Having the right people on your team can propel your business to the next level. What is the best way to find those ideal employees? One of our Members, Waylon Lewis, works for Indeed.com and gave us the inside details on exactly how to find and hire a top level team. 

What I learned has helped my real estate company so much I thought it would be valuable to pass these lessons onto you guys. Spending time to get the right candidates on your team is an investment that pays back in spades. 

How Do You Get the Right Candidates in the Funnel? 

Indeed is a hiring platform with a variety of tools that can help you attract great candidates. Another cost effective option is to use your social media for hiring which shortcuts you to candidates that are already interested in what you do and familiar with your work.

On Indeed.com, employees have more power than they used to and it is currently what we call an ‘applicant’s’ market. The average person searching for a job now has a huge variety of jobs to choose from and can apply for multiple jobs with the click of a button. 

How do you set yourself up to be the business that the best candidates want to apply for? 

The best people are going to want to work for the best companies. They want to work for people that have a lot to offer them. A job posting is an advertisement. You are marketing to get candidates. You can’t compete with big names like Google, but you can market what you offer and people interested in getting in on the ground floor with smaller companies can see exactly what opportunity you are offering them. What can you do to show people that by working with you they can be a part of something special? 

How to Standout: 

On your page post videos that distinguish you as a company. For example, you can post a video of charity events your company has worked on showing the current team in action working together for positive change. Spend time building an attractive company page that tells your unique story.

Research your competitors: 

See what other companies are offering and how they word their job descriptions. This is a great way to use what has already been done and adapt a format you like into your own job description instead of reinventing the wheel. 

Write a Great Job Description: 

In your job description lead off the top with what is in it for your candidates. If an employer begins a job description with what they offer their employees and not what they themselves want, it is a good sign that this employer cares about their employees.

Keeping the length 2,000 characters or less, works for entry level jobs. Keep in mind that many people are accessing these descriptions through a phone or ipad. Higher level jobs such as a COO can have a more nuanced and lengthy description. If the job description is cleanly and concisely laid out with the company’s story, what the company is looking to offer employees, and lastly what they are looking for in an employee, it goes a long way to engage potential candidates. 

Choose the Best Job Title: 

Stay away from job titles that are too ‘cutesy’ if you want your job to come up quickly in the search engine. Searching titles for the job you are hiring for yourself to see what sequence of words come up first in the engine is a great way to see what job titles are currently getting the most hits. The tighter your job description matches your title the more applicants you are likely to have. 

Exception to the Rule: 

Using a title like ‘Work from Home’ can get you a large response because the value to the applicant is present in the title before they even click on it. 

You simply want to avoid clickbait titles on professional platforms. 

The Follow Through: How to Get More People Engaged and Less No-Shows on Interviews 

It is a competitive market for employers and to cut down on the amount of no-shows and ghosters, you want to be one of the companies people are excited to interview for. Your strategy on who you offer interviews to will change based on how many applicants you have. If you have a large number of applicants and need to whittle down your interviews, you can put in an assessment or DiSC profile as a requirement for applicants to complete in order to move into interviews. If you are not getting traction with a large number of applicants, make the process to apply as easy and attractive as possible. 

Keep in mind extra requirements for applicants may limit you to the people who have time to complete the extra step, which could be those that aren’t currently working as opposed to top talent you want to hire from other companies. 

Pro-Tip: 

Be proactive by actively sourcing using the tools on your platform of choice. You can go into the database of a platform like Indeed and search for people that have skill sets you are looking for, target them and reach out to them directly. 

Building a solid team is key to taking your business to the next level! We hope these tips help you attract and hire the best candidates for your company.