How to Attract the Right Talent to Your Job Post
By: Dennis Richard
Tags: Interview, Jobs, Employment, Onboarding, Recruiting

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It is no longer a secret that a lot has changed around work-life and recruitment in the past few months. Traditional methods have become deficient in either reaching top talent or targeting the best-fit for tech jobs. Chances are, you have had unrelated applications (e.g. a Property Developer applying for your “Developer” position) to your job post before where you would then need to spend time sieving through many of such applications before managing to get a few matches. This can be very frustrating.

If you are a modern company seeking to recruit the right tech talent while saving both time and money, then this guide is for you.

When recruiting, it is not very advisable to just copy-paste a template that you found online, it is ok to use a template but tweak it to your specifications, do your homework then put it all together.

Do your homework:

Who are you looking for? — start out with creating a persona of your ideal candidate. Not a “ten-must-have list”, but a clear, blunt description of who you want. Are you looking for tech-savvy or more conservative, youthful, and willing to try crazy unconventional approaches to solving problems or firm, solid, experience-backed professionals? This should guide even the kind of language you use in your job post. Having an exact description of who you want would help you spot misfits from a mile away.

start out with creating a persona of your ideal candidate. Not a “ten-must-have list”, but a clear, blunt description of who you want. Are you looking for tech-savvy or more conservative, youthful, and willing to try crazy unconventional approaches to solving problems or firm, solid, experience-backed professionals? This should guide even the kind of language you use in your job post. Having an exact description of who you want would help you spot misfits from a mile away. What should they expect from you? — a Linkedin study has shown that 75% of candidates will research your company before applying, the reason is that a good number of them already have jobs and are seeking to switch not just for remuneration but because they want to build a career with a great company. These candidates need to see clearly what to expect from working with you: benefits, perks, potential, career growth, culture, work-life balance, etc.

a Linkedin study has shown that 75% of candidates will research your company before applying, the reason is that a good number of them already have jobs and are seeking to switch not just for remuneration but because they want to build a career with a great company. These candidates need to see clearly what to expect from working with you: benefits, perks, potential, career growth, culture, work-life balance, etc. Consider Remuneration — Sometimes you see recruiters want candidates who can code JARVIS and at the same time hack NASA while deploying a new in-house app from the moon all for a little stipend. Your budget should determine what kind of talent you seek if you want to avoid baseless bargaining, so try to research current industry salary ranges for similar positions — emphasis on “current” because the tech space is growing rapidly.

Sometimes you see recruiters want candidates who can code JARVIS and at the same time hack NASA while deploying a new in-house app from the moon all for a little stipend. Your budget should determine what kind of talent you seek if you want to avoid baseless bargaining, so try to research current industry salary ranges for similar positions — emphasis on “current” because the tech space is growing rapidly. Research current tech trends — there was a tweet that was trending recently about how the creator of an API was rejected for a job because the company wanted an engineer that had 4 years experience with his API but the API was only 1.5 years old! You should be very updated and accurate with the technical aspects of your job posting.

Putting it all together

If you need to further reduce the chances of receiving irrelevant applications like this, then you must treat your job post as a proposal. With a few tips, you should be able to draft the best job posts:

Avoid typos — candidates are attracted to company brands. 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agreed that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring. Typos might be subtle but they do not represent your brand well.

— candidates are attracted to company brands. 72% of recruiting leaders worldwide agreed that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring. Typos might be subtle but they do not represent your brand well. Avoid the generic crowd — Millennials have a short attention span, to show yourself unique, avoid using generic approaches that might bore candidates. Rather than using cold, impersonal, and detached messages, consider adding visuals, pictures, or videos that show a glimpse of your company culture, maybe employee testimonials about what they like most about working with you, work from home provisions, recognitions and reward schemes, retreats and team-bonding events, etc. This way, you are reaching the right talent with the core values you seek both professionally and in-person.

Millennials have a short attention span, to show yourself unique, avoid using generic approaches that might bore candidates. Rather than using cold, impersonal, and detached messages, consider adding visuals, pictures, or videos that show a glimpse of your company culture, maybe employee testimonials about what they like most about working with you, work from home provisions, recognitions and reward schemes, retreats and team-bonding events, etc. This way, you are reaching the right talent with the core values you seek both professionally and in-person. Make it brief and clear — you have 3–5 seconds to capture candidates’ interest in your post, there is no need to make it a technical report. However, be very clear about what you seek, the qualification, skillset, the salary range, experience level, etc. Avoid extravagant and loud company design, job seekers look for clarity in the job advertisements in terms of the profile, core values, company history, pay scale, career opportunities, etc. Be specific about the role, do not seek to lump a lot of responsibilities in one role because of budget, most top talents specialized in using a particular tool. For example, if you are looking for a JavaScript expert, specify which frameworks, task runners, and collaborative tools they should be familiar with to apply for the position.

Gone are the days when posting a job ad on craigslist or newspapers meant much, recruitment now goes much more beyond traditional mediums. Onboarding is a process and requires proper time and effort, a wrong hire means a lot of money wasted. You might want to reconsider your recruitment process, why does it fail to attract the right talent even if it attracts a lot of people?

If you are considering outsourcing your recruitment, contact us at CodeLn. Here are links to find us on social media: Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, and IG