What did you make of the deliberate spelling mistake in the header? Hopefully, it got your attention on a page full of search engine results or list of blogs fighting for your attention.
Did you notice it?
I just did a little experiment by presenting 10 people in the office with five genuine job ads. I asked them to click on the one that got their attention. Nine of them clicked on the one that had a similar spelling mistake to this one in the job title.
Of those nine, five said they hadn’t consciously spotted the error but later said that their eyes may have subconsciously been drawn to it and four said they had noticed it… ABOVE all else… but still clicked.
It’s not scientific but does demonstrate the value of standing out from the crowd, although there are probably better ways than littering your message with typos!
When you recruit for an IT position it’s more important than ever that you can get your message across above the noise of an increasingly busy marketplace. Fifteen years ago, you may have placed an ad in the job pages of your local newspaper and providing that the other IT firms in your neighbourhood weren’t recruiting you’d have the pick of the available local talent.
The Internet changed all of that. A little over a decade ago the proportion of job seekers using the web was just above 25% (in the U.S.). A more recent poll by Pew found that over half of U.S. adults (54%) have looked for information about jobs online. Among those who have actively looked for work in the last two years, 79% used online resources for their most recent job search. 34% now say online is the most important tool available to them.
With more and more options for IT talent to work remotely, you are no longer just up against employers in the same postcode, your main competitor for hiring top local talent could be based miles away … and they might not even be an IT firm! Put a search for “IT Project Manager jobs” into Google and many of the companies that are hiring are not traditional digital employers. Most businesses are now IT dependent so many different sectors are chasing the same talent.
You have to stand out.
However, you have to be credible.
This brings me back to that spelling mistake. Remember I asked ten people to click on one job ad and nine of them chose the one with the spelling error. I asked the chap who selected one of the other ads and he said, “If the employer isn’t intelligent enough to spot the typo or competent or diligent enough to spell check, I doubt that they have much to offer me.”
Getting noticed is one thing but getting noticed for the wrong reason may harm you.
9 out of 10 recruiters now believe that recruitment is candidate-driven. Recruiters are having to adopt an inside-out approach to candidate attraction showing their best side to applicants from way before their very interaction. To this end, according to LinkedIn’s Global Recruitment report, budgets for “employer brand management” are being increased at a majority of businesses.
What all of these numbers confirm is that, more than ever, recruitment of IT talent has to be spot on. More businesses are realising that this means hiring a recruitment partner but this isn’t always a silver bullet.
In an IT recruitment partner, you need the search capability of a recruiter with the selection skills of a subject matter expert to provide you with only the very best candidates. You need someone who will take time to get to know what it is that makes your firm the best place to work and have the skills to communicate that message with potential talent both active and passive.
This is best achieved by creating bespoke adverts with meaningful role profiles, written by subject matter experts. Your partner must be focussed on candidate attraction based on best fit with your company culture, selling your business as a great place to work but attracting talent who will complement and enhance your culture.
Thankfully, businesses are becoming as conscious of the brand they project to potential employees, as they are of the one that they project to potential customers. If this isn’t on your radar yet, now would be a good to adjust.
Choose a recruitment partner whose offer is as unique as yours and you can position yourself above the noise and be better prepared to get noticed in this candidate driven landscape.