One of the most common roles Talent Acquisition Teams are asked to perform is the crafting of adverts and sourcing approaches that appeal to top candidates. An art more than a science, this requires a deep understanding of what is considered attractive to candidates in terms of job roles, benefits, work-life balance, and culture.
It requires personalisation and understanding of differing motivations, alongside the ability to “ sell “ these benefits to a candidate of joining an organization. And yet, this process often begins once the job itself has been designed.
A common process often looks like the following:
- The Hiring Manager/Organisation identifies a need
- Discussion is had about what the role should look like, and what the requirements are
- Job Spec is written
- The role is passed to talent to hire
This is a hugely simplified version, of course, of what is often a complex process of budgets, negotiation, and internal discussion, but a common theme remains – the job is created and then it’s discussed how to source it to make it attractive.
However, in a world where authenticity is key, and potential candidates are increasingly savvy and cynical about buzzword bingo in the attraction process, Frederick Herzbergs often quoted aphorism has never rung so true; “If you want someone to do a good job, give them a good job to do “It’s not simply how we communicate the role to the market that attracts someone, it needs to be a good job. Your talent team skills, used properly, can help you with this if you bring them in early enough in the process.”
An often-used model in job design is to look at five key characteristics
- Skill Variety – will our potential hire be challenged and developed in this role
- Task Identity – is what is required by the role clear
- Significance- does this job matter
- Autonomy – will the new role provide candidates with the ability to have some freedom in how they achieve the task identity
- Feedback – will the role allow people to identify performance levels not just from hiring managers, but also from the work itself
A good job, therefore, is one that motivates, excites, develops, and engages employees, truly attracts the top talent in the marketplace, and retains them, a truly engaged talent function can help you in this
Talent spends their day talking to candidates. They can articulate why people are leaving their current employers, and what motivates them to enter into discussions about roles. They should know about what skills people want to develop, and how they stay excited and challenged, and this should be taken into account very much at the start of the job specification process.
It requires a mindset change- it’s not simply about what the company needs right now as a tick list of skills, but about creating a person-focused approach that creates competitive advantage by having people perform at their very best. A suggested approach could be:
Identify the Need – what are these roles?
Task Identity – Is going to be measurable, achievable, and able to be self-managed to some extent by the employee autonomously?
Identify the Stretch – how will this role develop?
Taking out job crafting which to an extent will always happen by the future employee, how do we make sure this role is attractive and motivating to our new hire a year from now?
Identify the Gaps – what is a “must have” and what is a development point that we can bring in great talent and upskill them?
Identify the Group – who will this hire interact with, what is the culture and approach in this team, and what does that mean in terms of soft competencies that we need to include as part of our processes
Communicate with Stakeholders – who can tell us what is great about similar roles? What is talent saying will attract and retain someone in this role? What is current employee feedback telling us about our current team’s feelings- do they think they have a “good job”?
Design the Role – taking into account everyones feedback, and the above Need, Stretch, Gaps, and Group, create a role profile that is fit for purpose and provides working conditions, employment conditions, and employee experience that will engage, satisfy, motivate and protect the physical and mental well-being
Design the Approach – it’s only now, with an authentically produced great job that we can design a job advert and sourcing approach that will attract the best people, to the best job
Of course, this process has to be completed pragmatically. Not every role is going to be all of the above every single day, but by putting the employee experience at the heart of job design and really caring about providing those intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivation factors, it can really help companies to get great talent without having to break the bank in terms of monetary approaches, as well as ensuring that the right person is hired, for the right role
Here at Troi, we’re changing the face of talent acquisition by supporting global organisations with their entire hiring processes through our modern take on the traditional RPO model. Troi embeds skilled recruiters into organisations to become their international talent partners, living and breathing the company’s culture and values, whilst being backed by the expertise and resources that Troi has to offer. All via a flexible monthly package.
Our team has decades of experience understanding what candidates need to hear to join an organization, why candidates leave, and what makes them stay. We can help you craft roles and then fill them with people that will help your company in a way that really places your people at the centre of achieving competitive advantage. If you would like to chat with us about how we can help please fill in our enquiry form (it takes a couple of minutes) and we will be in touch to have an informal chat about all things Troi!
Article written by Claire Anderson
