While I talked to about apartment hunting and its parallels to recruiting earlier this week, I wanted to do a follow up post on the power of finding the right job.  Going back to the apartment hunting example, you work with a realtor, scour Craigslist and try to find the right match for your wants and needs.

However, the funny thing about this process is there is sometimes no correlation between how much work you put in and when you find a good apartment.  It’s really just you coming across the right place through the methods you use.  And it only takes one good apartment to end the search.

Searching for a job is very similar.  You use a variety of methods from job boards, job search engines, connections, social media and other tools to try and find a job.  You have a set criteria for what you are looking for and trying to find the right fit.  While the potential for rejection is much higher in job searching, it also holds by the truth that you just need to find that one right position.

So the question I really have is if we need to match candidates to the right position, what can we do as organizations to help facilitate this matching better?  How can we ensure that one great job comes across earlier in the job search process?

Here are a few thoughts that may work (and I’d love to hear your opinions as well):

Better more precise job ads:  Your job ads are the gateway for how most candidates find your employment opportunities and you need to ensure that candidates understand the opportunity and can see early on if it is a potential fit for them.  To do this, you need to do a few things.  First, make sure the job title is reflective of the seniority and function of the position.  Second, make sure the ad gets to the skills needed for the position (not necessarily the responsibilities) and include any pre-requisites you need as this will be the best screening method during this stage of the process.  And make sure to measure your job ad variations with recruitment metricsthat can help you determine what job ads provide the most qualified candidates and hires into your ATS.

Open Requisitions:  This is something that I’ve seen a few recruiting organizations do.  In this case, they have an open requisition for jobs that they hire often for.  The skill-set they are looking at for these jobs is similar and therefore they continuously recruit for these types of candidates.  Once a qualified candidate comes through and is screened by a recruiter, they determine what job positions are the best fits for this candidate and put them into that jobs hiring process.  While this isn’t a solution for every organization, it might be a great way to attract candidates and then use your internal recruiter’s knowledge of organization need to find the right matches for the right openings.

Better recruiter screening:  This is in the same vein as the above item but this is more for organizations that go req by req with their recruiting process.  As candidates come through the recruitment marketing process, it’s important to give recruiters the authority to move candidates from one req to a position that may fit their skill-set and experience better.  Giving recruiters flexibility to match up candidates better to the organizations needs can provide better matches and less wasted interviews for hiring managers (and candidates.)

Targeted Follow-Up:  In your process today, there are a number of candidates that don’t fit your openings today.  From not having a position available that fits their skill-sets to getting to the final stages of potentially getting hired.  Once they don’t get a position, this doesn’t mean the relationship should be over.  You should provide them ways to opt-in to hear about new opportunities that fit their skills and interests.

To do this, you need to capture enough information to be able to segment and target the communications and employment opportunities they receive.  The more targeted and exact you can make the jobs you send them, the more likely a potential match can be made between them and your organization.

The job search process can be a difficult one for candidates to understand and really match up their skills and interests to the right opportunities.  As an industry, we need to get better at directing candidates to the positions that truly fit what they are looking for with organizations where they fit.