How to Persistently Educate Your Candidates
Anyone who has seen or heard one of my webinar or trade show / conference presentations has likely heard me say that employers and others in the recruiting space who want to enhance their marketing efforts need only look down the hall at the work being done by those in their marketing departments. Those in marketing tend to have far more years of formal training in marketing and much, much larger budgets than those in the human resource or recruiting departments.
I am such a believer in looking to the world of marketing to gain insight into what is likely coming to the world of recruiting that I subscribe to a number of marketing publications, including many of the SmartBrief e-newsletters. In one of yesterday's e-newsletters was a link to an article entitled, How to Persistently Educate Your Customer. The article included a number of great tips for marketers but with just a little effort the same tips can be made to apply to those who market job opportunities either directly to candidates or indirectly through partnerships with other organizations.
In the language of recruiters, hiring managers, and others whose jobs require them to successfully market employment opportunities, there are four necessary steps:
- Know what's relevant. In other words, focus on the benefits rather than the features of the job. Rather than focusing your sales pitch on the hours worked, requirements, and responsibilities of the position, instead focus your sales pitch on what really matters to the candidate. That will differ position-to-position and candidate-to-candidate but get out of the "what would matter to me" and instead put yourself in the shoes of your ideal candidate as it is their needs and wants which are relevant, not yours. The best candidates, for example, can be hired by multiple organizations for pretty much the same job for pretty much the same compensation. So why should they work for you? What makes your opportunity better to that candidate? Whatever that is, that's what you need to focus on in your sales pitch.
- Communicate something of interest. This actually implies two steps: (a) communicate and (b) be interesting. So email, call and otherwise communicate with your candidates regularly. Do you have an applicant tracking system? If so, use it to do more than just track the progress of your applicants. Also use it to communicate with all of those who are currently being considered and those who are no longer being considered. Did your organization just launch a new product? Land a big client? Overcome a significant obstacle? Communicate it. Candidates care not just about where they are in the hiring process, but also about your organization as a whole. After all, we all want to work with and for winners. Communicate how you're a winner or plan to become one.
- Be persistent. How many organizations send out a monthly e-newsletter to everyone who has applied to work for them? Virtually none. But if you were interested in working for an organization perhaps today or even years from now, wouldn't you love to hear from them what is happening in their industry and their organization? It costs virtually nothing to create and deliver a monthly e-newsletter. All of the major job boards have them because the job boards understand that they need to continually and persistently communicate with their users in order to keep those users engaged and happy. Why don't employers? Because they don't think like marketers. Yet.
- Make the calls yourself. When it comes time to extend an offer to a candidate to interview with your organization or even to extend a job offer, which will have a greater impact, an email from a human resources administrator or a phone call from their future manager? Definitely the latter. If you want to land the best candidates, you need to treat them with the respect that they deserve and that means making them feel as special as they are. If they're special, then the hiring manager should be happy to take time out to make those phone calls. If the hiring manager won't, then they don't deserve to work with special people but that's a topic for another blog posting on another day.
Great article Steven. I'm constantly trying to get my recruiters to "see the light" regarding marketing...and I kind of have to drag our marketing department along, too!
But, I strongly disagree on one point: HR should almost always make the offer.
A good HR person has, by this point, developed a strong relationship with the candidate. The offer from them is as valid/welcome as an offer from the hiring manager. The HR person adds value in two critical ways:
1) They serve as the "intermediary," much like a headhunter does if one is involved. If any issues come up, they are the go-between. (in fact, a good recruiter has already paved the way for a quick acceptance through a "trial offer," but minor questions can come up at the final offer)
2) HR people make offers all the time. We know how to do it and we've been through unexpected situations. A hiring manager makes offers infrequently. This prevents them from making a mistake on details or promising something they shouldn't have spur of the moment.
Bottom line is, done well, the HR person adds value throughout the recruiting process and it should culminate with HR making the offer, issuing the offer letter, and on-boarding the person.
Sorry, but I feel strongly offers should come from HR. (our on-boarding process includes, upon acceptance, an immediate "congratulatory" call from the hiring manager and a second phone call between the acceptance and start dates)
You're absolutely right that HR people frequently make offers and that good recruiters add tremendous value to the hiring process, but unfortunately some recruiters aren't as good as others and can actually detract from the hiring process. I've heard this repeatedly from engineering and other such candidates. Many have told me how much they hate being interviewed on-campus or anywhere else by HR or recruiters because the interviewers don't understand the jargon, issues, experiences, etc. which are so relevant to the hiring process so they end up screening out some of the best candidates and recommending some of the worst.
I suppose that in situations where HR can objectively and correctly see that it is adding value that it should at least be involved in extending the offer. Perhaps HR and the hiring manager extend the offer together. Where the hiring manager is incompetent at extending offers then HR should perform that vital task. But let's agree that in some situations, HR is not as good at extending offers as the hiring manager and it is in those situations where the hiring manager should be the one to extend the offer to the candidate.