Upgrade Your Job Description

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

Do your job descriptions attract talent like a magnet? Do you stand out from the pack and inspire candidates to check out your company over the competition?

As retained executive search recruiters, we have a front-row seat to see what works for companies trying to attract top talent. Using our 20 years of experience as a firm working with 300+ companies, we have crafted a winning job description template that helps our clients stand out from the pack and attract talent that is not actively looking. In our experience, taking an hour to upgrade a job description ends up saving you 20+ hours later as you attract better talent, proactively answer questions and present a positive first impression.

So how does your job descriptions currently stack up? Here are 8 practical steps we take for our clients to upgrade their first impression with candidates and hope you find this a valuable resource.

Our goal: Help your job descriptions stand out from the pack and inspire more talent to join your company.

* Want higher quality candidates? It starts with the job description.

* Want to save time and have fewer interviews per hire? It starts with the job description.

* Want to recruit faster? It starts with the job description.

* Want to have great onboarding for new employees? It starts with the job description.

YOUR ULTIMATE JOB DESCRIPTION TEMPLATE
There are 8 steps that make up a winning job description. This template has been field-tested with hundreds of companies and roles over our 20 years as an executive search firm – it just works.

Your “company pitch” is assessed in the first 3 steps. This is your standardized, two-paragraph company overview you can use at the top of ALL of your job descriptions, from entry-level to executive. This proactively answers common questions which saves you time and will inspire someone to consider applying and learning more. Often when we do our intake conversations with our clients, what a CEO or hiring manager shares is often inspiring and makes you lean forward – but often the written job description isn’t close. Honestly, most job descriptions are really boring. Just like copywriters know when crafting news articles – you need to catch someone’s attention in the first section or they will not read on.

Your “role pitch” is assessed in the next 5 steps. This is your typical overview of what the specific job is you are looking to fill ranging from the title, key outcomes in the first year, activities, and qualifications. But the key is to not come across as sounding like “Here are 20 soul-sucking tasks you can do in this job and not know why….interested?”

OK – let’s now walk through each of these job description components in detail. Each of these 8 articles includes an overview description, why it matters, and practical examples of how to assess your job description.

LEARN ABOUT STEP #1: INSPIRING (click to view)

How Job Title Buzzwords Help You Attract Talent

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

Paul Freed, Managing Partner & Co-Founder of Herd Freed Hartz, was interviewed for a UK article around the trend with companies using new creative buzzwords to attract talent using non-traditional job titles such as “Ninja”, “Rockstar” and “Guru”.

See full UK article (published March 2, 2018)

HOW JOB TITLE BUZZWORDS CAN HELP YOU ATTRACT TALENT

As a small and emerging business, every hire is integral to your success. Many businesses use buzzwords in the hopes of getting the attention of younger workers. You may be tempted to advertise titles such as ‘IT Guru’ or ‘Development Wizard’ in the hopes of landing an employee who is flexible and can meet unexpected challenges as you continue to grow. These seem like flashy titles, but what do they actually mean? Here’s a snapshot of some buzzwords you may see out there:

GURU

Candidates must have expert knowledge in a field and a high level of problem-solving skills. They’ll also be able to pass on knowledge to other workers.

WIZARD

Vast amounts of creativity are needed, likely balanced with a very technically-based skillset and able to bring a unique style to work.

DYNAMO

Must be self-motivated, with lots of energy and an ever-positive attitude in the face of problems. Almost certainly target-driven and likely from a sales background.

STORYTELLER

Storytellers lead PR efforts and coordinates promotion across many different channels. They’re in charge of how a brand communicates its ideas to the public to drive increased sales.

GEEK

These positions demand workers with extensive knowledge of a niche area of expertise, most likely in the realm of technology (such as a programming language).

ROCKSTAR

Rockstar may be used if a company is looking for a forward-thinking individual in their field of knowledge who can produce out-of-the-box ideas. They’ll likely also be target-driven and will regularly exceed said targets.

