2. How to reach out to your candidates
‘How to reach out to your candidates’ is the second chapter of Boost, the third book of The Hiring Playbooks, 5 ebooks that will turn all your hires into wins. Created by the Homerun team.
This chapter will help you take an active approach to hiring, increase your employer brand visibility and find the right person for your job before your competitors do.
After identifying who your ideal candidate is and where they are, the only thing left is to reach out to them. The key to doing this successfully is being precise, proactive and personal. Just like in every other step of the hiring process, you’ll need the support of your team to do this, and you’ll need to think on your feet too. Thankfully we’re about to explain everything you need to give your posts the maximum boost — or the booooost as we like to call it.
How do I reach out to candidates?
1. Focus on the most effective channels
If you try to promote your job post everywhere, you’ll spread yourself
and your message too thin. Instead, you should focus on the channels
with the best ROI for your goals.
To determine which channels those are, look at your candidate map and
select the ones that rank highest on density, relevance, impact, and
culture fit for the candidates that you need to reach.
(If you don’t have a candidate map, check out the previous article in our
guide: Boost your job post: Where your candidates hang out).
Some of the most popular ways to promote job posts are:
• Niche job boards (Dribbble, Github, Authentic Jobs)
• Google ads
• Social media advertising
• Networking events (hosting, sponsoring, or attending)
• Employee referrals
The last two can be combined in the Homerun Talent Clipper. This
Chrome plugin is an easy way for your team to ‘save’ a talent that they
think could be valuable in the future. Once the plugin is installed, all you
have to do add someone to the talent pool is click the icon, and add a
note so that the team knows what you like about the person. That’s it!
As it’s a plugin, you don’t even have to leave the page you’re on to do
this.
Whatever tools you decide to use, think carefully about your budget
and the amount of time you have available. Be realistic with your goals
to preserve the quality of your messaging and your sanity.
2. Tailor your messaging to your audience & the media channel
The channel that you’re using to promote your job will shape the way
that you promote it. It will affect the length of your message, the form it
takes (text, video, image), and the media you use to enrich it (hashtags,
links, photos) — so make sure you approach each channel differently.
You’ll also need to tailor your message to your audience. Think about
how your target candidates talk, what they’re into, and what they’re
looking for in an employer, and take all that into consideration when
shaping your message.
For example, your tone of voice should be informal on social media,
and more formal on LinkedIn. It’s also worth considering where you can
best reach a certain role: LinkedIn might be the best place to advertise
a sales position, while a graphic designer is more likely to hangout on
Instagram or Facebook.
3. Grow your (job post) network
The more people who are sharing, or engaging, with your job post, the
more likely it is that you’ll reach awesome candidates. That’s why we’ve
made a short list of the most effective ways to boost your network.
Programmatic Job Advertising
You might be tempted to buy Google ads, or social media ads to
promote your job. These are effective as you can be very precise about
who you target, but can be even more so if you use Programmatic Job
Advertising (PJA). This is a nifty tool that is available on Homerun’s Beta
version.
All you have to do is set the budget and create a profile for the job post,
and the PJA will create a fully customized campaign for your opening
based on similar job openings and profiles. That’s not all: the PJA also
customises the title image and description for each platform and reacts
according to the success (or failure) of the ad on each program. So if
something’s not working on Facebook, but is hot on Instagram, the PJA
will immediately drop Facebook and shift all the budget to instagram.
Win win!
Referrals
Although PJA is a great way to target people online, you shouldn’t
forget the value of a good-old fashioned referral. It’s another effective
way of reaching people who are a good fit for your company, especially
as the personal angle will probably mean that the person who has been
referred will share similar values to your company.
Willem van Roosmalen, co-founder Homerun:
“Don’t ignore the power of your team to boost the job
post. The more involved and connected they feel to the job post, the
happier they’ll be to share it with their own network.”
Social media
Encourage your team to share and engage with your job post, because
when they do, the people in their networks are more likely to see the
post and engage with it themselves. Again, the personal angle to
this connection has a good chance of leading to a good match — and
who knows, if your post goes viral, it might even result in an extra
application or hundred…
Events
If you’ve decided to promote your job opening at an event, bring some
team members with you to network and scope out potential colleagues.
Better yet, have someone from the team you’re trying to grow
participate as a speak at the event.
For example, if you’re hiring for a junior UX role, then having a senior
UXer from your company give a talk about conversational design is a
great way to connect with enthusiastic new UX designers.
4. Review your efforts, revise, improve
After each attempt you make at promoting a job post, make sure you
take time afterwards to review your process and your results.
Did you get the results you wanted?
You did? Well done! We suggest you dish out some high fives to your
team before sitting down to a) have a breather and b) work out the
secret of your success. If you can establish the factors that led to your
success, then you should be able to replicate this result in the future.
Hooray!
If you didn’t, don’t worry. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Examine
everything you did, consider what went wrong and what changes you
can make to improve. And don’t forget to ask your team’s opinions too.
The more perspectives you have on the hiring process, the better.
Whatever the result, by conducting a mini review, you’ll ensure that
you’re always learning, improving, and moving forward. It won’t just be
your job posts that you boost, but your entire hiring process!
What do I do next?
Boost and boost some more, until you have a nice, thick stack of top
quality applications on your desk. Then you’ll be ready for Playbook
#4 Hire, where you’ll find out how to do job interviews that screen for
skill and cultural fit, while staying true to your employer brand.
By the way, if you have any questions on anything in this playbook or
the wonderful world of hiring, then we’d love to hear from you. Say hi at
hello@homerun.co.
All Images by Studio Spass.
