Are you facing the challenge of hiring an employee for your company/team? Wondering whom to hire?From all sides, you hear how hard it is to get good people nowadays, how hard it is to find the right person and convince them to take/change jobs? So you establish a partnership with specialist in the field. recruitment, hope to help you with this difficult task. This is certainly a good course of action, such a person knows ways to find and reach the right people. There is only one “but” – he needs to know which people will be the right ones and whether such people even exist…. It is important to define the target group.
When starting to work with a recruiter, one of the first meetings usually discusses the position, the scope of tasks, the expectations of the candidate, and the proposed offer. This is all very important, but for recruitment to be effective it may not be enough. Today it is not enough to publish a job offer and wait for the flow of applications. Nowadays, a job offer has to be sold – and the rules of sales marketing apply as much as possible! And selling starts with identifying your target group, and that’s what you should do! A target audience is a group of people who may be interested in “buying” your job offer. To put it another way: they are those people whose needs and expectations are met by your offer. How will you know this? All it takes is a moment’s reflection and a conversation with current employees. Below you will find 9 questions that will help you identify, your target group, it is worth asking yourself, and give the answers to your business expert recruiter. This will be a huge help to him/her, and will increase many times the chance of finding and hiring the right person.
1. For people from what companies, with what prior experience, will your offer be attractive?
Surely the first answer that comes to your mind is – competing companies. And that’s fine, but think a moment more. To be sure, there are other industries where employees acquire the competencies you need. Of course, they are bound to have some shortcomings due to unfamiliarity with your business, but these can be quickly made up. Persuading a person from a competing company to switch jobs is possible, but can be quite difficult, especially if the competitor has a stronger brand, for example. Therefore, it is worth considering other companies and institutions as well.
2. What goals and needs, will resonate with the position offered?
This is a very important question! Answering them will increase the likelihood that the person you hire will want to be associated with your organization for the long term! A certain catalog of potential motivation factors should emerge in response to this question, e.g.: the desire to work more quietly and maintain W/L balance, the opportunity to work on large-scale projects, access to modern technology, the desire to grow as a manager, the desire for a pay increase, an industry that has a mission to make people’s lives more comfortable, etc.
3. How does your offering address these needs?
With this reflection, you will help the recruiter to shape communications to candidates, and define the so-called selling points, or differentiators of your offer in the market. For example, knowing that the software your company develops supports people in monitoring their health and facilitates contact with their doctor – you can shape a message that will appeal to this group of developers, for whom it is important to create software that makes people’s lives easier and better. For those looking for stability , it’s worth showing the company’s history, financial performance and highlighting the terms of the offer that ensure long-term employment – such as employee shares in the company.
4. What difficulties do you encounter in other workplaces and do not occur at your place of work?
Another space to differentiate yourself from competing offerings. These can be such mundane matters as payment of wages on time, an indefinite employment contract – guaranteeing a certain stability of employment. Right down to the little nuances – location, ability to work remotely, charismatic leader. Your recruiter, who is usually quite familiar with the reasons why people leave their jobs, including those of your competitors, can also help you answer this question.
5. What do current employees value in their work? What was their motivation for joining the team, what makes them not leave?
It’s a good idea to ask your employees about it, maybe that way you will notice some aspects of the work that you didn’t think might be important? When listening to employees, you need to keep an open mind and not underestimate even the simplest answers. The ability to use a company laptop for personal use, or the quality of company hardware and software can sometimes be as important to people as the attractiveness of the project they are working on.
6. What do you value in your work?
Don’t forget your point of view, he is also important. After all, people like you are also part of the target group. This question can be one of the more difficult ones, because it requires self-reflection. But don’t give up on answering them, especially since candidates nowadays like to ask this question during the interview!
7. People with what type of personality, what values will find themselves in the offered position?
When hiring a new person for a job, one should expect that this person will have an impact on the existing group, structure. What changes are you ready for? What changes is your team ready for? Maybe you need someone to “stir things up” a bit, or maybe the opposite? If your employees are mostly so-called strong characters, individualists, then a slightly withdrawn, introverted person may have difficulty finding his way in such a group. It’s worth thinking about it for a while! Also remember that there are no perfect people, everyone has some flaws – what flaws will you not be able to come to terms with?
8. For whom will the level of remuneration offered be attractive?
You certainly know the budget you have for the position. Now consider how this budget fits into market realities. The recruiter will also help you with this. The idea is to determine what is the probability of finding a person with the competencies you require, who will agree to work for the salary offered. The higher the probability, the faster the recruitment project can be closed.
9. How many people do you think are on the job market with the qualifications you require?
The last question – although it should de facto be one of the first- allows you to make your expectations more realistic. If you are looking for a person who, for example, knows 3 foreign languages and on top of that is a programmer, there are probably such people on the market, but they are relatively few… The chance of finding them and convincing them to accept your offer, may be very small. In addition, it is important to remember that we are not able to check everything during the recruitment process. Are you looking for a person who is highly competent in influencing and at the same time empathetic and sensitive to the other person? This set of qualities is very difficult to evaluate, not to mention that it is a rare combination….So you need to prioritize and determine what is more important to you.
In this article, we focus on those aspects of a job offer that will help sell it. Of course, in determining your recruitment needs, the starting point is the scope of the tasks of the job, and the skills and knowledge needed to perform those tasks successfully. From my experience of working with clients, I note that this is unlikely to cause difficulties. What managers forget is the motivation of potential candidates. They assume that their offerings are so good that those willing will “stand in line” to work with them. None of that! With unemployment at such a low level, research indicates that workers are becoming more “choosy” when it comes to taking jobs. And this applies to all industries! Employers need to sell their job offer, it is worthwhile to prepare well for it.
Wondering how to improve your workplace even more? Read about the “work life fit” concept and apply it to your business!