(left to right) Paige NeJame from CertaPro Painters, Lily Stoyanov from Transformify, Brad Owens from HR Coaching, Doug Monro from Adzuna and Paul Freed from Herd Freed Hartz. Also contributing: Gene Mal from Static JobsGrowing your workforce is a lot different to promoting your business, so we spoke to recruiters and hiring managers from around the world to learn how these buzzwords can promote your business and land top talent when you’re looking to hire.

We asked each of our experts about which job titles are successful in attracting candidates, and which will likely turn people away. You can find the results of their scores, including their thoughts on how job titles can help or hinder the ability to recruit talent, below.

WHY DO COMPANIES USE CREATIVE AND UNUSUAL JOB TITLES FOR POSITIONS THAT ALREADY HAVE CONVENTIONAL NAMES?

GM: They want to stand out, plus this is a way to emphasise that they want the best of the best. They don’t want just a Big Data Analyst. They want an Expert Big Data Analyst. Big Data Guru is the next logical progression. ‘Guru’ implies another level of expertise – someone who can teach experts.

BO: The initial use of creative and unusual job titles was to appeal to those job seekers that felt like they couldn’t stand to do their same, boring job over and over again. A new and innovative title made them feel like this new potential company was taking a fresh approach to what they do and was a more attractive employer.

DM: An increasingly competitive environment for recruiters means top talent is often highly sought after. Hiring managers are facing more pressure than ever to make every available role “the one” and help their positions stand out as special.

WHAT POSITIVE EFFECTS CAN THESE TITLES HAVE ON A COMPANY AND ITS SEARCH FOR RECRUITING NEW TALENT?

PN: Companies may be able to attract a younger employee with these titles.

BO: Initially, I think the shift to more creative job titles led to an increase in motivated applicants for organisations that were willing to think outside of the box with their roles. That doesn’t always mean that the applicants were the right fit, but they certainly had a spike in interest.

PF: It shows off your culture. People work for people, not companies, so showing your sense of humour and culture is good and can add personality to often boring, HR-driven job descriptions. You don’t want to come across as saying “Here are 25 soul-sucking tasks you can do, but you don’t know why. Interested?” Talking like a real person is helpful, but you need to get them to find your opening first.

WHAT NEGATIVE EFFECTS CAN THEY HAVE?

LS: In some cases, the creative titles may be confusing or even misleading. What if the ‘overlord’ is actually there to support all team members and has no voice at all?

PF: You will attract fewer candidates. In fly fishing, you want to “match the hatch”. This means you want to make your fly on the hook look like something the fish are looking for. Candidates do not type ‘Coding Ninja’ into Indeed.com or sort by that. This is a huge disadvantage. Why would you intentionally lose candidates in an effort to look cool?

PN: When I advertise for a position, my first objective is to be as clear as I can be in the ad. This means I remove all company jargon and boil the position down to the nuts and bolts of what they’ll be doing. By not sugar coating the position, I tend to get fewer, but better candidates who understand what it takes to do the job. By using an unusual title for the position, I might get more resumes, but fewer qualified candidates.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE MOST COMMON TITLES YOU’VE FOUND IN THE WORLD OF RECRUITMENT THAT PEOPLE MAY BE SURPRISED BY?

DM: ‘Genius’, ‘expert’ and ‘rockstar’ come up more often than you’d think. We don’t see as many ‘overlords’ as we used to, though. Must be a competitive space.

GM: I’ve seen ‘evangelists’, ‘gurus’, ‘jedis’, ‘ninjas’, ‘warriors’, ‘soldiers’ and ‘knights’ for ordinary software development roles.

PF: ‘Product evangelist’ – someone promoting a new product or industry. ‘Sales hunter’ – a term used for salespeople who get new logos and clients. ‘Sales farmer’ – a term used for salespeople who keep current clients happy.

WHAT PROBLEMS CAN ARISE WHEN SOMEONE WITH AN UNUSUAL JOB TITLE IS LOOKING FOR A NEW POSITION, POTENTIALLY WITH ANOTHER COMPANY?

PN: There are two main problems: candidates seem immature or young, or the company they worked for looks unestablished. Often a recruiter will have no idea what that title means, so the candidate is passed over for an interview.

