Today companies face one of their biggest challenges: attracting and retaining talent.
And this is added to the fact that people currently have much more power to decide than ever, since information about companies is much more accessible.
But how do we manage to attract those “ideal candidates” for our company and make them fall in love? Well, first of all, the first step is to know who those ideal candidates are and get to know them in depth.
WHAT IS CANDIDATE PERSONA?
In the Inbound Recruiting Methodology , the candidate has a fundamental role in the selection processes, being the center of everything. That is why we have to know very well the candidates that our company wants to attract and needs and build our recruiting strategy based on their needs.
The ideal candidate is the one who fits in with the culture of your company and the way you have to understand the world, the one who shares the values of the company.
So what exactly is the Candidate Persona?
The Candidate Persona is a semi-fictional portrait of the ideal candidate for your company.
And we build this candidate person by defining the characteristics, traits and skills that the ideal candidate for your company should have.
WHY DO YOU NEED TO BUILD YOUR CANDIDATE PERSONA?
If we know our ideal candidates (what they want to know, what motivates them, what their fears are...) we can focus all our efforts on giving them all this information with the aim of making them feel attracted to our company.
Creating your Candidate Personas will be the most important part of any Inbound Recruiting strategy, since without them, it is impossible for us to create a relevant Value Proposition or an attractive Employer Branding.
In addition, building our Candidate Personas will help us to:
Make candidates who fit your culture and company feel attracted to it.
Increase the suitability ratio of candidates to the offer and culture of your company
Better convince candidates with better arguments to resolve their doubts with real examples from other candidates.
HOW TO BUILD YOUR CANDIDATE PERSONA?
Asking who has the answers:
Choose people from your company that you would like to clone, from each position that you want to attract talent.
If there is no one in the company with that profile, talk to external people who would fit perfectly in that position
It is not worth saying that you already know what they value.
We need to be able to use these people's own words, we cannot create them under the ideas that we have as managers or HR, since then it would be totally irrelevant.
Who do you think knows better the concerns of a sales person, the Recruiting person or a person who is working in sales? Too obvious answer, right? Well, then we are going to be guided by what they tell us and how those people we would like to clone tell us.
And… what do we ask?
Of all the questions, we want to know what you value most about this company. We have to get all the benefits that the person sees and why they value them, since they will be our "weapons" to convince the talent that we want to attract to our company.
Some of the questions we can ask would be:
What do you like about working at this company?
What do you value most about your colleagues?
What motivates you especially to work here?
What interests you most about your current position?
Tell me 3 reasons and why you would recommend someone to work at our company.
Finally, after having classified all the information, you must shape your Candidate Persona by creating its story.
Stories bring all the information together and create an overview of the ideal candidate for your company. In addition, they will facilitate the selection process for your team since they will be able to familiarize themselves with the ideal candidate and recognize them faster than ever.
Once you have interviewed at least 3 people per position (in order to see if they all value the same), from their answers, we will see what things are the most repeated, that is, what these people value most about working with us , and that is going to be our value proposition, be it at the position, department or company level.