Better Hiring Practices, Approach Job Candidates like Investors

by admin on June 15, 2018 in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Ask a Recruiter, Employment

 

Even with the advent of AI and centuries of businesses hiring employees, finding the right talent remains the hardest problems businesses try to solve year over year. But what if there was a new approach that could give you the results you want? Forbes contributor Marissa Peretz offer a new insight on hiring that has yielded incredible results for innovative companies like Netflix below.

Want to Find the Best Talent? Approach Job Candidates Like Investors: The job description is obsolete. These written statements of the responsibilities, duties, required qualifications and reporting relationships of a position are ineffective. For startups, they can be even harmful – losing you a chance to make a connection with a critical hire and to fortify a company’s brand message. In many ways, the ineffectiveness of job descriptions – and the need to rethink how to approach potential job candidates – reflects significant changes in the talent marketplace

Why Talent Is So Hard to Find: Half of all small businesses say the top challenge they face is hiring new employees, according to the 2017 State of Small Business Report. Growing revenue, cash flow, and increasing profits are all easier in the view of business owners than finding talented workers. First, hiring has become a buyer’s market. The most talented people – the ones that can take a company to a new level — are secure in their positions and they are looking for new jobs passively if at all.

Find Employee “Angels”: Consider a new approach to attracting talent modeled after proven fundraising techniques. When companies approach investors, they usually provide them with material called investor decks. These pitch decks, which are aimed at prospective angel or venture capital investors, typically consist of 12 to 20 PowerPoint slides that explain the company’s vision and mission, its leadership team, and the problem and solution the company is addressing. In the current job market, though, companies need to sell the candidate in the same manner they sell an investor.

Make Recruiting a Marketing Task: People have short memories and they quickly forgot the lessons of the Netflix culture deck. Instead, they continue to churn out job descriptions that have become less and less effective. In desperation, companies fill the job descriptions with buzzwords like “rock star” and “guru,” terms which has seen a roughly 20% increase in job listings in the past two years. Companies continue to make job descriptions shorter, despite evidence that job seekers want deeper and richer information about companies before they apply.

What the best candidate wants is a recruitment deck: Like Netflix a decade ago, many companies probably already have that information ready to go – in their investor’s pitch. It might surprise many how little effort it takes to turn an investor’s deck into a recruitment deck that can attract the attention of the key people a growing company needs. It often requires just a few, albeit important tweaks. The key thing is to think about hiring as less of an approach of HR than of marketing (and ideally the marketing people should at least review the recruitment deck). So if a company wants to land the best talent, it should appeal to them with its mission, values, and goal – just as if they were investors.