GM: As a job seeker, your safe bet is to avoid them on your resume. They can always write a professional-looking title, i.e. DevOps ‘Engineer’ instead of ‘Ninja’. It’s like going to an interview in professional attire even though your interviewer can wear jeans and sneakers.

BO: When someone that has an unusual job title searches for a new position, they are often faced with the need to explain their past positions in more depth than candidates with traditional titles. Employers often have less trust of potential employees with vague job titles.

DO YOU BELIEVE WE’LL SEE MORE CREATIVE JOB TITLES IN THE FUTURE? WHAT TYPES OF ROLES MAY WE HEAR ABOUT IN 5 OR 10 YEARS’ TIME?

LS: There will be more creative titles in the tech industry, for sure. ‘Cryptocoin Mining Guru’, ‘Bitcoin Trading Wizard’ etc. are likely to come to life.

BO: I think that unusual job titles only have a place internally at organisations that want to promote their culture. However, external job titles and job ads should focus on being much more straightforward and traditional, or else you risk missing your ideal candidate. In 5-10 years, I would hope that employers could create job titles that wouldn’t set their team members up for a headache when they leave their organisation. Think about how you’re affecting their careers.

DM: Pressure is on organisations to push the boundaries more than ever, to stand out for candidates and attract top talent to work with you. With the increase in creative language, we may well be seeing yet more unusual titles joining the fold, from ‘pirates’ to ‘wranglers’, as well as social media developments pushing in words like ‘influencer’. We may even see words like ‘programmer’ or ‘scientist’ make the leap out of the world of STEM and into the marketing mainstream. ‘Brand Scientist’, anyone?

Art of Recruiting Storytelling

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

We love epic stories like Lord of The Rings, Star Wars and The Matrix. They are timeless and epic because they go beyond entertainment. They invite us into a bigger narrative and an important quest. Likewise, I believe the world of recruiting needs better storytellers. For a candidate, it’s the difference between a decent job and an epic opportunity. For a company, it’s the difference between an good applicant and a must-have hire.

What makes epic stories great? Epic stories all have three similar components: The Hero, The Quest, and The Villain.
1) The Hero – A hero will have unique skills or abilities, values we admire, and yet have character flaws to make them relatable and authentic. They will also recruit companions with a mix of skills (like the Avengers) to balance the team.

So in recruiting context, who is “The Hero?” I believe every person and every role is a hero in some way that you recruit. So you are not recruiting people to fill empty seats, you are recruiting heroes!
2) The Quest – The hero needs the setting of an epic quest: A long, difficult journey of great significance. Even with setbacks, the hero strives forward.

So in recruiting, use “The Quest” as people want to be inspired by a bigger vision than just delivering a quality product at a competitive price.Set your company into a bigger battle where you have a team of heroes working together to achieve some epic goal.

3) The Villain –The Villain brings the needed drama of conflict, danger and a worthy foe to be concerned about.

As recruiters, use “The Villain” as your key competitor you want to take out. Or maybe it’s a pain that customers feel today you want to take away or battling the old way of doing things.

Story fails: Three ways companies fall short in telling their story

If good stories are so useful, then why do the majority recruiting stories fall flat? In my 20 years of recruiting experience, I’ve had a front row seat to reading hundreds of job descriptions across a mix of job titles and company sizes. I’ve found I end up rewriting over 90% of them because one of three “story fails” is going on.

Story Fail #1 – Culture cool – In the effort to appeal to young talent and show off a great place to work, the job description ends up being all about culture, buzzwords and links to people playing ping-pong at the office. This comes across to the reader as: “Hey we are culture cool, but you have no idea what the job really is. Interested?”

Story Fail #2 – Kitchen Sink – The descriptions feel like a legal contract listing every possible activity the role might encounter. “Attend team meetings as needed.” “Keep manager updated on projects.” Really? This comes across to the reader as “Here’s a list of 25 soul sucking activities we need done, but not sure why you are doing them. Interested?”

