Tag Archives: employers

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.

Should Companies Still Care About Candidate Experience?

With talent shortages causing headaches for talent acquisition leaders across many industries, some companies are tempted to deprioritize aspects like the candidate experience. Some may argue that with applicant pools shrinking and bargaining power shifting towards job seekers, investing extra effort into perfecting the candidate journey seems superfluous. Why devote resources there when it’s hard enough to secure talent in the first place?

While those questions may be understandable, our position is still an emphatic “yes!” Here’s why companies absolutely should still care about crafting a thoughtful, positive candidate experience:

It’s Key for Conveying Company Culture

Experiencing what a company is like directly influences whether sought-after candidates will accept offers. If the recruiting process itself seems disorganized or indifferent, it starts applicants questioning if that reflects the broader culture. Even small signals influence perceptions.

It Discourages Ghosting

Job seekers today, especially those in high-demand roles, have options and little hesitation in walking away from bad application experiences. This leads to ignored messages or mid-interview ghosting. While frustrating, it’s often because they feel deprioritized versus other opportunities showing more care.

It Builds Goodwill Value

Perhaps a candidate was not the right fit today, but had a positive enough experience to consider applying again down the road or recommend others do the same. Word-of-mouth referrals remain hugely valuable. Leaving talent satisfied rather than soured preserves future goodwill.

It’s Simply the Right Thing To Do

Respecting those willing to devote time, emotional, and intellectual energy into potentially joining your company by making the evaluation experience thoughtful shows character. Candidates are more than just means to overworked, understaffed ends today. Honoring that is the path forward.

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The recruiting landscape continues evolving quickly, so we understand the temptation to cut certain corners. However, preserving or elevating candidate experience efforts needs to remain non-negotiable. At best, it sets companies apart. At a minimum, it’s both the smart and principled path in an ever-competitive talent marketplace.

Looking to fill a role? Get connected with one of our staffing experts.

Strategies to Tailor Yourself to Employers’ Needs

Landing the right job may seem a difficult feat given such extensive qualifications in many listings today. However, a careful analysis of these listings can unlock key insights. Savvy job seekers can leverage these details to tailor their experience and present themselves as ideal candidates. By decoding employers’ needs and showcasing a fit, applicants can transform the job search process into a strategic endeavor.

Below, we offer useful tactics to interpret and respond to employers’ needs rather than become intimidated.

Company Culture and Values

Look for repeated language across listings emphasizing certain work styles, mindsets, and capabilities. Regular mention of traits like “innovative” or “data-driven” offers clues into expected temperaments that sync with company culture. Incorporating such phrasing and attributes into a resume or cover letter sets up the job seeker for potential opportunities to progress forward during the interview process.

Identify the Gap

Hiring managers cannot always crisply stipulate what missing component the team currently lacks. But there may be odd consistencies or new requirements across related roles exposing underlying unmet needs. Flag these trends and attempt to read between the lines about appetites not directly expressed. Proactively calling out such gaps in interviews can strengthen positioning.

Adaptability as Key

Job seekers may not always match every desired qualification from an employer’s wish list. Rather than overinflating competencies, focus on baseline strengths that align with the must-have capabilities. Then emphasize adaptability, growth potential, and eagerness to build any missing skills. Framing one’s candidacy around the upside through learning and development, instead of claiming to meet every stipulated competence, conveys stronger self-awareness.

Showcase a Cultural Add

Along with aligning capabilities, apply a similar lens to workplace culture compatibility. Look for clues into motivating perks or values beyond posted job responsibilities. Highlight in your application ancillary team contributions you could make through unique hobbies, leadership activities, or community involvement.

Convey Shared Values

Equally important is determining compatibility with company values and priorities. Evaluate what motivations are most emphasized across the careers section and culture code. Identify ways you authentically align not just with required tasks but also with the deeper “why” behind their work. What drives your passion and sense of purpose? Conveying these insights provides a critical layer beyond stated skills to underscore fit.

Looking for work? 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.

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.