3 simple ways to immediately improve your candidate experience

When was the last time you’ve heard someone brag about, “what a great time they’re having searching for jobs”?

Stop boring your talent away.

Top talent today has new reasons that motivate why and where they choose to work. They’re looking to be led by purpose and be given meaning. Many companies have exciting positions, thriving cultures and incredible career growth opportunities — but click any “Apply Now” button — and you’re met with an uninteresting text-based job posting. Just imagine how uninspired candidates are reading sentences like:

- Ability to manage competing deadlines and a variety of complex projects simultaneously

- Coordinate with applicable business groups to define/implement necessary activities to ensure client success

- Design, develop and manage proprietary systems that adhere to company standard operating procedures

Seriously. In what way would these make a candidate excited and/or interested in a job opportunity?

Your job postings deserve better.

…and your candidates need better. Think of job postings as a t-shirt that a company wears — it’s the first thing a candidate sees when looking at an organization. The entire point is to attract the type of candidate you want by showcasing how your organization aligns with their interests and goals. Be interesting, and your candidates will be interested. Be standout, and your candidates will be outstanding. Top talent has choices, and it’s important that you make that choice as easy as possible by taking that extra step and providing them with a unique and engaging candidate experience.

If you aren’t sure what a unique candidate experience looks like. Here’s 3 things you can implement right now that will bring you much closer to providing a unique candidate experience:

1. Update your job skills and requirements. Provide specific context that will help candidates better understand the position and expectations. Eliminate arbitrary skills and requirements and provide contextualized asks from candidates. Instead of asking for “communications skills”, why not ask for “a strong conversationalist who can strike up conversation with a brick-wall”?

2. Brand your job postings as if they were a marketing tool. If you were to remove the logo from a job postings… would candidates know who they were applying for? It’s important to stand out from competition, and it’s important to maximize your recruiting dollar. Job ads are an outward facing marketing tool that should be used to connect with qualified candidates. Make them as enticing and interesting as possible! This is a chance to extend your employer-brand as a first touchpoint for your candidates.

3. Write your job postings for the people you want to hire and not the SEO-robots that will index them. As mentioned in the previous point, context is incredibly important, and it goes hand-in-hand with speaking directly to the candidates you want to attract. Top candidates are people first, and it is important to speak them in a way that is meaningful and genuine. Remember that candidates are looking to be purpose-led and not job-led.

Through research, experience, and lots of execution, we’ve seen these tips in action and the long way they go in helping attract qualified candidates. Feel free to give them a try yourself and if you’d like some help or more examples, check out our website or feel free to contact me at jahmal@ruutly.com.

Brought to you by Ruutly. We create standout job postings, so you can attract, engage and acquire the outstanding talent you need.