Story Fail #3 – Cut & Paste – This is recycling old descriptions with a new title but for a totally different job, team and mission. When I hear “I’m too busy to fix the job description, I need to get to sourcing” I believe this comes from a belief that a job description is just a hoop to quickly get through so can get to REAL job of recruiting. This ends up comes across to the reader as: “Here’s a Franken-description that has pieces of other old jobs. We are asking you to change your job and life for us, but don’t respect you enough to tell you what the job really is. Interested?”

Ironically, when I have taken that extra hour to make a great job description – it ends up saving me and the interview team 20-40 hours as I get a better response rate and candidates interview better.

6 Practical storytelling tips you can use right away

1) What is your Quest? Hook people on your quest first, and then give role details. So many descriptions just dive first into role details. Write down the best pitch you’d give someone in-person. Proactively add any questions candidates might ask to save time. Talk conversationally about your quest like a human to an audience of one. In reading your description aloud, does it make sense?

2) Tell how the role can be The Hero Focus on Outcomes vs. Activities. Most job descriptions are just full of bullet points list of detailed activities the role will be busy doing, but you are not really sure why. So ask hiring managers what Top 3 outcomes would make them happy in first year. You’ll be surprised at what you hear is not in the current description. But THAT is the job and how someone can be a hero!

3) Deliver more recruiting “WOW”Not everyone is Mad Men creative, so talk with people in Sales and Marketing teams for creative feedback and customer examples. Use video as it has a much higher response rate. Nothing overproduced – iPhone video quality is fine and more authentic. I’ve seen this really work with candidates who say “I watched Dave (the CEO)’s video. He seems great and I want to work for that guy!” Well that just saved me a lot of time. Walk the candidate past a hallway of pictures where you can stop and tell a few quick company stories, customer examples and your values.

My final 3 tips will shift gears a bit, and focus on how we can coach candidates to tell better stories. No one gets hired unless we close both sides of the deal – the candidate AND the hiring manager. That’s why it’s called the art of recruiting! Let’s face it, some candidates are just better interviewers than others, but it doesn’t mean they are better for the job. Common sense to us isn’t common for people who haven’t been interviewing all the time. A little coaching and honest feedback sets up the candidate for success.

4) Resume first impressions matter – My #1 resume coaching tip for candidates is what I call the Top Third Rule. Let me explain: if you took a pair of scissors and cut your resume with only the Top 1/3 left, and then handed it to the hiring manager – they should know what the person wants to do and be compelled to schedule an interview looking only at this section. Why? On average, a resume only gets 6 seconds of review before making a decision. 6 seconds. Recruiters and hiring managers cannot play career counselor, so candidates need to be clear on what they want to do and what makes them qualified in a good “elevator pitch” customized for the job.

5) Prep candidates for Top 2 interview questions. Candidates will always get asked these questions early in the interview process. First question: “What are you looking for?” I am amazed at the rambling answers I often get on this question. Organize and focus the answer to 5 tangible, bullet-point items that track toward the job. Instead reply to this question, “Well, I’m looking for 5 things. First…” This makes the interviewer lean forward with interest, and already like you because you know what you want and can organize your thoughts. Second question: “Why are you interested in us?” Do your research, share specifically why interested and a fit and want the job. The person who often wins the job has done their homework and came across most excited.

6) Facts tell, but stories sell.

Be ready with a few 3-4 sentence “case study” stories from past roles answering: What was the problem, what was your role on the project and the results? Have one ready for each of the three key role outcomes listed, something you are most proud of, and a failure and what you learned from it. This leads to hiring manager feedback such as “Wow – I loved the specific examples she shared solving the exact problems we are facing. If she could do that of us, it would be a big win.”

Be the hero for your company by telling better recruiting stories. Good luck on your quest.

BONUS: Here are a few recent job descriptions as an example of recruiting storytelling in action:

Zonar – Chief Talent Officer

Ossia – VP of HW Engineering

Article by Paul Freed

How to Strike through the Competitive Talent Market in Order to Find the Right Candidate

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

The current competition within the job market is pretty steep, for both employees and employers. Everyone is out there looking for the best candidates, and likewise, candidates are searching among employers to see where they fit best, and fit involves everything from job title, to salary, and more recently, company culture. In many ways, employers are under more scrutiny to appear attractive to top candidates than vice versa. These days, to find the right candidate, you need a solid strategy in place.

