Finding the right profiles in the digital industry has almost become a sport in itself.
On LinkedIn, I receive countless messages with requests for recommendations for various roles—who fits best where, and so on. I’m not a headhunter, and even though I have some insight into the digital world, it can be a challenging task.
Are you looking for a specialist, a versatile all-rounder, or a strong leader? The paths to success are many, and missteps can be both costly and sometimes necessary.
However, I would like to highlight someone from my network whom I have seen achieve great success multiple times. I’ve had the pleasure of observing from the sidelines how he masterfully sniffs out the right talents, and it is without a doubt the best I’ve seen in the industry.
It seems appropriate to introduce Kenneth Bo Jensen, founder of TalentX, who works extensively in this area.
Recruitment of digital profiles
Thanks, Micky!
My story is that I have worked with talent for 7.5 years and in recruitment for the last 2.5 years.
I was outside the recruitment space and working with talent profiles, and I simply COULD NOT understand why so many were not more successful with their recruitments than they were.
My wonder was, why do we in marketing focus on CLV, how our Ideal Customer Profile looks, where we find them, how we should communicate messages, how our tone-of-voice is, and much more.
All the while, in recruitment, people often say: “Do we have the job posting from last time?” when a new employee is needed.
This inspired me to create my own framework for talent-based recruitment, where many of the principles from marketing are used.
When it comes down to it, how big is the difference between attracting the right customer or the right candidate through a funnel?
Therefore, I will now give some inspiration to the process and mindset, so the chances of success can hopefully increase when it comes to digital profiles.
Here are my 5 tips
Define your success profile before starting your recruitment!
What is it you are actually looking for in a potential candidate?
It’s not enough to say: “I need a Paid Social Specialist”, because I can reveal that they come in MANY different forms.
It’s also not enough to say you want experience, as studies show that there is a 6% correlation between experience and future performance.
Success is instead about context
At TalentX, when we create success profiles, we base them on talent profiles. We identify 7 talents that will have the greatest success in the future job.
If you don’t use talent profiles, disregard this—but you still need to do the groundwork.
Consider the following:
- What tasks will the person need to handle in their daily work?
- How do I want the person to solve these tasks?
- How do I want the person to think?
- What would be great for the person to be driven by? (Should the person be driven by deep-dive analysis, execution, learning new things, being social in the team, developing others’ skills?)
- How do I want the person to fit into the culture?
- What is important for the employee to collaborate with the immediate leader? (Collaboration with the immediate leader accounts for 70% of the employee’s engagement, making this one of the most critical parameters for success).
The above are just some of the basic elements you can assess when it comes to how the future employee can successfully fulfill their role.
It’s about narrowing down your criteria as much as possible, as we want to target exactly the candidate who meets these.
The job posting as the core of successful recruitment
Oh, how often I have discussed this with my clients before we even start the first recruitment process.
Again and again, we hear:“Enough with the job postings. Let’s focus instead on the candidates you already know, as well as how we find the candidates you don’t yet know.”
At the same time, we often hear after the recruitment:
“Damn! During the interviews, they constantly referred back to the job posting and how it spoke to them.”
That is the key to recruitment.
The job posting has the same purpose as the ads targeting potential customers.
It should attract the right candidates, so they think:“Wow – this is just for me! I don’t really need another job, but I have to find out what this is about.”
At the same time, it should ensure that the candidates who do not match the job think:
“Ugh, that sounds like a tough position!”
When the job posting has this dual purpose, it’s crucial that it is written sharply, which is why a well-defined success profile is very important.
Target your job postings to the right candidates
When we work with talent, it is easy for us to communicate specifically to these 7 talents throughout the entire job posting.
If communication is not sharp, you will suddenly reach far more people who can see some of themselves in the posting and think:
“Hmm, these 3 things match me well – maybe I can also handle the other 3 that don’t fit me as precisely?”
This is where it can become dangerous, and the risk increases that you find the wrong candidate.
So, when writing the job posting, it is important to keep it as clean and consistent as possible.
Think about how your dream candidate looks and make sure to always write to that person’s personality.
If you need someone who is “goal-oriented,” you don’t write: “You are goal-oriented” in the posting, because what is “goal-oriented” anyway?
Who wouldn’t say they are goal-oriented? Everyone is goal-oriented towards what they are passionate about.
