Gone are the days when companies used to put recruitment ads up and were rewarded with a slew of great candidates to choose from. The last SEEK presentation I attended quoted the statistic that 85% of the total candidate market is not actively looking for a role. So those ads are being seen and acted upon by only 15% of the market. I would go so far as to say that in Digital this figure is even lower given the shortage of talent and high demand for skills in the market.
Yes, you may get a lot of applicants if you advertise, but often the best talent is “heads down bums up” doing what they do best. Someone needs to tap them on the shoulder, interrupt their day and invite them for a coffee to talk about a great opportunity, because they sure as heck aren’t going to be applying to an ad anytime soon.
Ask any Digital candidate with a half-decent LinkedIn profile and they will tell you they get approaches on a daily basis. Candidate Fatigue is a real thing. They are getting sick to death of being approached for roles by in-house talent acquisition, hiring managers and recruiters alike. They have stopped responding to LinkedIn messages if they even bother going on there more than a couple of times a month.
As search specialists our job is to find that elusive A-Grade talent on behalf of our clients. At least, that’s Part One of our job. And it involves a fair amount of science combined with logic, using our networks, online searches, industry communities and relationships.
Then comes Part Two. Part Two is more Art than Science. Part Two is intuitive as much as it is based on evidence. It’s about establishing or furthering relationships and creating engagement.This is where we have to determine not only if the candidate is a great match for the role, but also whether the role is a great match for the candidate, and if so to get them interested.
In my view the most important part of pitching an opportunity to a candidate is listening. Listen first to how receptive that person is. Listen to how they speak about their current role. Listen to what their career and personal aspirations are. Listen to their frustrations.
Then, and only then, should we consider pitching the opportunity to them. A lot of recruiters make the mistake of diving in and harping on about an “amazing role” without understanding what “amazing” means to that particular candidate.
As Brian so famously said in the Monty Python classic : “We are all individuals”. Listening to a candidate’s individual drivers will tell us a lot about which aspects of a role should appeal, and to focus on those when talking about it. I have sadly heard many a recruiter get on the phone to pitch a role by reading out the Job Description over the phone. Not a great experience for either party. And not a great representation of the Client’s Brand.
At the end of such a conversation the candidate should be left feeling either excited by the idea of the role and the company, or excited by the connection to us for whatever the future brings because we get them.
At AllSquares we place great importance on Candidate Experience. Come for a drink at our famous bar and we can tell you all about it in person.
