Let’s be honest. Apart from the very well-known, prestigious enterprises that have the luxury of choosing between hundreds of job applicants for a traineeship, we’re all struggling with getting the right candidates in the pipeline. Or even getting candidates in at all. The painful truth is that our job application processes are all about fear. Fear of not being able to hire the right person. Fear of rejecting the wrong candidates. And lastly, fear of not having enough candidates to pick from.
Here is your wake-up call: Hiring success isn’t about quantity. It’s about quality.
After reading this blog, you will know:
- Quantity vs. Quality in recruitment
- How to attract top-quality candidates
- Ways to become a company where people want to work
- Promote your jobs in the right place & in the right way
- Providing a job application experience that candidates will love
P. S. This blog is an excerpt from the playbook we wrote on how to attract top-quality candidates – you can download it here!
Quantity vs. Quality in recruitment
The debate of quantity vs quality is ongoing in many different parts of our lives, also in the realm of hiring.
There are two common ways people tend to look at this. Some argue that a quantity-inclined hiring process increases chances of finding someone who fits the job role faster or simply just having more candidates to pick from. In fact, time to hire is rated as one of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs) when assessing the effectiveness of the recruitment process.
However, time to hire is the worst hiring KPI – a decreased time to hire does not mean increased hiring quality. Rushing your hiring practices, in fact, has never worked out well for any company. Maybe in the short term, but definitely not in the long run. Others argue that playing the waiting game is the safest bet when it comes to hiring – to avoid making a hire that is a bad fit. Yet, this can imply that the job roles stay open for too long, so you begin to settle for less and this eventually leads to an overall lack of diversity within your teams.
What we often see going wrong when companies are boosting their recruitment processes and simultaneously attempting to reduce the time to hire, is that quantity of candidates gets mistaken with quality. The reality, however, is different – quantity is a vanity metric when attracting talent. Let me explain to you why.
This reason why quantity is a vanity metric when attracting applicants
Having fewer candidates may feel frustrating and almost as if all the effort, time and financial resources are wasted, especially, if you do not end up with the best-fit candidate in the end. There is a common misconception that the more candidates we attract, the sooner we find a quality candidate. What I’d like to emphasize here is that in recruitment – quantity is not your friend.
In fact, having fewer applicants actually means that you will end up spending less time going through applications of unqualified or uninterested candidates.
How to attract top-quality candidates
Become an employer of choice
From an employer’s perspective, a candidate-driven market is something that isn’t always recognised until faced with the prospect of recruiting. The competition for talent is real and more intense than ever, which means that candidates have the upper hand and are the ones choosing where they want to work.
So, the question you should ask yourself is: how to make sure that your company is the company that people want to work for? The answer to this question is actually more simple than you might think: you should be an employer of choice.
To become an employer of choice:
- Have a powerful & clear vision, as it will attract the right people (read more about how to effectively communicate your vision)
- Don’t underestimate the importance of company culture (this is what happens when your scaleup does not put culture first)
- Emphasize your commitment to ensuring Diversity, Equality & Inclusion (here’s what happens when your scaleup does not prioritize DE&I)
- Offer both professional & personal development
Promote your jobs in the right place & in the right way
Don’t underestimate the impact of the quality of your job descriptions when it comes to attracting top quality candidates. Job descriptions are the very first impression the candidates get of your company. They are the key piece in every company’s hiring strategy and are especially valuable to communicate your employer brand (5 step guide to writing better job descriptions).
Once you’ve perfected your job description, it is time to start promoting your jobs. There are four main ways in which you can do so:
- Advertising internally & within your network
- Posting on your company career site
- Advertising on job boards
- Posting on social networking sites
Provide a job application experience that candidates will love
Ensuring that you attract top quality candidates starts by becoming a company that people want to work at. However, that’s not where the journey ends.
4 out of 5 candidates say that their overall experience is an indicator of how the company values people.
You don’t want people to throw away your business card without looking at it or remembering it, right? That’s also how it works with your job application. You don’t want candidates to drop out or even not remember you.
Comfort, respect and speed – are the three most important dimensions of candidate experience. Create a revolutionary candidate experience by using gamified assessments as part of the application process. This way you can attract the top quality candidates in an objective, bias-free and data-backed way.
Acquiring top-quality talent is the most important key to growth
The competition for talent is real and more intense than ever, which means that candidates have the upper hand and are the ones choosing where they want to work. That’s precisely why it’s important to be a company that people want to work for and realize that quantity is only a vanity metric when attracting talent.
The real power is hidden in the quality of candidates, as that is what will take your business to the moon.
Do you want to know more about how we can help you with this? Get in touch with us & we’ll be happy to tell you more!
Cheers, Anete
