Only attracting B grade applicants? Don’t settle for second best, take action and prosper.

The job applications are coming in thick and fast, but none of the candidates are proving to be even remotely close to what you are looking for. Some of you will have found yourself in this situation before and compromised on your choice of candidate. Others of you stopped and asked the question of why?

When you go looking for an answer, chances are you will find it. The answer to your inability to attract qualified candidates may be in your job description. Granted you know your business and your job role better than anyone, but can you clearly articulate it? A great method of delivering an accurate job description is to ask an employee to read the position description, without the job title attached, and tell you which role it represents. If your description of the position, company or benefits is wrong, you have an opportunity to rectify this before it is distributed to the masses.

Something that is not such an easy fix is your company’s reputation. Yes, that’s right, the good candidates are taking a wide berth because your reputation in the market place is tarnished. Everyone wants to work for a great boss and a great company. And we know who falls into the category of most desirable because people talk. In a high tech world chatter spreads faster than wild fire and it spreads globally. How do you get quality candidates to then apply for a role with you? Well, you could engage a professional recruitment agency who advertises the job role under their banner. Throughout the screening process they can upsell the job and get a candidate really excited about the type of role, the benefits and the future opportunities that they could be exposed to if they work hard and succeed. So much so that a candidate may place far less emphasis on the employer’s reputation and far more on the challenges and opportunities that go hand in hand with the job role.

Perhaps though there is nothing wrong with your job description and you are held in high regard in the eyes of the general public. Great candidates should be beating down your door, right? Yes! Right! Maybe you should subject yourself to your own application process then. Some employers make the mistake of dragging out their hiring process or have so many screening layers that candidates simply get frustrated and move on. Or worse yet, are snapped up by the competition while your still deciding who to hire! True you want to weed out many job seekers, but you don’t want to lose the most qualified. Those that are the best presently have a job. They are actively seeking another by networking, interviewing and researching who can give them the best career opportunities. Their time is precious and a tedious job application process is absorbing too much of that time.

A candidates experience with you is important. It will have far reaching effects in the wider market. Did you acknowledge their application? If you didn’t, others will hear about it. The number one gripe candidates have is that potential employers do not acknowledge their application. They have gone to great effort to put together a resume and letter of application, the least an employer can do is recognise that effort. So from the first point of interaction, let a candidate know that you have received their application and what the next step is in the process.  According to a CareerBuilder survey of over 800,000 job seekers:

• 44% had a worse opinion of the company after applying and receiving no response
• 32% were less likely to buy products from a company who didn’t respond

It’s all about marketing some might say. Perhaps you made some rookie mistakes. Everything is salvageable though, you just have to have vision. If you know and understand why quality candidates are not applying for job roles with your organisation, you can take positive action and turn the tide on the trend. Compromising and accepting your worth as equivalent to the average candidate applications piling up on your desk is not proactive and your business will fall further and further behind the competition. Do you want to see your organisation prosper?