In the last issue, we discussed some of the reasons why companies neglect to or don't sell their opportunities to the candidates they want to hire. We tried to communicate how such an atmosphere gets created and how detrimental it is to a hiring company and individuals. The archaic attitude that "we have the job so we control the process and candidates should flock to us" just doesn't attract good quality candidates much less retain them.
Sell, Sell, Sell!!
We discussed the fact that most individuals in companies create their own cold monster out of ignorance, defensiveness, and conditioned thinking that everyone and anyone who is looking for a job would go to work for them simply because they have a job to offer. Our message is that good candidates need to be sold on why they should go to work for a company. A company doing the interviewing needs to hear features, advantages, and benefits about the candidate, and by the same token the serious candidate needs to hear the same from the prospective employer.
We will admit that in initial interviews, candidates are responsible for selling themselves. They have the monkey on their backs to give the prospective employer reasons as to why they should be hired. The employer may be a buyer in these initial stages. But once one or two prime candidates have been identified, the employer needs to become a seller of his company, opportunity, and, especially, of himself. This is most important for a hiring manager to do. Having the personnel department sell the opportunity might help, but most candidates don't go to work for the personnel department on a day to day basis. Hiring managers must recognize their roles here. The better they do, the better luck they will have in getting the best candidates.
"Regular" Companies
The vast majority of companies in the U.S. are not Fortune 500, their stock isn't traded on the big board. Our names and faces of our boards, presidents, etc., won't appear on the cover of Fortune Magazine or U.S. News and World Report. Their shares of stock aren't likely to be a bargaining chip in hiring negotiations.
The vast majority of businesses are good honest medium sized businesses run by people trying to provide goods and services at a profit. For the most part, there are no miraculous, glitsy things we can do for people that come to work for any of us. If we are going to sell ourselves and our companies to our prospective employees we need to think about the reasons why any of us work for our particular firms. We need to come up with solid concise reasons as to why someone should work with and for us. Writing them out and having them on hand when we interview a .final list of candidates will help us hire the best people available.
People Work For People
We recommend that our clients remember that people don’t work for companies, they work for other people. Why other people work at a firm is very, or should be, very important to perspective employers. A. conscious recognition of this makes selling an opportunity with a firm easier to do. These should even go beyond the corporate philosophy, down to individual personal reasons why hiring managers and others work at the company. Nothing glitsy, just simple solid "what its done for me" kind of stuff.
Every once in a while we work with a firm who truly doesn’t know how well they stack up against other employers. Part of our service is to help companies recognize what unique qualities they have and what they might sell to prospective employees. Since we deal with so many different kinds of organizations and have since 1952, we can readily compare the features and benefits for working for a particular firm. Since many companies don't hire enough people often enough, they are not as used to selling themselves, let alone know what aspects of their personality to sell to candidates. We are very sensitive to these issues because we deal with them every day.
Selling a job to a candidate should be an essential part of the hiring process. The effort to do so can make the difference in hiring quality candidates and missing them.
