7 tips to hire the perfect candidate
“The job for life is diminishing in its allure. Candidates are renting out their skills on a temporary tour of duty basis.” Tony Lasocki, Talent Acquisition lead at Microsoft
Workers may be a bit happier now, but they still don’t see themselves sticking in one job for all that long. Research from the Independent earlier this year [1] showed that almost half the UK’s workforce will be looking for a job over the next few months. It’s an improvement over 2017. But it’s one so small that, as Gareth Southgate would doubtless say, there’s only a Crème Egg between them.
So with so many people looking around, finding the right people for a job should be easy as pie, right? Actually, no. The war for talent carries on. Or, as Tony puts it, “It’s more of a war for skills. We’re regularly market-making in the combination of skills we need to be successful… We’re often seeking that transformational combination of skills that often doesn’t exist in a single package in one individual.”
The perfect fits are turning down jobs
Unfortunately, even when you’ve found what appears to be the perfect candidate, they don’t always sign on the dotted line, let alone stay for life.
- They expect to get higher salaries than you may be prepared to offer. After all, if you think they’re top-notch candidates, the chances are they think so too.
- There’s every chance you’re not the only one wooing them. They’re probably able to pick and choose between several opportunities.
- If you don’t strike while the iron is hot, you could lose them altogether. In many companies, the recruitment process drags on and on. Good candidates won’t hang around: they’ll get up and go elsewhere.
Get it right today, and you get it right for the future
In these days of social media, it may not even be what you do today that can make candidates choose to go elsewhere. It could be what you’ve previously done. Nearly 60 percent of job seekers have had a poor candidate experience, which is a worrying statistic. Even more concerning is that 72 percent of them have shared their experience online [2]. In the Twittersphere, grumbles and rage spread like wildfire.
Clearly, giving people good experiences and high expectations starts even before they apply. You can do that, for example, by making sure that HR and hiring managers work very closely together, and there’s a win/win ahead. You’ll help people and their contacts feel warm about the company. And there’s a chance that the actual interview process itself could work on your behalf. It may seem surprising, but in 80 percent of cases, it’s the personal relationships that candidates strike up during interviews that sway their choice of job. [3]
With that in mind, what can you do to keep the best candidates knocking at your door? Here are some ideas.
Tick these seven boxes and make people keen on working for you
- Get your brand ready to attract the best candidates. Make sure that it stands for the values they’re likely to share themselves.
- Find and attract passive job seekers, for example by analysing the skills on their LinkedIn profile. You can even see whether they’ve applied to your company in the past. Then use that insight to pre-empt their challenges and answer their questions.
- Work out exactly who you want as your candidates and what you want from them. Develop robust profiles.
- Use predictive job matching and candidate mining to identify potential employees.
- Put together an experience that candidates will feel positive about – and keep it simple.
- Work with hiring managers to create a consistent experience.
- Make sure that the positive experience extends to the onboarding part of the process.
As Tony advises, think of your candidates as customers who are making an investment in you rather than a transactional purchase. You need to steer them through that process.
It’s simpler than you might think to find the best candidates for every role.
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[2] http://www.careerarc.com/blog/2016/06/candidate-experience-study-infographic
[3] http://www.mattersight.com/resource/take-this-job-and-love-it/
