Building your Dream Team » Talent Identification
Talent Search
Click to Download: Job Description Example
Based on the needs assessment tool, it’s time to develop a job description for the position. These descriptions will outline the roles and tasks an employee is expected to perform, therefore making it easier to hold them accountable.
Keep in mind that not all job descriptions are set in stone. The idea is to have your employees grow within the job and have a mutual relationship.
Look at the following example for a Digital Marketing Specialist.
Job descriptions typically include:
- Specific tasks
- Purpose of tasks
- Responsibilities
- How the employee’s role affects the department/company
- Qualifications
- Location
- Certifications/licenses
You want to be specific enough to limit the amount of people that are eligible to apply, but broad enough to have applicants. There is no perfect person.
After you’ve prepared your job description, you are then ready to post on job search engines. Job boards such as Indeed, Monster, LinkedIn, and other boards that are related to your industry are ideal due to their brand and network. Oftentimes, it may be useful to use more than one job board. If you do not get a lot of traffic to your website or have a huge email list, then use a board like Indeed or Monster.com. However, if your website is already optimized, then use it!
HINT: Like Google, job boards utilize search optimization. It is useful to optimize your job ad for key words such as the position, location, certifications, etc. The more specific the better. For example, “Accounting Manager” is going to have a lot of competition. But “Accounting Manager in Houston, TX” or “Manufacturing Accounting Manager” will have less search results and will get you the candidates you want (rather than any accounting manager).
For example, ABC Company needs to find the right person for a position. They might post the position on their website, on a job board like Indeed, post it on their personal LinkedIn and the company’s LinkedIn. No longer are you limited to a newspaper job ad.
The Importance of Your Network
Your own personal network and references are also a great source of recruiting.
Social Media
With the advancement of technology, social media is more common in the recruitment process. 93% of recruiters look through a candidate’s LinkedIn. 60-70% of recruiters search for their candidates on Facebook. Simply connecting with a prospective employee, or even posting about the job opening to your current connection on these devices requires less effort than posting on local bulletin boards or making a call.
When reaching out to people on LinkedIn, send them an InMail introducing yourself if you have no 2nd or 3rd connections. If you are indirectly connected with them, ask your friend to introduce yourself. That’s the beauty of LinkedIn.
Your Employees
Instead of wasting so much time collecting various applicants from different sources, ask some of your trusted employees if they know anyone that could be suitable for the open position. In fact in a 2015 SilkRoad study, employee referrals produced more hires than any other source studied. Referred candidates are usually of higher quality and are more likely to feel connected to company culture once hired. The Strategic CFO has seen a lot of success using this method.
Identifying Qualified Talent
Click to Download: Phone Screening Interview
Selecting From Your Pool of Resumes
Going through hundreds of applicants is a tedious task. Organize the prospects in different categories, or by your own preference (if the application was done online, this will be easier to do on a spreadsheet). Depending on the website you use, you can set up different categories based on whether they have licenses, their education level, their years of experience in the industry, etc. Basically, you don’t need to interview 50 people to find a good candidate.
Typically, a recruiter should select 10-15 people for a phone interview. As you review over the pool of applicants, keep in mind the initial criteria you had set for this position. This person may be a star-employee on paper, but may be wrong for the job.
Hint: Have your needs assessment in front of you when you are screening and interviewing potential candidates.
Phone Screening Interviews
The next step in finding the right talent for your company is to call and screen the candidates. The purpose of calling, rather than meeting, is to see their initial responses and how enthusiastic they are about this position. When filling out the answers on our Phone Screening Interview tool, ask the questions from your point of view and then record their answers on the paper.
This step also saves time and effort on both parts. From the employer’s point of view, interviewing 5 people in person is better than scheduling time to interview 30 people. Each phone interview should only be about 30 minutes max.
The Phone Screening Interview template is specifically created to be broad. The phone interview is just to see if you like the person.
One thing we’ve found helpful during phone interviews is to test them if they really care about the interview… Have they done their research? You don’t want the candidate that just applies for every single job without doing their own due diligence. This is a major indicator that they are not likely to stay for long.
Feel free to add in fun questions to throw them off. Questions like “if you could be a huge mouse or a tiny elephant, what would you be and why?” are useful to see if they are creative and can tell a story.