1. Develop Your Goals Into a Written Plan

The benefits of a thorough plan are manyfold, but first and foremost, it will help you find the best candidate in the least amount of time. In developing a written plan, consider expectations you have for candidates, realistic demands of the position, and even broader departmental and organizational goals.

Creating an accurate and specific description of the job, it’s demands and the requisite qualifications necessary to meet those demands will help your HR, executive recruitment partners, and interview teams screen candidates more quickly and thoroughly. Likewise, it will give prospective candidates clear expectations from the outset. All of this leads to a stronger candidate pool in less time.

Pulling in broader departmental and organizational goals will help you identify the team your candidate will work with. Through this, you can create your job and candidate descriptions through consensus.

Just like an executive search firm, a fully fleshed plan will take the grandview. To push hiring-based decisions beyond the subjective, define your company culture and how it affects the role candidates will perform.

2. Create a Fantastic Job Description and Make it ‘Sizzle’

You’ve written your plan, coalesced the information you need to describe your ideal candidate and their role in your organization. While that will help to screen better candidates more quickly—especially on your end—it won’t do much to attract the most sought after candidates all on its own.

Whatever your business may be, finding top candidates for executive roles requires a bit of marketing. Put yourself in the shoes of your ideal candidates: you have a valuable, desirable skill set and are eager to continue developing them. Would a sterile list of figures, facts and revenue reports attract you to apply to a job listing?

In Seattle and beyond, the best executive search firms work to understand and market to a target audience of potential new employees. Your job listing should be a compelling response to the question, “Why should I work for your company?” That answer is developed through your company story.

Where did you begin? Before Apple was the most ubiquitous multinational electronics company, it was just two hopeful guys in garage. Origin stories provide a great way to make a personal and humanizing introduction and show that growth is inherent to your business.

Where you are now is why employees want to apply for job you’re advertising. Whether you’ve received company culture accolades like placement on a “best places to work list” or are providing the first product of its kind, identify what sets you apart. Every business has something that sets them apart. In a concise, meaningful and genuine way, let prospective candidates know what that is.

Likewise, let them know what will set their tenure with you apart from other jobs. Don’t be afraid to use realistic language that might deter candidates unlikely to thrive in your business. You want the best and the best will be excited to face the unique challenges of your business.

3. Utilize Inspirational Story Telling

Your story doesn’t have to be just a story, it can be an epic story. So many of the epics we revere as a culture are timeless because they speak to a larger narrative and inspire us to act. To us, that is the true art of executive search firms perform: telling your story in a way that will inspire candidates to become inspired employees.

Try to incorporate the three common elements of an epic into your listing: the hero, the quest and the villain. Your story’s hero is the candidate you will hire. Your detailed job description and sizzle will help to outline the challenges and successes they’ll experience. Their quest is your organization’s broader quest, something your hero will complete along with the team of heroes you already employee. The villain is a top competitor you plan to outpace; reasons your company presents the best fit or breaks the status quo in your market.

4. Hire for Culture First, Not Résumé Keyword Fits

Your company’s culture describes your core values and how your organization is aligned around them. Establishing those values has been a project unto itself and it takes the right people to maintain it.

When it comes to company culture Zappos and it’s CEO Tony Hsieh are lauded examples. In Hsieh’s own telling, he has built Zappos into a business with annual revenues in excess of $1 billion by maintaining the company’s culture: “If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand will just happen naturally on its own.”

Hiring for culture helps maintain your workplace as a place that employees are excited to come to every day and ensures smooth workflow and good communication. Talent doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t thrive in the context of your company culture.

5. Make Sure Your Candidate’s Experience is Top Notch

A candidate’s experience throughout the interview process will certainly affect their interest. In a LinkedIn poll, more than 80 percent of participants stated that a negative interview experience can change their mind about a job; similarly, more than 80 percent stated that a positive experience can sway them the other way.

