A fantastic opportunity to join your firm crops up and you – or your HR rep – dutifully go ahead and post it, excited to begin interviewing the marvelous talent that this top-notch job is sure to attract. And then, nothing. Crickets.
Turns out that, despite your best efforts, your company may be putting up roadblocks that are preventing the candidates that you want from applying successfully to your job posting. Below, we outline five of the most common foibles and what you can do to prevent them moving forward.
Word Limit:
When you’re crafting your job description, particularly if it’s for a top-tier position, your inclination might be to give as much information as possible – after all, you want to share all the juicy details about the job and your company to attract only the most qualified candidates. However, the reality is that serious job seekers are likely reviewing dozens of job descriptions each day and don’t want to read a lengthy tome about your company history, only to figure out that they aren’t even remotely qualified. With this in mind, the experts recommend that you go ahead and put the most essential experience and skill requirements near the top of your ad, pushing any information about other “nice to have” experiences or even your company’s culture to later in the ad where it can be digested by only the most interested parties.
Choose your words wisely:
As we touched on above, you want to keep your job description short and sweet and really focus on the most relevant information for your candidates. However, as you are chopping and changing your job description, make sure that you aren’t removing all of the wording that describes why your company is wonderful to work for. When candidates are scanning all those job descriptions, yours will stand out if your company’s voice shines through if you talk about what makes your existing employees happy. Hype up your 401K, your benefits plan, your efforts to help your workers achieve work-life balance, your meaningful company culture, and anything else that makes your company shine. Remember, the job application process is a two-way street, and you want to woo them too!
Streamline your application:
As we touched on above, when it comes to job seekers, time is of the essence (and particularly in today’s job market). With the job description, we suggested that while you want to give as much information as possible, you should streamline it somewhat, and we recommend that you do the same with your actual job application. Sure, you want to glean as much information as possible about the person applying, but rather than put them through a series of rigorous questions or worse, ask that they write an essay or two, you should streamline your application so that it can be filled out in full in less than 15 minutes. Be sure to ask the most relevant questions. The ones that will tell you quickly whether someone is qualified and will make sure that the top candidates make it through your search engine but leave the heavy digging about job history and other super specific tops to later in the interview process. From a tech standpoint, experts also recommend that you limit the number of fields candidates have to fill out as many job applicants work on smart phones and it can become cumbersome if you force people to scroll for forever!
Get with the times:
Back in the day, every job application basically looked the same: a fill in the blank application with demographic info, a PDF resume, and a targeted cover letter. These days, however, cover letters have very much fallen out of vogue. Even resumes are being phased out in favor of links to candidates online LinkedIn profiles, which houses all of the relevant work info, but also provides a glimmer of insight into a person’s interests, both professional and somewhat personal. With this in mind, you should consider updating your job application process to give employees the option to share their LinkedIn profile in lieu of providing the traditional resume and use the actual interview time to ask the questions that you’d want covered in a cover letter.
Behind the scenes fix:
If your application process is glitchy or freezes up, candidates will, at the best, delay their application and at the worst, not bother applying at all. While your application submission process might look good on the back end, it’s always wise to do a test run of the process as if you are an applicant. Specifically, you’ll want to test whether the instructions are easy to understand, whether the spaces to upload links or files is in good working order, and does it take 15 minutes or less to read through the instructions, application process, and complete the forms. In addition, it is a good idea to make sure that the application can be filled out on a computer, tablet and even a mobile device without glitches. Another smart idea to ensure engagement is to include a function that allows candidates to check on the status of their application or at the very least contact information for whoever will be heading up the hiring process so that folks don’t feel like their application is in the wind.
By creating a more streamlined and effective online application process, you have a higher chance of attracting the candidates that you most want for your company and not losing out on the right person for the job!
Have you made changes to your application process to attract new talent? Let us know in the comments!
