You know the uncomfortable, slimy feeling you get when you think about your competition? That's the way qualified candidates feel when persistent, pesky recruiters frequently ping them for positions they're not interested in.
But hold on to that bitter taste — your company's rivals aren't all that good for nothing. Here's why.
Duking it out with your industry opponent is probably a bad idea in the literal world, but leveraging your company-intrinsic mode to shower them with "haterade" can actually teach your team how to come up with a stronger recruiting strategy.
Convince your company to buy the competition's product.
It sounds counterintuitive, but learn how to sell a product or service sold by your competitors, and you'll understand how to market an opportunity to top talent that's playing harder-to-get.
Ultimately, the job you're approaching a candidate with could be described in two words: unwanted and unwarranted — that is, until you understand how to make your company, opportunity, and its benefits and perks a need that solves the pain of an unsatisfying job with a better one. If you're unable to market or sell any product, the chances of successfully promoting your own product (which in this case, is a job) are slim.
Take time before pitching a candidate to write down their counterarguments for not considering your opportunity, and think of rebuttals to support your argument. Bolster your recruiting strategy by building a clever sales and marketing strategy around it that anticipates all possible points of discussion.
Make candidates laugh.
But while you're building a moat of persuasion and nurturing, don't forget to pour in a healthy layer of humor. People like to laugh. It's an enjoyable, pleasant feeling, and if your candidates aren't privy on relishing jolly tendencies every now and then, this could be indicative of a bad culture fit, which we'll get to in a second.
"The truth is, if you can make the customer laugh, you can make them buy. Laughter naturally reduces our 'no selling' guard and makes us more open and responsive to what’s being said. Great marketers know that injecting a little humor is the secret sauce of sales, and content marketing with a focus on entertainment takes that to a whole new level." —KISSmetricsDon't mess up the culture.
The PG-13 version of what Peter Thiel said to AirBNB's Brian Chesky before Thiel signed a $150 million check for the company's Series C funding.
"The culture is what creates the foundation for all future innovation. If you break the culture, you break the machine that creates your products," Chesky said in his piece for Medium.
Hire the right fit candidates from the start to help engage similar candidates further down the line. Culture takes time to develop, and the process can only be stifled by a few bad men and women who take for granted the team's mission, values, and goals. As Bulldog Drummond CEO Shawn Parr wrote, "Culture eats strategy for lunch." If your company's team is comprised of employees who don't see eye-to-eye on the organization's vision, it doesn't matter how great your recruiting plan is because, at the core is a soft, vulnerable foundation waiting to be stomped on by other players in the game.
Culture works both ways: Internally, it strengthens the team's collaboration and fluidity, and externally, it can create a desire to want to work for the company, a desire that can come organically or with a little candidate outreach.
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