Have you been struggling to hire qualified candidates to your roles? You’re in good company. Our research shows that 70% of senior HR professionals have difficulty engaging highly skilled candidates and within the digital sector this number jumps to 93%.
There are a number of reasons why this could be the case. As the war for talent continues to rage, here are 4 common blockers to hiring top candidates:
Your candidate journey is poor
Standing out from competitors is difficult enough, if your application process isn’t up to scratch you’re in real trouble. Starting with your job ads, be sure that you’re adding sufficient detail including salary band, location and clear role requirements to help candidates determine their suitability. Use keywords to improve the visibility of your job and keep your copy to the point.
Avoid candidate drop off by ensuring your application process is direct and streamlined. As a minimum it should be mobile optimised with as few stages as possible. In addition, be sure you’re keeping candidates informed of the progress of their application. Even if a candidate has been unsuccessful, they can still have a positive experience with your company if they’re updated efficiently. A failure to communicate effectively with applicants however, can severely damage your employer brand
Jobbio research shows that a lack of feedback is what candidates find most frustrating about the hiring process.
Your content isn’t strong enough
A strong employer brand is what will attract people to your roles and keep them within your company once they’re there. It’s what makes you unique as an employer and it covers many elements from your mission and culture, to your office space and benefit schemes. To really nail your employer brand you need to give an honest insight into what life is like at your company. If you oversell the benefits, you may secure talent initially but they’ll only end up disillusioned with the role.
Defining your employer brand is half the battle, communicating it is the real challenge. How do you articulate in a digestible way all the things that make your company a brilliant place to work? It’s not enough to talk about how great you are on your careers page, you need to leverage your team to bring your employer brand to life. A candidate is twice as likely to trust a testimonial from a potential colleague than from the CEO.
Learn more about employer branding
You’re not using the right channels
What’s the point in creating amazing content if the right people aren’t seeing it? Think about the different channels you’re using to get your employer brand and jobs in front of the right audience. It’s not a one-size-fits-all undertaking, connecting with talent in a meaningful way requires adequate research into your audience. What social platforms do they use? How do they interact with video vs article content? What publications do they read and why do they read them? What groups are they part of? Understanding the motivations and behaviours of your audience is the first step in hiring them. Narrowing your focus allows you to get maximum impact out of your resources. Instead of spreading your budget across a number of channels, hone in on the ones which are most likely to deliver success. Of course to be able to determine success you need to have clear objectives to begin with. Set yourself realistic targets for growth in line with business activity and within specific timelines.
