1. Define Your Value Proposition

This is ‘Your sell’, your ‘Why us?’. This is how you differentiate yourself from your competition.

Practice your ‘elevator pitch’ for candidates – this is a 30-second speech summarizing who you are as a company, what you do, and why the candidate should want to work for you.

This will be key to winning those perfect candidates. They should be left in no doubt as to why joining you will be an amazing career move!

2. Write an Engaging Job Description

Ask yourself “Would you apply for the role?” A great job description should be a mix of the practical requirements of the role and engaging content that encourages top candidates to apply and commit to the process. At this stage, you may be communicating with passive candidates, so you really need to create an engaging job brief to stand any chance of tempting them to apply.

Writing an effective job description is sometimes considered an art form, and the importance of it should never be underestimated.

3. Pre-Screen Your Candidates

This would usually be an initial telephone call to gather top-line information about the candidate and assess their immediate suitability for the role. This will help you save time meeting candidates that are not right and will also be your first chance to really sell you and your company to the potential candidate.

Even if the candidate is not what you are looking for, leave them feeling they had a positive experience. You never know when your paths may cross again or perhaps they may know the perfect candidate they can recommend to you!

4. Be Flexible

Throughout the whole process, you need to be able to adapt. What if a candidate is not a perfect match to your previously defined requirements? They only have four years of treasury experience, and you said you wanted six years’ minimum? Well, maybe they are a fast learner and have the gravitas to step up to that role? If you are bound by strict rules and restrictive processes, you won’t be able to adapt to what is a rapidly changing, “talent-short” recruitment environment.

5. Engage Your Team

Involve your employees in the process. Companies who fail to do this neglect their most important asset. Teams who participate in the process want to help the new employee succeed.

If a candidate sees an engaged and supportive team that wants them to join, they will be beating down your door to join your company.

You can’t get better than that in terms of candidate engagement!