Getting the best candidates— Pitching Your Company Right
The competition for great software engineers/designer/tech candidates is stronger than ever, companies are fighting for great candidates through competitive offers, perks, titles, etc.; however, while companies spend a lot of resources on these, they forget (or fail) to do the most important thing —to let the candidate know that they/you are awesome (and why).
Marketing yourself probably is the first step to get you through the door and to set the right tone for the rest of the recruitment process. While recruitment marketing & employer branding is a big topic, we are going to focus on (verbally)pitching your company to candidates.
What Needs to be in Your Company Pitch
When pitching your company, you should:
- Sell the mission, values, culture and structure of the company that aligns with the type of candidate you want to hire;
- Showcase the product/service, achievements/recognition;
- Share what makes your product/company a notch above the competition;
- Sell the team (especially for juniors/people who are looking for a good environment to grow);
- perks, and other great pull factors.
Although this is not a part of the sales/pitch, but it is also important to be transparent and to share your org chart, org structure, the interview process and your strategic timeline so that your candidate would know what to expect.
Aim to spend 10–20 minutes pitching the company, that is the estimated attention span of a healthy adult/teenager. Here’s a sample structure for you to follow:
- 1 unit of time — Introduce yourself
- 1 unit of time — Talk about your product/service (inter-changeable with 3)
- 1 unit of time — Dive into the teams’ mission, vision, culture and background
- 1 unit of time — Talk about your roadmap and expansion plan
- 1 unit of time — perks and other pull factor (optional)
- plenty of time — Q&A
Make sure to practice with your colleagues/friends to keep your speech concise and engaging. When you practice, you will start to find bits of pieces that can be trimmed down/added.
Lastly, be prepared that the candidate will stop you and ask question at any point, and you maybe jumping between the topics. It is good to keep note on what you need to cover and what their questions are.
Briefing Your Agency Recruiter (Us!)
Lastly, perfecting your pitch is not only important for sourcing candidate directly, but also crucial for helping your agency recruiters to put you in the best light (which, in turn, make them more excited to work with you; who wouldn’t want to work on an easier sell?).
When you brief your agency recruiters, imagine that you are pitching to a candidate whom you really want to pull onboard. Recruiters will mimic how they see you sell your company, so a successful pitch not only makes your company top of mind, it sells your company the right way to all candidates we come in contact with.
We always ask our clients to pitch their company and roles to us when we onboard them. All our recruiters agree that seeing our clients pitch to us help make sourcing and selling to the right candidates tremendously easier!
