candidates Archives - Atlantic Group

How Staffing Firms Promote Candidate-Company Connections

Even in an employer-driven landscape with shortages across the job market, facilitating the right match between candidates and a company can still pose challenges. What inspires workers to buy into a company’s purpose? Where do opportunities exist to build more understanding on both sides?
Below, we outline the main gaps with traditional hiring and how staffing agencies help make better talent matches.

Overcoming Communication Gaps

Traditional hiring processes often have room for improvement when it comes to communication between talent and employers. Job descriptions often present an idealized version of a role that does not typically align with reality, while candidates market themselves on their resume bullets alone.
To overcome these shortfalls, recruiters have more open discussions with candidates to confirm competencies and advocate for them. They work closely with hiring managers to discern key company details, such as culture, and help candidates better understand the role they would be taking on. Such transparent conversations spark more significant mutual investment compared to limiting job specifications.

Setting Realistic Previews to Align Expectations

Another issue is that candidates may enter new roles with misaligned expectations, which can lead to suboptimal job fits and performance challenges. Recruiters address this by providing a balanced, realistic preview of the role’s responsibilities and expected team dynamics.

This transparency helps prevent regretted resignations or terminations from unforeseen challenges that surface after a candidate’s start date. This, in turn, allows for better-aligned expectations and an improved retention rate.

Emphasizing Alignment with Company Mission

While day-to-day responsibilities deserve clear communication, a larger question looms for talent: does this company’s mission resonate with my values?

Staffing professionals play a pivotal role in answering this. They convey the priorities guiding an organization beyond profit incentives. This includes subjects like community engagement, sustainability, DEI commitments, and other defining principles.

Ensuring one’s values align with a company’s mission is crucial for making candidates feel an intrinsic connection to purposeful work that resonates with them. When roles become more than just jobs and provide opportunities for employees to express their values, this connects with them on a deeper level that goes beyond what resumes can convey. Communicating this big-picture vision helps forge strong bonds between employees and the company.

Conveying Future Growth & Leadership Paths

Oftentimes, candidates are looking for opportunities that offer the most potential for growth. Recruiters assist in this process by conveying realistic long-term growth trajectories, not just immediate role responsibilities. Highlighting future training programs, cross-disciplinary projects, and leadership opportunities shows high-performing candidates the career potential of a particular role.

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While today’s talent market favors organizations looking to hire, companies that attempt to overlook strategic talent investments will inevitably encounter challenges in the form of turnover and stagnation.

Organizations that leverage staffing partners can build bridges where impersonal hiring processes fall short. By refreshing recruitment approaches to refocus on compatibility, mutual priorities, and future potential, companies can broker lasting bonds between top talent and its organization’s priorities.

Looking to hire? Get connected with one of our career experts.

Best Practices for Crafting an Elevator Pitch for Interviews

If asked to sum up your best qualities and motivations in just a minute or two, could you pull together an elevator pitch that feels authentic and natural? Many job seekers struggle with this. Generic or overly practiced pitches fail to showcase what makes you unique.

So how do you develop an elevator pitch that impresses, while feeling honest versus rehearsed? Below, we unpack the top tips for crafting pitches that stand out to employers.

Best Practices for Crafting an Elevator Pitch for Interviews

Know Your True Motivations

First, do some self-reflection to identify what truly drives you in your career. Get clear on questions like:

What makes you excited to come to work and tackle the day’s challenges?
What past projects or accomplishments brought you the greatest sense of purpose and pride?
What larger visions or innovations do you want to work towards in the coming years?

With your motivations clearly defined, it becomes much easier to identify roles and companies that align with your passions.

Inventory Your Relevant Strengths

Once you have a job description in mind, carefully inventory your skills, talents, and experiences that directly connect with the prioritized wish list for the role. See beyond just formal qualifications to showcase the full picture.

For example, if the role requires leading projects from start to finish, reflect on examples from past positions, volunteer work, or side businesses that showcase those end-to-end leadership capabilities.

Weave in Your Unique Value

While matching your capabilities to the role is important, you also want to differentiate what makes you uniquely valuable. What niche skills, unusual backgrounds, special certifications, or creative talents make you a one-of-a-kind fit?

For example, maybe you bridge across multiple disciplines like marketing and data science. Or have innovated processes blending online and offline campaigns. Or have certifications in emergent areas like VR applications.

These unique elements help hiring managers see you as the ideal talent – someone who brings innovative perspectives and next-generation capabilities before competitors catch on.

Put Your Pitch into Practice

When it comes time to deliver your elevator pitch, start by expressing genuine enthusiasm for the company and how the open role connects to your larger passions and career aspirations. Quickly summarize your background, incorporating those unique differentiators.

Then, share real examples of how your experience equips you to excel in the role’s top priorities that you identified earlier from the job description. This supports your match claims with actual evidence versus just stating that you meet the requirements generically.

Close your pitch by summarizing why making this move at this point in your career would be so exciting and aligned with your personal growth. Use authentic statements specific to this company and position rather than generic phrases that could apply to any job.

Elevator pitches don’t have to feel forced or come off as bragging if you have the right elements. With core motivations clarified, plus examples showing how you uniquely meet the needs employers care most about, you can ace interviews through authenticity.

Looking for work? Get connected with one of our career experts.