Best Practices are so yesterday! They are sourcing and recruiting techniques designed for a time that has passed.
Next Practices are strategies and tactics for winning the real War for the Best Talent – the one you actually face today and will face tomorrow. They modernize your approach to:
- Job Posting
- Social Recruiting
- Candidate Engagement
- Optimizing the Candidate Experience
- Managing Your Own Recruiting Career
so you maximize your success.
The book is composed of short, straight-to-the-point essays that can be read in ten or fifteen minutes and still transport you to a whole new dimension in the state-of-the art for recruiting and sourcing talent. With titles like Become a Talent Whisperer, Post-Social Recruiting, The Inconvenient Truth of Recruiting and Don’t Post a Job, Advertise Respect, they are sure to entertain and enlighten you.
So, don’t recruit with yesterday’s techniques. Get Next Practices and start recruiting right now with the next generation of recruiting mastery.
The book is available on Amazon. Click here to place your order.
Advertise Inner As Well As Outer Job Dimensions
For years now, recruiters have been telling job seekers about the responsibilities of a job. What they’re actually describing, however, is the tasks to be performed – the outer dimensions of the work. That may be interesting to the average candidate, but it fails to engage or motivate top performers. What they want to know is an opening’s “inner dimensions” – aspects of the work which to them aren’t responsibilities at all.
Let’s begin by dealing with an issue that seldom gets the attention it deserves: for whom should you write your job postings? Average candidates or top performers? Well, duh, for top performers, of course.
While that answer may be obvious, however, its implications are not. We write job postings to reach top performers because, consciously or unconsciously, we all recognize the Golden Rule of Recruiting. It states that “What you do to recruit top talent will also recruit mediocre talent, but the converse is not true.” In practical terms that means the only way we can recruit top performers is to write job postings that are specifically geared to their unique expectations and goals.
So, how are top performers different from everybody else? Well, the research I did for my book The Career Activist Republic found that top performers are unique in many ways, but two are particularly important for recruitment advertising.
- First, they aren’t at all interested in doing a job, they want to excel at it.
- And second, they don’t come to work for a paycheck; they want to grow their capabilities and feel the satisfaction of doing superior work.
Those two attributes are the main reason why so few top performers bother to respond to today’s job postings. Despite what some pundits will tell you, they do, in fact, read such ads. They are committed to their own career advancement, so they are always curious about what opportunities are being presented. Unfortunately, they seldom find the kind of content that interests, engages and ultimately motivates them to act.
An Ad That Tantalizes Top Talent
The key to writing a job posting that tantalizes top talent is to adopt a two-step descriptive process that addresses both the outer and the inner dimensions of the work. It’s also important to use a vocabulary that focuses on the reader rather than your employer.
Step 1: Describe the job’s “responsibilities,” but instead of using that term (which only an employer could love), answer these questions:
- What will the person get to do?
- With whom will they bet to work?
Your answers will provide one of the key triggers for passive, high caliber candidates: they want to know what it will be like to work in your employer’s organization.
Step 2: Describe the job’s inner dimensions – the advantages it offers to the candidate – by answering these questions:
- What will the person get to learn?
- What will they get to accomplish?
- How will they be recognized and rewarded?
Your answers will provide the other key trigger for passive, high caliber candidates: they want to know what’s in it – the job – for them.
Most job postings today are written in a way that appeals only to the average candidate. To pique the interest and persuade the best candidates to apply, a job posting must be written to address their unique expectations and goals. It must recognize and promote the job’s inner as well as its outer dimensions.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com
2014 User’s Choice Award Winners
If you’re tired of reading the pundits’ picks for the best employment sites on the Web, here’s the alternative you’ve been looking for.
Each year, WEDDLE’s hosts an online poll for job seekers and recruiters to vote for THEIR picks of the best sites. We call it the User’s Choice Awards.
To see the 2014 winners, click here.
To cast your vote for next year’s winners, click here.
The Recruiting Resources You Deserve
The best recruiters use the best resources to get the job done. And, when it comes to reaching top talent online, their choice is clear. It’s WEDDLE’s Books. Get yours today!
WEDDLE’s Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet. This is the 11th edition of the Guide the American Staffing Association called the “Zagat” of job boards and social media sites.
The Talent Sourcing & Recruitment Handbook. This is Shally Steckerl’s tell-all guide to his sourcing secrets and cybersleuthing for hard-to-find talent.
WEDDLE’s Guide to Association Web Sites. This book details the recruiting resources and capabilities that are available at the Web-sites of over 3,000 professional and technical associations.
Finding Needles in a Haystack. This one-of-a-kind guide lists over 25,000 keywords and keyword phrases, across 5,400 job and position titles in 28 industries and professions.
A One-of-a-Kind Recruitment Tool
WEDDLE’s Directory of Employment Web Sites is a one-of-a-kind database of job boards, social media sites, career portals, aggregators, employment-related search engines, job ad distribution companies, recruitment blogs and other recruiter resources. Its 9,000+ entries are organized by occupational field, industry, geographic focus and other specializations (e.g., diversity, veterans).
If you want to:
- Develop a pinpoint targeting strategy for your recruitment advertising,
- Identify the best social media sites for connecting with top talent,
- Improve the quality of the applicants you source online,
- Sell products and services to job boards and other employment Web-sites
then the WEDDLE’s Directory is for you!