“IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME”
Posted by Barbara Spector on Fri, Aug 31, 2018 @ 8:44 AM
Remember the movie in which Kevin Costner said that? It is burned into my memory. Probably yours too. So, what does the film, Field of Dreams, have to do with finding top sales talent? Companies are always asking us, “Where do we go to find great candidates? We post our ads on the best job boards but there is no one out there that we would want to hire. We just get lousy results and spend hours pouring over resumes that don’t even come close to the type of candidate we need. We must be posting in the wrong places. What are the best places to find them.”
I’d recommend you think again. The job boards aren’t the problem, a tight labor market isn’t even the problem.
I’d propose that your best candidates can’t find you because you are probably writing a job ad that no top performer would even be interested in reading, never mind responding to. Did your HR department, with no fault of their own, tell you to use your job description as the ad for the position?
Ah, therein lies the problem—your job descriptions are not designed to attract top talent! They are basically a compliance document that describes fundamental skills, duties and responsibilities. They have no “sizzle”, no excitement. Boring! And should never be used as job ad copy.
Consider if you wrote an ad to sell your products online, or on TV or on the radio the same way as you write job ads. You wouldn’t get any new customers.
Imagine if companies like the company with the little gecko as spokesperson simply droned on about their various products—car insurance, homeowners insurance, motorcycle insurance, flood insurance, earthquake insurance and how long they have been in business along with what a great team works at the company, and then they listed their premium rates—you’d stop listening immediately. You would change stations!
The people that write great job ads, like we do, know that you must MARKET to your candidates rather than expecting them to get excited enough over a list of skills, duties and responsibilities. Trust me, they won’t send in their resume.
And the ones that do send them in, suck! These applicants are mediocre at best because a job description does NOT describe top performance, only mediocre performance. Therefore, TOP performers won’t reply to job descriptions posing as a job ad. They need to read something entirely different because they want to DO something different.
So… You must start thinking about your candidates like you think about how you would attract your best customers. Ultimately a great ad will attract great candidates—who (if you use great interviewing techniques and use the best sales assessment on the market to ensure they are a fit to your business) will become great sales people and the truth is, THEY will be your most important (internal) customer. Why? Because you won’t grow without them!
So, please, remove your job descriptions posing as ads and write an ad that attracts top talent. Want help writing your job ad? Request a free call with me to help you.
If you build it right, they will come! It is THE most important first step to finding top talent.
And stay tuned. Next time we will discuss the “fake news on resumes”.
If you’d like to receive this series of 52 tips to creating a world class sales organization, please text SMARTMOVES at 72000 or email us at assess@smartmovesinc.com with 72000 in the subject line.