Beyond a candidate’s interest, the interview experience you provide can have an impact on your public image and employment brand. Consider each candidate interview as an opportunity to create a new fan of your business.

The number one key to providing a candidate with a positive experience is communication. Whether to schedule a first interview, request more information or respectfully decline their application, try to reply to every applicant within 48 hours. Throughout, keep every candidate abreast of timing and next steps so that candidates can focus on giving their best interview, not logistics.

A chief complaint among job applicants is never being officially “closed out” of the interview process. It’s of little cost, but significant consequence to send a respectful brief email to candidates who will not be moving forward. However, if a candidate has dropped out of consideration after a round or more of interviews, consider making a brief phone call to let them know personally.

6. Using the Right Tools

These days, social media operates at the very center of the business world. LinkedIn is still the biggest platform for executive recruiters and search firms, but there are others—TalentHook, Gild, Hiring Solved to name a few—that you can incorporate into your candidate search.

Social media tools are also essential to developing an employer brand. Your website may be your foundation, but an attractive social media presence can nudge the most passive candidates into considering career opportunities with your company.

7. Consult Herd Freed Hartz, Seattle Executive Search Consultants

Finding the best candidates in today’s job market is a time consuming and expensive process, one that is multiplied many times over by selecting the wrong candidate. New hires can have profound impacts on culture and productivity, especially within management or executive positions.

We at Herd Freed Hartz pride ourselves in delivering peace of mind to clients by finding greatness, not just good hires. Executive recruitment is an art that we at Herd Freed Hartz have proven ourselves in. Since 2001 top Seattle and NW companies have trusted Herd Freed Hartz to find their executive hires. Over 90% of our business comes from returning clients or referrals. Helping businesses build great executive teams is our passion.

If you’re on the hunt for your next great Executive hire, Connect with us today!

5 Ways Ineffective Recruiting is Hurting Your Business

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

You rely on your employees to keep your business running and your customers satisfied, which makes finding the right candidates critical to your success. But let us remind you, in the U.S., managers have an average hiring success rate of only 50%. That’s far too many missed opportunities, and too many unfortunate consequences as a result. Aside from being a headache and a time drain, hiring the wrong candidate can cost a business an incredible amount of money, increase employee turnover, diminish morale, productivity and product quality, just to name a few. Here are five of the typical consequences that come with bringing on the wrong hire, and five things you’ll want to avoid to keep your organization’s on track.

1. Hurting Your Bottom Line

Even the right candidate is expensive: the upfront costs of interviewing, travel and hotels, training, testing. The wrong candidate multiplies those costs and carries additional hidden costs of diminished productivity. The Center for American Progress reports that a bad hire can cost as $6,000-$15,000, or 20% of an average employee’s salary. However, in their best-selling business book Who, authors Geoff Smart and Randy Street, calculate the cost of a wrong candidate to be as high as 15x that employee’s salary. That means an employee salaried at $100,000 could cost a business $1.5 million in both hard costs and productivity loss.

2. Lowers Employee Morale

In a recent survey from Robert Half of more than 1,000 small and midsize businesses, 53% of respondents reported that teams that work with bad hires experience increased stress. In the same survey, 20% of respondents said mistakes in hiring led to decreased confidence in management. Those results spell disrupted workflow, diminished productivity and increased customer dissatisfaction.

In a larger, wide-reaching organization employee morale is everything. If you’re empowering individuals to make important decisions on their own, then you’ve got to make sure they’re happy with their role and responsibilities, and often times that sense of happiness depends on stability provided by management. When management competence is questioned, which often happens as a result of bad hire, employee morale suffers.

3. Creates More Work for Team Members

Terminating a bad hire isn’t the end of that mistake. Between termination and finding a suitable candidate to fill the vacancy, other team members typically have to pick up the slack. That can take a serious toll in Portland or Seattle where, according to Glassdoor, the average time it takes to interview is 25.3 days or 25.0 days respectively. Not to mention the demands that interviewing, training and monitoring new hires puts on management and human resource departments.

