need? There’s an art to providing the kind of public profile that will inform and inspire the right candidates, while letting a poor fit know it’s not worth wasting everyone’s time. It’s also in a business’ best interests to be proactive with their physical presence when finding new hires.
Consider more traditional methods of reaching potential hires
First, let’s look at how to get yourself out there. As demonstrated, social media is rife with employers and jobseekers. A business will do well in communicating a sense of energy and vitality if they keep their pages up to date and providing new content. It’s the quickest and easiest way to let hires know who you are, but it’s also the most crowded. Everyone’s going to be doing it, so how to make yourself stand out?
A concise bio for your company (alongside engaging media content like blogs, free items, and job postings) goes some way to saying who you are, but not all the way. The more places you can advertise yourself, the more industrious and dedicated you will be. Candidates want to see energy from a prospective employer as much as vice versa.
TV is more popular than ever (with billboards still effective), and job fairs are still thriving places to meet and greet jobseekers face-to-face. An even better idea is to host your own job fair. Initiative and drive as an employer will inspire the same in anyone out there who’s looking to get hired.
Likewise, if employers attend colleges and universities to provide information on their businesses and related opportunities, they’ll get a jump on the competition while future employees are still in the making. Again, this is a powerful opportunity to inspire candidates, especially younger people who may be concerned about their future prospects. A good fit early is the best fit of all.
Expanding on the theme of education
To further the point of benefiting from connecting with students, consider Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs as they’re commonly referred to. MOOCs are a two-fold educational frontier: training students in new skills while adding to the existing skills of others. They’ve been called the birthplace of the new jobseeker and they have the backing to add weight to the claim.
Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and many other highly-respected institutions are providing MOOCs and shaping the employee of the future. Industrious employers are becoming part of this frontier and creating their own MOOC curriculums that will inform, educate, and guide students into their company culture. For more on how this can be effective in attracting candidates, visit leading MOOC sites like Udacity, Coursera and edX.
Own the job boards
Potential employees will be making use of recruitment sites. Millions of hits a day land on job boards like Monster, Indeed, Glassdoor and Craigslist. There are key ways to write your job ad to increase your chances of attracting the talent you’re looking for. For instance, making your job application a little more difficult to complete may actually make it easier to find the right fit. A few extra hurdles can mean only the most dedicated will complete it.
The tip above can work in some instances and is worthy of consideration, but so is keeping your job posting very simple and clear. Your posting should attract applicants further into the hiring process, so be sure to use a professional yet personal tone; one free of a cold corporate tone or over-friendly jargon. Employers who think into the shoes of potential hires and imagine what they’d want to read will be most successful in crafting ads.
Knowing your target candidate is also crucial in finding new hires: their demographics, expectations and search habits. They’ll find you much more effectively if your job ad is tailored to them. If you’re in a favorable location, be sure to push that as a plus for your job opening. The average American commute to work is 35 minutes, and with remote working on the rise, more and more candidates are thinking seriously about even leaving home. If you can lower commute time, you’ll be more likely to attract applicants.
Improve your responses
It’s a lack of knowledge on both sides of the employer/employee fence that leads to a low application rate. If you’re getting the applications, however, then that’s the time to send another signal to your applicants. Namely, it’s that you want to hear from them in the first place.
How you respond to reviews, queries, and resumes speaks volumes about your commitment to your candidates. All the clever and compelling ads in the world won’t matter if you’re not there when they reach out to you. In fact, 69% of applicants are likely to favor a business who takes the time to respond to reviews and applications. Job review sites can go a long way to attracting other candidates.
If you communicate using professional conduct and personal consideration (even if someone isn’t a good fit for your company) it could lead to a glowing review that will increase your reputation.
Conclusion
Social media is a wonderful method for attracting candidates, but in the end, it’s the human touch that will give you the extra edge. Consider who your applicants are, understand their needs and motivations, and think outside of the box for ways you can truly connect with them beyond a screen.
Most importantly, you don’t need to conduct your search for the right people alone. As qualified recruiters on your side, we can use our expertise in talent acquisition to find the very best fit for your organization. For more than twenty years, we’ve conducted thousands of projects for hundreds of companies all over the world. We’d be happy to do our part in filling your vacancies, so contact us today.