It is no secret: Today’s job market is tough for businesses. There are more open positions than there is qualified talent, so pickings can be slim. What is a hiring manager to do? You need to be thinking like a product manager and effectively marketing your open opportunity to qualified candidates. We will tell you how.
If you want to have a strong workforce that can propel your business toward future success – and, honestly, what company does not want this? – then the first step is to attract high-quality talent. Unfortunately for HR departments across the country, there are currently more open vacancies than there are searching applicants, which means that competition can be fierce.
When it comes to the hiring process, the first thing to remember is that you are selling your company as a great place to work just as much as prospective candidates are selling their skills and experience. The organizations who know how to best market their open opportunities will be the ones who receive the most applicants and have the pick of the litter – so to speak.
Suffice to say, you need to draw available talent in. This means capturing their attention from the initial job posting, and helping them envision what working at your company would actually be like. In this regard, the initial hiring process is a bit like product marketing.
Countless open positions – even those that offer great opportunities and benefits – are overlooked by qualified applicants every day because they did not effectively “sell” themselves. Think about it like this: You need to do whatever you can in order to help your posting stand apart from the competition.
When it comes to crafting your job posting, there are certain things that you can do that can help catch the eye of qualified applicants. This means including interesting and compelling graphics. You should also be breaking up text and using different styles (e.g. italics, bolding, bullets) to make your information more readable.
Also, consider the copy that you use in your job description. For an active applicant, reading dozens of different postings can quickly start to sound monotonous. Do not be afraid to incorporate your company’s personality into the copy. Not only will this help catch potential candidates’ attention, but it will also give them a sense of your company’s style and personality – helping to weed out any bad fits.
The next time that you have an open position that needs to be posted, do not just reach for the listing that you have used time and time again. Instead, take some time to review it with a critical eye. Take into account the marketability of the posting – including both copy and visuals – and make any necessary adjustments. The effort that you put into this process up-front will pay itself off multiple times over in the quality and quantity of applicants that you receive as a result.
