Talent Attraction is much more than just media acquisition, multi-posting and attracting applicants.
What is talent attraction?
Talent attraction refers to parts of the recruitment process that support attracting prospective candidates, up to the point of application. It is a small part of what should be an overarching talent acquisition process, which is everything that happens in the recruitment timeline from attraction all the way to offer on employment.
The talent attraction stage of this process involves: job advert writing, job advert optimisation, media channel selection, job posting and applicant capture.
Job advert writing
How you write your job adverts is an integral part of the talent attraction process. This is because many businesses make the mistake of writing a simple job spec, with their essential requirements for the role and little else to excite and engage a prospective candidate. With the best candidates often passively searching for a new role, your job advert is the perfect place to really sell the role and opportunity to them.
Job advert optimisation
To make sure your ad actually gets seen by talent online, optimising your job ad is important. 75% of internet users actually never scroll past the first page of results, so you want to increase your chances of appearing on the first page of your chosen job channel.
Media channel selection
Getting your role in front of the right candidates means selecting the right media channels that these candidates will be searching on. You also want to be present across a large enough number of these channels to attract a high volume of talent.
Job posting
Once you have selected your job advertising channels, actually posting your jobs on your selected channels is of course a key part of the talent attraction process.
Applicant capture
Actually capturing applications from talented candidates is what you want the final outcome to be of the talent attraction stage. You don’t want potential applicants dropping out of the process, overwriting all of your hard work.
Why is talent attraction important?
A good talent attraction process is the key to finding the right quantity and quality of applicants for vacancies at your business. This is important because making the wrong hire can cause a huge financial strain on your business, from issues with underperformance to poor cultural fit that impacts the wider company.
Getting talent attraction right at the beginning of your recruitment process will help you make better hiring decisions, and bring employees into your business that match your needs.
How to improve your talent attraction
There are ways to optimise each stage of the talent attraction process that increase your chance of success. These techniques should be influenced by data and research, human behavioural science and tried and tested methods. There are 3 primary outcomes this will achieve:
1. Maximise views of your job
Getting your jobs in front of more candidates means you increase the chance of talented individuals seeing and applying for your roles. Two ways you can improve the chance of this happening are around media channel range and selection.
Media range
The breadth and range of media channels your job actually goes out to.
Media selection
An evidence-based approach to selecting the right media channels where your prospective applicants are most likely to visit and that give you the best ROI.
2. Generate more applications
Naturally, the more applications you generate, the more talented candidates you have to choose from. Luckily there are some ways you can guarantee improved visibility and conversions through completed applications.
Improved Visibility
Increasing visibility within each media channel by manipulating the search engine, so that your job appears higher in the results, thus generating more views.
Increased conversions
Maximising applications by converting more views into actual applicants through better copywriting techniques.
3. Retain applicants
Once you’ve attracted your talent, retaining their interest is a vital part of the process. This again comes down to the fact that many of the most talented candidates are only passively searching for a new role; you need to continue to impress and engage them throughout each stage of the recruitment process to avoid drop offs.
Improved Capture
Avoiding the loss of any applicants in the first stage of the application process.
Improved Engagement
Avoiding early drop off immediately after the application takes place by deploying a reward and nurture strategy.
Getting all of this right for each individual job certainly isn’t easy, but many online recruiters consistently get this very wrong.
Working with our clients to generate significant tangible improvements in this area is certainly one of the most rewarding parts of what we do.
At SRO we have refined every single part of the talent attraction process, in order to optimise results and get more jobs filled with higher quality direct applications.
From job creation, channel selection, styling and tone, to applicant experience. We ensure that every touchpoint with each prospective candidate is designed to increase the probability of a positive outcome. To find out more request a demonstration of our platform.
