The New Model of Hiring: If You Want to Attract Top Talent, You Need to Create an Attractive Opportunity
Log in to LinkedIn, and you’ll find an abundance of coaching and advice for job seekers on every topic from resume tips to offer letters. I can scroll down my newsfeed on any given day and 5-10 people will have tips to help me stand out to attract the job I want.
In fact, for many years now, I’ve been one of those people, coaching job seekers on much of the same stuff. I even wrote an article about what I called “the new job search model” for this very publication about four years ago.
But what about the companies searching for talent? Is anyone advising them?
The greatest irony, in my opinion, is that research shows companies are feeling just as dissatisfied with the candidates they attract as candidates are with the jobs they’re offered. And any recruiter or HR pro reading this knows the huge investment of time and company resources required to find a candidate, onboard them, and train them — only to discover it wasn’t a great match and they will have to start the process all over again!
So, my question to employers is this: When on earth are you going to adapt to the times and brand your company in a way that attracts top candidates who align with the culture, vision, and values of your company?
Be Attractive to Attract Top Talent
It sounds simple, but given the current state of the job market, it’s worth saying: To attract top talent, you must first be attractive yourself.
To be a little blunter about it: For the love of all that is good, stop making job posts that are as dense as a giant rock in the Grand Canyon, mundane as folding socks for two consecutive hours, and as exciting to read as a cardiologist’s report!
Boring!
As a job seeker, I want to read company descriptions I connect with, descriptions that actually convey some excitement and enthusiasm about the role. And I should be able to easily absorb enough information from an ad that I can quickly grasp what the company wants, the basic requirements, and whether I might be a good fit. It’s so simple, yet, judging by how few companies take this approach, not.
Think about it: Recruiters and hiring managers spend around six seconds glancing at a candidate’s resume or LinkedIn profile before judging their fit. Candidates probably spend about the same amount on reading a job ad.
So my question remains: If you continue to be dissatisfied with your candidate pool after all these years, why not change something on your end?
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Back in 2017, I wrote an article for Recruiter.com called “Employer Branding 101.” In this article, I used an example of how a company could make its job postings really pop while still touching upon the responsibilities of the role. I used a mock ad for a role at Recruiter.com as an example. That example is copied here, with some slight updates to account for the changes between 2017 and 2021:
This position is an incredible opportunity to be the senior director of marketing at one of the world’s most widely used recruiting platforms.
Here at Recruiter.com, we have spent years working around the clock to be the absolute best at what we do. We believe that recruiting is a people-centric business. We keep the human touch in recruiting by supplementing our AI and video hiring platform with the world’s largest network of over 27,500 small and independent recruiters.
As the director of marketing, you will get to work alongside CEO Evan Sohn and the rest of our executive team, who have dedicated their careers to understanding the inner workings of the recruiting and hiring world on both the employer side and the job-seeker side. Our team is extremely passionate about closing the gap between employers and job seekers in our digital world.
Just this month, we announced a partnership with KarmaCheck, bringing innovative and streamlined candidate screening tools to the growing Recruiter.com Marketplace. This is an incredible time for our company, and we are looking forward to having a marketing director who can help us continue with this momentum and spread our company’s value and mission on a global level.
Your job, should you choose to accept it, would be to lead our marketing team to make sure we are highlighting all of the amazing new partnerships and site improvements we will be bringing to employers, recruiters, and job seekers alike. We want someone who has the experience, bravado, and creativity to lead our ambitious team to reach more people than ever this year — and every year after.
As the director of marketing, you will be heading up a team of five (5) people and reporting to the CEO directly every week regarding new strategies and updates.
Here at Recruiter.com, we pride ourselves on being the best, and we are looking for the best to join us.
What makes this a strong ad?
First, the post feels very personalized. I not only feel like I am already on the Recruiter.com team in a way, but I also know some of the history of the company and the people I’d be collaborating with. I also have a very good basic understanding of what a day in the life of working for this company in this role would look and feel like. This is what a job ad should do if you want to stand out as an attractive company for attractive candidates!
Change Starts With You
I’ll leave you with a few parting concepts I want you to meditate on; fall asleep to; and talk to your staff, your partners, your friends, and even your spouse about!
First, recognize that the change starts with you. If you keep doing the things you’ve always done, you’ll keep experiencing the same results.
Second, stop writing such boring job ads! This isn’t a contest to sound “smart” or even “formal.” Talented job seekers aren’t interested in reading a million bullet points of dry, dense jargon. They want to feel excited about working for you, understand the culture, and be enticed to take the next step. That’s it!
You are the one that needs to adapt to the times. Make the branding of your company, especially your job posts and hiring process, more attractive, and watch as you attract more (and better) candidates.
Scott Engler is an internationally recognized branding thought leader and LinkedIn specialist. Connect with him on LinkedIn to learn more.