At Herd Freed hartz, our time to candidate metric is typically around 37 days, which means that in that time we will present you with the candidate that is ultimately hired. That may seem like a long time, especially when you have a role to fill, but trust us, it’s better to hire slowly (combing through candidates to find the right people) and fire quickly (when it doesn’t work out) than it is to do the opposite.

4. Increase Employee Turnover

For all the reasons above, choosing the wrong candidate creates an environment that can lead team members to seek out new jobs, multiplying the problem you’re trying to resolve. People can only pick up the slack of a vacant position for so long. And the damage of poor leadership or management level hires is even greater. Rather than simply decreasing a team’s productivity and lowering morale, bad leadership leads to mismanagement of whole teams or departments that can ripple throughout a business. One Gallup report found that half of all employees have left a company to get away from disagreeable management at some point in their career.

The more responsibility for a role that you’re trying to fill, the greater the fallout from a bad hire is likely to be. That’s why, when attempting to fill an executive position, it’s best to work with executive search consultants that have experience sourcing and placing the very best executive talent available.

5. Wastes Your Time

The extra hours you put in should be to grow your business, pursue new ideas, and develop with your team. When managed in-house, it can take far too long to find and hire the right candidate, meanwhile typical responsibilities and workflow suffer as a result. There’s no need to bog down management and human resources with a problem that companies like Herd Freed Hartz strive to resolve so that your time stays your own.

Your business is what you do. At Herd Freed Hartz, saving your business time and money by finding the best leadership with the highest ROI is what we do. We understand that executive recruiting is as much art as science. At Herd Freed Hartz, we look beyond résumés and keyword-matches. We understand personality and the importance of culture fit. Our executive search consultants will work with you, listen to your story, utilize a business-wide approach, dynamic interviewing, and epic storytelling techniques to deliver peace of mind in the form of top-level executive talent.

If you’re interested in the ways that Herd Freed Hartz’ Executive Search Consultants can help you, connect with us today.

Hook job candidates with your “company sizzle”

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

Does this work? While it may not deter candidates who are actively seeking new positions, you aren’t going to see much traction with sought-after talent through this approach. Instead, your company must tell a compelling story to reel in desirable candidates.

As recruiters and hiring managers, we’ve all heard the term “employee value proposition,” or EVP, tossed around inside corporate cultures. A new term that is starting to gain traction, particularly as the hiring market remains heated, is “candidate value proposition.” The difference is subtle, but speaks to the need to understand and market to your target audience — in this case, potential employees — by having a well-thought-out answer to the question, “Why should I work for your company?”

As a marketing organization, the best way to hook your audience is to understand what it is they want to know, rather than telling them what you think they should know. Place yourself in the shoes of the customer — or, in this case, the candidate — to develop a personalized, relevant introduction to your company that will engage their interest by asking yourself the following questions.

Every company is compelling in some way; the key is to understand and articulate what differentiates your company’s products and culture. Did your company make a “best place to work” list? Is it active in the community or focused on environmentally friendly solutions? Does your company boast a long average tenure? Is your product the first of its kind, or on the cutting edge of the latest evolution in a mature or crowded space? Leverage public opinion of your company, but in a concise and meaningful way. Identify the ways in which your company deliberately fights the status quo.

What unique challenges does my company face?

Companies tend to pitch themselves in a glossy, Photoshopped light, but your toughest problems can actually be an attraction to potential talent. Everyone wants their work to be recognized and meaningful; show potential employees how they can step up and be a hero.

Most job descriptions provide a laundry list of responsibilities that don’t vary much from one description to the next. Instead of focusing on the tactical work, focus on the results the successful candidate will achieve in the role, and how those results will directly impact the big picture.

Keep in mind that not everyone will be the right fit for your company, and that’s OK. Don’t be afraid to use language that will deter candidates who wouldn’t likely be successful in your environment. Not only will this save you time on the back end by filtering out candidates who aren’t a fit, but it can actually make the right candidate even more attracted to the position.

