When it comes to recruiting and hiring top marketing talent, many companies are clueless about why candidates are turning down their offers or falling off during the hiring process. Instead of making changes to how their company attracts top talent or evaluating their recruiting process, companies chalk it up to a tough candidate market and keep doing what they’ve always done to recruit marketing talent.
While some candidates who leave during the hiring process might be due to a tight candidate market, there are likely other factors that are driving away your top candidates. Keep reading to learn 4 ways your company is inadvertently turning off top candidates and causing them to seek out positions elsewhere.
Vague Job Description
The first step of attracting top marketing talent is writing a strong job description that not only includes the job requirements but also describes your company culture and unique benefits of working for your company. Many professionals make the mistake of copying and pasting a generic job description and making minor tweaks fit their position. Top marketing candidates will see right through this strategy and won’t waste their time applying for a position if you haven’t spent the time crafting a detailed and engaging job description.
Website and Social Media Aren’t Up to Date
One way marketing professionals determine whether or not they want to work for a company is by researching the company website and social media profiles. It’s an immediate red flag for a candidate if they find out the company that is recruiting them does not know how to market themselves or have failed to update their blog in 4 months.
Make sure your company website is appealing and that fresh content is added on a regular basis. Also, make sure that all of the company’s social media profiles are current and are promoting company events, culture, and awards.
Don’t Engage
Using an applicant tracking system is a great way to track and organize marketing candidates who have applied to your open positions, but it also makes it easy to ignore these applicants. Having an automated response after they apply is nice, but make sure to follow up with candidates after this initial email. If a candidate doesn’t hear from you for weeks after they’ve applied, they’re most likely going to move onto another company or maybe even accept a job offer.
Also, it’s important to stay in constant communication with a candidate once you’ve engaged with them. If you have an initial call with them and are waiting to finalize an interview date, make sure they know this instead of going quiet for 2 weeks without giving them any information. Even if you don’t have any new information for them, call just to check in and let them know you’re still interested in them.
Slow Hiring Process
Even though the hiring process is taking longer than ever these days, it doesn’t match up with the candidate’s expectations of how quickly they should be moving through the process. Top candidates are being pursued by many companies and won’t wait around for a lengthy hiring process. Start by evaluating your current process and see where things start to slow down. If you can increase your hiring speed, you will increase your chances of hiring top marketing talent.
If you want to hire top marketing talent, it’s important to make sure you’re recruiting process is seamless and that you’re engaging candidates throughout the process. And everything from the job description to your company website can be a factor in whether or not they want to work for your company.
