I get asked multiple times a day about how organizations can find more talent. The desperation in today’s world around this one topic is concerning. People are losing their jobs and their well-being over it. Corporate recruiter experience is at an all-time low.
The formula for hiring and attracting talent has not changed and it won’t change. Like anything we desire in the world, it comes down to scarcity and authenticity. That being said, that is also extremely difficult to provide to a job seeker.
Why?
99.99% of us can’t present our jobs in a scarce way. Google can, you can’t. Turns out, you’re not Google.
There are very, very few of us who have the luxury of working for a brand that almost anyone would kill to work for. The unicorn brands, as I like to call them. These brands can create scarcity around their jobs. This scarcity feeds upon itself, where candidates will go to extraordinary lengths to get noticed for a job, just trying to get their “foot in the door”.
The “authenticity” part is where we in the 99.99% of us can fight back!
Whether you are big or small, if you have a non-unicorn brand, we can always be super authentic. It’s harder for those running the scarcity game to do this because part of the game is to have some mystery behind door one.
To be able to leverage your job postings with videos from potential co-workers, the hiring manager, and an executive giving deep insight and understanding of your jobs and brands can be something very powerful to pull in more talent.
Can you combine these? Yes, but you rarely ever see it. Mainly because if you’re lucky enough to achieve scarcity around your jobs, you feel like what do we really gain? We already have almost all the candidates we want, why do the extra work for a small incremental increase.
The key is you have to do one or the other really well. One you control, one you don’t.
What I find is too many organizations act like they have scarcity when they don’t. And almost none of the organizations that should be killing authenticity actually do it.
The formula didn’t change.
I frequently drive past two employers on the interstate.
One is a food manufacturer and has a sign that says “Now Hiring.”
The second is a parts manufacturer that makes parts that support the food industry and has a sign that says “We help feed the world – now hiring.”
The first one has a more direct relationship to feeding the world, but is less inspirational in their advertising than the second one that has a more indirect relationship to feeding the world.
Seems to go along with your post today.
Totally!
How are we making people feel wanted? Not every job is about directly saving puppies. Sometimes we have to connect the dots!
We’ve found that when a HM does a brief video that we use in our recruitment marketing, it increases the number of qualified applicants by a factor of 5. Easy, simple, and cost effective. That’s probably why we run such a positive hiring velocity.