Instead, you write:
“You are the type who finds it hard to sit still, and you often feel that those around you are a bit lazy and don’t work quite as hard as you do.”
Now you attract the right people, not those who interpret the word “goal-oriented” based on their own thoughts and experiences.
Keep your requirements short and precise
We always start our job postings with: “If you recognize this, then you are the one we are looking for”, followed by listing sentences like the above, so the right candidates keep reading—while the wrong ones quickly leave!
Make sure not to set too many requirements in the job posting. The data we have shows that the more requirements listed, the fewer applications are received (especially from women).
Keep it as short and precise as possible.
This is undoubtedly the most important part of recruitment.
In other words, it separates the wheat from the chaff, and you end up sitting across from the most talented and relevant candidates. This cannot be emphasized enough.
Use the right channels to market the job posting
Again, think about finding new customers for the company. Which channels are used to attract them?
However, I will say that almost all digital profiles are cruising around on LinkedIn, as it is often part of their job to be on the platform and know a lot about it.
We have had great success with paid advertising on LinkedIn. If the job posting is well-made, it will often bring in a flood of applicants.
You can easily use other channels as well, which can be more specific to digital profiles.
But often LinkedIn will be more than enough
As long as it is a paid job posting, so it can be pushed to potential candidates.
Free and organic job postings rarely go as far compared to paid ones.
In addition, it is recommended to share the posting from both the company’s social media and private accounts.
There may be exciting candidates within your immediate network. We typically have more trust in shares from our network than from companies.
Reach out to candidates within the industry
By pushing the job posting and
sharing on social media, it’s possible that the candidates will come on their own, but with the competition for digital profiles, it sometimes requires a little extra effort.
Here, it can be advantageous to connect with interesting candidates and mention that you/your company is looking for new colleagues and that the job posting can be sent if the interest is mutual.
If the job posting is well-written, it won’t require convincing sales tactics once they’ve received it.
The potential candidates will either be drawn to or repelled by the posting.
But it often takes a bit of proactivity to activate candidates who are not actively looking.
Think of it as the collaboration between marketing and pre-sales, where the market is tested in advance.
Selection and the job interview
This can be a bit tricky because normally when we do recruitment for our clients, talent profiling of applicants is the FIRST thing we do.
Not to see if they are by definition good at what they will be doing, but to ensure that the candidate matches the success profile. That they will be motivated and energized by holding the job.
We use this as a screening of candidates because, as mentioned before, experience has a 6% influence on future performance. So consider bringing in some candidates who might be a bit of a wildcard.
AGAIN we are back to the job postingIf it is well-written, it will attract applicants who can see themselves in the success profile described.
These should be applicants who are drawn to the way of working, thinking, and acting.
In our recruitment processes, we see that between 60% and 80% fall within the talent-based success profile.
So give it an extra chance. There may be hidden gems in the applicant pool that are not immediately apparent because applications often focus predominantly on experience.
When it comes to the job interview, it is about asking questions related to the elements deemed important in the success profile.
The job interview and success profile should “align” to ensure you can offer the job to the best-qualified candidate.
Allow room for detailed questions during the interview
For job interviews, we recommend semi-structured interviews.
This way, there will be elements that recur between the individual interviews, while at the same time allowing the interviews to flow naturally with more specific questions if something needs further explanation.
Here are 9 examples of questions that can be asked during the interview, as my colleague Rasmus presented in an article about job interviews for Lederstof:
- What specifically made you type out your application and apply for the job when you read the job posting?
- When applying for a new job, certain things may be particularly important to you—it could be regarding the tasks, the future leader, or the team. What is most important to you when considering a new job?
- Based on the information you have received about the job, what would you highlight as your most important qualities as an employee?
- Where do you most need support and assistance so you can focus as much of your time as possible on what you do best?
- If I were a fly on the wall in your previous jobs with a small notebook, wanting to observe how your strengths manifest in your actions, what would I note?
- What have I done right as a leader if you feel engaged and motivated in the job after 1-2 years?
- What have we as a company done right if you are sitting here after 1-2 years and feel that the collaboration is working optimally?
- What have we as a company done wrong if you are sitting here after 1-2 years and want to leave?
- Tell me something that is NOT on your CV!
Hopefully, these questions will help you uncover who fits best in the role at your company.
If you follow these tips, things shouldn’t go too wrong.
Worst case, you can always find us at TalentX.
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