How awesome are your job postings? Do they describe a company teaming with activity, promote your work hard, play harder culture, an abundance of opportunity to advance one’s career and leave you leave you thinking “who wouldn’t want to work here?” If so you have a cool place to work!
If your posting is a detailed list of duties and responsibilities meant to clearly define expectations, it may convey that you are an organized, well-structured and purposeful company seeking doers, that are ready to jump in and get to work. This tells them you are just like everyone else.
So if you want to attract the best candidates for your positions, rewrite your job postings. Tell them who you are looking for and not who you are.
If you've ever been featured in a magazine, interviewed on TV or been presented an award, you know how good it feels to be recognized by others. Having someone else describe our best qualities and highlight our strengths or accomplishments resonates deeply inside each of us.
Either way, your posting should speak directly to candidates and call them to your company. Think in terms of the classic Uncle Sam WWI recruitment posters. We want you.
Consider a posting of a sales position that included a statement like this: “Our ideal candidate is a persuasive, confident, self-motivated individual with strong initiative, a high desire to win and an ability to meet customer expectations while balancing multiple tasks at once.”
For a high performing salesperson this would be like seeing themselves on the Jumbotron at the ballfield. That’s me, that’s me! I am perfect fit. This is how you want your candidates showing up to your interviews.
You might be thinking this will surely limit the number of candidates that apply for the job. You are right, it will, and that’s a good thing. Hiring is expensive, time consuming, and when you make a mistake it’s extremely costly in more ways than one.
When every hire matters, don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. Ans as hiring managers you should be extremely choosy about how you spend your time. You and your team don’t need to be wasting time team phone screening, interviewing, and negotiating with candidates that aren’t the right fit.
By writing a job description that describes your ideal candidate versus simply stating the work to be done and celebrating your culture, you accomplish two things. First you connect with those candidates that feel you are an exact match and you have a much better chance of eliminating low performers and non-matches because you’ve clearly stated who you’re looking for versus a resume of experiences.
We utilize The Predictive Index to gather this people data, but if you aren’t using an assessment of some kind, it is still worth spending the time to craft your own an ideal candidate personas.
When you're done with one and ready to post, give it to some current employees to proofread. Ask how it makes them feel? If it’s not something that excites them, keep rewriting.
(Bonus: your current low-performers will step up their game and your managers will thank you for strengthening the line-up.)