It takes time to hone your company story, and it’s important to stay consistent with overall company messaging. However, don’t fall into the trap of being too uniform in your candidate approach; tell a story that will grab the heart as well as the intellect of top talent.

Karen Bertiger advises companies throughout the Puget Sound area as a managing director of the Seattle-based firm Herd Freed Hartz Inc.

Create an Excellent Candidate Experience

Paul Freed on April 12, 2024

By Karen Bertiger / Special to The Seattle Times Jobs (published in June 2016)

It’s no secret that today’s talent market is highly competitive, but perks and sign-on bonuses aren’t the only way to attract top talent. Creating a positive interview experience can strongly influence a candidate’s interest, as well as create a long-lasting impact on your overall employment brand.

According to a LinkedIn poll, more than 80 percent of candidates expressed that a negative interview experience can change their minds about a role; likewise, more than 80 percent also said that a positive experience could change their mind the other way.

But it’s not just the candidate you want who matters; everybody has a network with whom they may share their experience. Employer review sites like Glassdoor.com are becoming an influential resource for career decisions. More than 60 percent of candidates who have a positive interview experience will not only actively encourage others to apply, but 39 percent of them would be more likely to purchase that company’s product or service. Meanwhile, a third of those who had a negative experience will publicly share that experience as well, according to the Talent Board’s Candidate Experience Awards survey.

Your goal is to ensure that every candidate who has a touchpoint with your organization not only feels they were treated professionally but leaves the experience a new fan of your company.

Here are a few simple steps you can take that will make an immediate impact on your candidates’ experience.

Hook them early with a job description that “wows” and an easy application process.
Job descriptions should outline the exciting possibilities of the company and its role. They should clearly state the qualifications and goals for the position, followed by a straightforward submission process. Send an automated confirmation so the candidate knows his or her application was received. Often, résumé submissions fall into a “black hole” within recruiting departments; by providing a response, you will differentiate yourself and add a touch that shows appreciation for the candidate’s effort.

Communicate, communicate, communicate.
This is the No. 1 mistake hiring managers and recruiters make when it comes to the candidate experience. Make it a goal to reply to every applicant within 48 hours, either to schedule a first interview, request additional information or respectfully decline with an email template. Throughout your interview process, keep every candidate informed on the next steps and timing.

Outline your hiring process, so the candidate can focus on the interview and not logistics.
When inviting a candidate in for an interview, provide clear directions both to the office and upon arrival, and details describing the structure of the interview, e.g., how long should they expect to be there? Whom will they meet? Will there be a white-boarding session or other skill assessment tests? Providing candidates with the proper information to prepare for the interview will make the candidate feel more confident and at ease, which leads to a more “real” interaction. When the interview is over, be sure to let the applicant know when you plan to follow up with next steps — and then do it.

Respectfully decline.
It’s much easier to focus on creating a good experience for the candidate you hope to hire. But how do you guarantee that the candidates you decline will still leave the process with a positive impression of you and your company? Respectfully declining a candidate is a task most of us would rather avoid, so it’s not surprising that one of the top complaints of the interview process is never being officially “closed out.” By sending a quick, professional note letting the candidate know he or she will not be moving forward in the process, you will actually make a much more positive impression than if you avoid delivering the bad news. If the candidate advanced through multiple interviews, take the time to deliver the news by phone.

Timely communication is even more important when it comes to the candidate you do want. There’s a good chance your top choice will receive multiple offers from your competitors. The candidate will consider a number of factors when deciding which offer to take, but many hiring managers don’t realize that one of those factors is the experience the candidate had throughout the interview process. Did he or she receive clear, professional communication? Was the interview process well-organized? These are indicators of how he or she will be treated once in the job.

Most of these steps can be automated and will take just a few minutes, or even seconds, of your time. And yet, so many companies miss these opportunities to create a long-lasting, positive employer reputation in this competitive marketplace. By treating every candidate with professionalism and respect, you will have a competitive advantage over a less-conscientious competitor.

Karen Bertiger advises companies throughout the Puget Sound area as an executive search consultant with the Seattle-based firm Herd Freed Hartz, Inc.

Last update of the article: 06/05/2020.