When it comes to recruiting, your primary focus should be branding — with an emphasis on using the inbound methodology. Recruiting content is the backbone of great talent acquisition. Job seekers run the recruiting process, and it's now more important than ever to onboard the most qualified candidates when and where they're needed most.
Bringing the right people through the door all comes down to branding.
If your company brand isn't exactly aligned with the goals and intents of your hiring prospects, you're only going to waste company time — interviewing the wrong candidates, onboarding poor culture-fits, and inevitably short-selling your own company.
To get the full scoop, check out the video above with our talent manager, Jasmine.
Perspective: The New Hire Point-of-View
In hiring and recruiting for your company, presentation and support are everything. This applies to both the prospective employee and the company itself. You have to sell your organization — its culture, values, expectations, and the like — as much as your prospects have to sell their own image. Your image is your brand.
Job candidates seek out and filter potential employers in the same way companies sort sales leads. They qualify and disqualify, rank, and observe. All of this in order to find the best possible fit for their needs.
Determining a best-fit potential company comes down to five things:
1. Pay
At the end of the day, income is perhaps the primary factor that prospects will consider when looking at various job opportunities. However, given the constraints of time and budget, this isn't something that can always be controlled.
2. Location
Physical location also plays a large role in compatibility between candidate and company. However, if the other criteria in this best-fit section are met, it's surprising what lengths people will commute for a new employer.
3. Growth
People intrinsically want to work for a company they can grow in. Nobody seeks out cozy dead-ends. The potential for advancement, growth opportunities, pay scales, and career paths are all core to the decision-making process for new hires.
This is where incorporating growth as part of your company's brand can really help you stand out to highly-qualified candidates.
4. Culture Fit
That's what this whole blog post and video is about — establishing a unique, authentic company culture and building brand/values. In most industries, candidates don't settle for a closer office location if the company culture doesn't mesh with their core values and goals.To recruiters, this aspect of hiring is perhaps more important than experience and education; a good culture fit, someone that's willing to grow with the company to reach their full potential, is more valuable to most organizations than a seasoned pro that doesn't fit with their culture.
That's why it's important for prospective employees to make sure they understand and are compatible with their future employers.
5. Experience and Title
This criteria is an interesting one, because it often determines all of the other factors (different experience means different expected pay, different travel range, etc.). How does professional experience influence salary, growth opportunities, and the like?
Again, this is one criteria that may hold more weight than originally thought and ultimately lead to more accurate hiring.
Ongoing Growth: Employee Satisfaction
In addition to your core values, your employee turnover rate and satisfaction are a big selling point for job candidates. The hurdle, here, is that most of this information is available online to any and all audiences.
Your best prospective employee could take one look at your Glassdoor page and decide then and there whether or not your company is a good fit.
Positive reviews and recognition can make all the difference when prospective employees are on the fence between your company and a competitor. Going back to the idea of a culture fit, candidates want to work for a company that's known for its satisfied employees.
Compensation and location aren't enough to sell highly qualified candidates in the long-term. Ultimately, qualified candidates need to feel like their values are not just understood, but also supported by their team.
Alex Dunn
Alex is a University of South Florida mass communications graduate and Video/Media Specialist at Bluleadz. He is a big movie nerd, loves (possibly dangerous) concerts and enjoys taunting co-workers with a camera. He's probably seen The Royal Tenenbaums 14 times by now.