When we’re brought in to consult on a role it’s most often because it’s already been open for some time. Maybe a month or two with no results, but we’ve also been asked to help with roles that have remained unfilled for six months to a year. For one reason or another the right applicant hasn’t come to the table yet, and understandably the company is trying to find out why. It’s usually a very similar story: the job is posted, it’s easy to locate on the company website, but for some reason it’s just not drawing the right applicant.
Of course every role is different, but in most cases the issue comes down to advertising or process - both of which we can help you address. We’ll focus on advertising first and process in part two.
The job isn’t posted widely enough
This happens a lot for smaller to medium sized companies that don’t have a lot of name recognition. Candidates aren’t really looking for your specific company because they don’t know about it. So if the role is only posted to your company website or 1-2 other job boards, you’re just not quite reaching your target audience. Candidates gravitate to company names they know or job boards they hear a lot about. So they might search the Capital One careers page, but they probably won’t think to search for every small financial consulting business in their area to check their career pages. Job boards are a separate but related issue, they seem like a great resource, but even if you’re posting to a fairly popular board it’s easy for your posting to get buried under others with similar titles in your location. Take today on Indeed for instance, on a random August Wednesday there are 12 pages of new results for Software Developer openings in Washington, DC. And it’s only 1 PM. Unless you’re being incredibly diligent about refreshing your posting every day and pushing it up to the top of most recent additions, it’s going to get buried.
This is often one of the first areas we address when we take over sourcing on a role. It’s our job to identify your ideal candidate and come up with a plan that reaches them quickly and efficiently. We’ll target more niche specific job boards or Linkedin groups, create marketing campaigns with directed targeting, and more. It’s time consuming for sure, but it’s the best way to cut through the noise of the big boards and shine a spotlight on a smaller organization.
The job is posted too widely
Many job boards now have a crawling function that takes your posting and plasters it...well everywhere. Every corner of the internet gets a link to your job posting. Most of those links come with “quick apply” or “easy submit” functions that let a candidate use their prefilled profile on that site to instantly apply to your job. When the application is that easy most candidates won’t take the time to read your job description in depth. If you’ve started to see a lot of low effort applications that don’t quite make sense, this is probably why. It’s incredibly frustrating, and usually a waste of your team’s time to filter through those generic quick apply responses. Another major benefit external recruiting support can add is making sure those low effort applications aren’t bogging the team down. We do the first screen with candidates so you can move directly to speaking with only the ones who meet your salary and skill requirements.
The posting is missing key selling points
One of the first questions I always ask hiring managers is “tell me about a day in the life of someone doing this job”. It helps me as someone who’s never done most of the jobs I’m recruiting for, but it also helps hiring managers articulate the unique highlights of a role. It’s also a great way to approach writing a job description. Paint the picture for applicants of what life looks like at your company, the day to day responsibilities, challenges, and rewards. Most postings are pretty vague and don’t really give candidates a sense of what the job actually entails, so writing yours in a way that helps them really understand the role will immediately set you apart.
It’s also true that many candidates are looking for a fully remote opportunity right now. If that’s yours, make sure it’s front and center on the job posting. Things like fully paid health benefits, education allowances, flexible schedules, and unlimited PTO set a company apart - so make sure they’re easily visible!
The title is too specific to your organization
Even if your company uses organization specific job titles a job posting typically shouldn’t. A mid level inside sales rep isn’t searching for a job called “Client Engagement Manager” or “Customer Success Coordinator”. That’s just one example, but the basic premise here is you have to think about the job title your ideal candidate is most likely to be searching for. In my inside sales days my actual titles ranged from Client Care Specialist to Training Advisor, to Customer Success Manager, and finally Customer Retention Lead. In all of those roles the basic responsibilities and requirements were the same, and when I was job searching I’d generally look for some version of “Inside Sales”. We can help with this - when we start working on a role we’ll discuss the titles your ideal candidates probably have now and help you optimize the posting so they’ll see your role as a logical next step.