A position just opened up on your team and you need to hire someone quickly. You dust off the old job description and work with your internal team to get it posted on the company website. Within a week or two, you have an inbox full of resumes, but you’re just not seeing exactly what you need. Now what? 

Too often organization leaders approach the hiring process from their own perspective – that there is an abundance of available talent and the best and brightest will be fighting for an opportunity to join the team. Unfortunately, the reality is often that there is a scarcity of talent who are the right fit for your specific job openings, and your organization’s culture. 

When hiring, the most important thing you can do to attract the best talent is to create a compelling job opportunity that a high achiever would want to consider. Even candidates who are currently unemployed want to know that their next job is a career step in the right direction. While you, as the hiring leader, are carefully seeking the right match, so are the candidates. 

To increase your chance of hiring success, start by throwing away that boring job description and write a job posting that will show prospective candidates how the role ties to business objectives, and what initiatives and challenges they will tackle in the first six months, 12 months, or beyond.  

In a recent Brilliant Ink survey, it was revealed that workers who have clear communications about the link between company strategy and the work being done have much higher levels of engagement. 

Showing that link in the job description and the interview process sets the right tone early. You also want to ensure that your website’s career section includes information that gives an accurate depiction of the culture of the organization and the good work being accomplished by everyone. 

According to the same survey, nearly three-fourths of candidates didn’t know much about the organization before they applied for a job. Most try to learn more by going to the company website, but half report that they aren’t finding the information they need to make a good career decision. 

And finally, hiring leaders must be committed to the process by investing time up front to clearly define the competencies needed to be successful on your team. This, combined with the illustration of the work that will actually be done, allows both the recruiter to more quickly present candidates who are a match, and the entire interview team to evaluate each candidate more effectively.

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We’re excited to have a guest author featured on the Brilliant Blog this week. For more than 17 years, Angee Linsey has worked closely with company leaders to recruit exceptional team members and implement solid recruitment strategies. She is currently the managing director of Linsey Careers, a boutique executive search firm that specializes in working with marketing and communications professionals. 

Prior to her career in search, Angee was an award-winning public relations and corporate communications professional in corporate, agency and military environments.  Angee earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, and a Master of Arts degree in Career Development from John F. Kennedy University in Northern California.