Thoughts on job postings (and attracting all-star talent) in 2022 and beyond

Posted March 31, 2022 in
IMPACT+ HQ IMPACT+ HQ

Zach Basner

Digital Sales and Marketing Coach at IMPACT | “All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.”

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Every organization needs great people and great leaders. Yet, nearly every company I talk to is experiencing some sort of challenge around hiring and recruiting right now.

“It’s really hard to find great people right now, Zach.”

Trust me, I feel you. Even we at IMPACT have experienced the pain of the “Great Resignation.” It’s not that great people aren’t out there, it’s just taking about 3 times as long to find them.

Fact is, though, it’s high time we all take a closer look at exactly HOW we go about attracting these people - starting with our communication on the front end. 

Of course I’m talking….job postings.

Three things we’ve noticed will make a radical difference in both the quality and amount of applicants you attract in your job posting:
  1. Put a salary range IN the job description. Just like your customers want to have a sense of cost/price before they buy from you, job candidates want an idea of what they are getting into pay-wise as well. Most people are afraid that if they put a range, the candidate will expect the highest amount. However, in most cases, applicants will actually propose coming in at the bottom of the range.


  2. Include an 80% video from the hiring manager in the description. Very similar to the 80% video strategy you will use for your customers, this will save you a lot of time and help applicants qualify (or disqualify) themselves much faster. Add in the fact that they now see, hear, and know the person they’ll be interviewing with and it’s easy to see why this quickly attracts more candidates.


  3. You need to be clear about their mission. Lists of responsibilities are not enough, they need to be able to picture themselves doing the work. Talk about why you’re hiring for this position, what success looks like, what problem they’re helping you solve, etc. Remember, people will work for a salary, but they'll devote themselves to a mission.

These are three things that will almost certainly make you stand out and increase your chances of filling those positions with all stars.

What next? If you’ve already mastered these things, the next step is going to be a great careers page and great messaging around your company mission. (Storybrand, anyone?)
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Dale Pease
I'd love to hear more about #2. Do you have any examples of what this would look like for a job posting? 
Zach Basner
Here's a couple, Dale. :-)

https://www.drive4ats.com/ (80% video on the homepage)

https://www.tunnldata.com/hiring-senior-director-performance-marketing
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AJ Cheponis
ATS is well done, thanks for sharing. Professional, clear, and authentic.  
Winnie Anderson
These are really good.
Dale Pease
I've created a script for an 80% video (based heavily on the tunnl one) for the content manager position we are going to be trying to fill. I'd love your feedback: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cJCln5RSelmdlqX2XMr1EDJ8aAnGlaOMxGjhdEO74VI/edit?usp=sharing
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Zach Basner
I really, really like it, Dale. My one addition would be to mention TAYA specifically. How excited would they be if they knew the strategy and direction is already so clear?
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Dale Pease
Good suggestion.
Continue reading this thread
Dale Pease
That tunnl data video is awesome! Thanks.
Winnie Anderson
Love these suggestions and this topic! I'm a former recruiter and can talk about this all. day. long! Recruiting is really marketing but to a different audience. You need to attract great applicants or you'll never become the great company you dream of being. They ARE your brand to the customer. 

Even more important than videos from a hiring manager would be videos from employees talking about why they love working there...why they enjoy their job...the positives they see in the culture. 

Just as clients have a choice -- to buy from you or the competition -- the best applicants have a choice as well. 
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Zach Basner
Really great points here Winnie. Adding videos from employees would be a great addition!
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Winnie Anderson
Something else I think is important here is to consider what the perceived negatives are to the job and discuss them honestly. 

I was a high volume recruiter in the casino industry back in the day. I had a job I recruited for that involved physically back-breaking work -- hard count attendant. Those folks refilled slot machines with tokens or coins. The buckets would be unbelievably heavy. 

The job was dirty and at the time, needed to be completed within a tight time window. 

BUT...they would get paid for an 8-hour day no matter how few hours they worked.

The right person --  a morning person who was typically a weight lifter and sometimes had a steady job that started late in the morning -- was always hard to find. 

But when I explained the negatives to the right candidate they got excited about it.

Same is true for when you're hiring for a position facing challenges -- a manager who is going to have to turn a department around for example. 

It's important to be honest so you're hiring from a pool of candidates who are jazzed by the challenge not turned off by it.

And if a job is naturally challenging -- customer service rep or any other type of position that may naturally involve dealing with less than happy customers -- I think it's important to not only recognize that but talk about what the organization does to mitigate that emotional stress. (So many companies don't do anything of course which is a whole other problem)
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AJ Cheponis
Hi Zach, 

You’re absolutely correct; every organization needs great people. 

I know you might be taken back by this statement – but here it goes. It’s not hard to find, hire and keep great people – they are all around us. 

Unfortunately, how we fundamentally go about looking for people is massively flawed.  

We write ads based on things that “mostly” don’t matter. We talk about technical details, experience, education, and so on. Then we look for keywords on a resume that have no relevance or correlation to job performance and choose to interview certain people. 

BTW, your job history or “what you’ve done” is not an indicator of job fit or job performance. And if you were curious, education plays an almost nonexistent (1.1%) role in predicting job performance. 

When most organizations interview, they have no framework in place and lack an unbiased way to rank people. They ask questions based on history and experience and play in the hypothetical “what if” arena and make biased judgments on what they hear. Then to make matters worse, they end up hiring the applicant they “like” the most or worse, a person who did a similar job somewhere else. 

It’s a proven recipe for churn, decreased culture, poor performance, and disengagement.

 

While your three ideas aren’t bad, it still doesn’t get to the desired result of attracting, hiring, and keeping engaged, happy, productive team members.

 

 The key to making phenomenal hires revolves around Job Fit – is the person a “natural” fit for the role. Experience, age, education, identity aside; is the person a behavioral and cognitive match for the demands of the role? 

Once we know this vital information, only then do we proceed to interview. Frankly, the people you’d be interviewing at this point could all perform the job at a high level. Where most of your interview energy is spent will be on passion, purpose, values, and cultural fit. 

 

I’m sure you and many of your readers will have questions as I’ve left out a ton of details – I didn’t want to turn this into a 3,000-word reply. 😊  Feel free to reach out to me anytime and I’d be happy to dig in deeper with anyone frustrated with trying to find, hire and keep incredible talent. It is completely solvable. I can be reached at  aj@straightline.consulting and will respond as quickly as possible.  Thanks! 

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