How to Be a Company Job Candidates Love | 2-Minute Video

Can you become a company job candidates love? The kind of organization that candidates would “hire” to be their employer?

That’s the premise behind new research: Job candidates actually hire you as much as you hire them. And employees continue to decide if they want to hire your company as their employer every day, week, month and year they walk into work.

What’s Up in This Episode: Job Candidates Hire You

In this episode of HRMorning’s 3-Point, our expert Michael Horn, Co-Author of Job Moves: Nine Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. walks us through what job candidates and employees really think. It’s not exactly what you might expect. It goes beyond the desire for good, transparent pay and unique perks.

Click, watch and listen for more details on the kind of companies and opportunities job candidates are looking for — and how you can become that for them.

Transcript (edited for clarity):

In HR, you do a lot of hiring. But if you want to hire and keep the best people, think about this: Would job candidates hire you as their employer? And is the job one they’d continue to “hire” day after day?

That’s the idea behind new research on getting and keeping great people.

Turns out, people aren’t just looking for the next best job. They’re hiring for their future.

Michael Horn, Co-Author, Job Moves: Nine Steps for Making Progress in Your Career: “The idea is that people hire jobs to make progress in their lives. And if you want to be a place where someone is really engaged, giving their best effort, really excited to be there, motivated, trying to nail there with key performance indicators, because they really care about it.

“Then you want to be a place that they have proactively said, ‘This is a place each and every single day I come into. And I’m choosing to do that.’ Right? And so for you as the person in HR, the frontline manager, you want to be a place that someone has actively made the decision to say, ‘I’m hiring the job just as much as you are hiring me and paying me.’” 

So if you flip the switch on how you see hiring – as your company the one getting hired – you want to start to think about how you can be your best.

Horn: “If you’re a place that can understand that, okay, why are they coming to me? What’s the motivating factors that said I’m a great place to help them make progress? Then that helps you a better design your workplace around those hiring criteria, if you will.” 

Naturally, you aren’t going to redesign your workplace for every job candidate to make them happy. Nor are you going to pretend your workplace is something that it’s not just to woo a candidate. But you can help candidates figure out if yours is the place where they’ll thrive.

Horn: “I think the biggest thing is understand what are they desiring when they come to you, right? You know, what’s progress look like for them?” 

This is different than selling your company to candidates. And it’s different than just learning about their skills and experience. You want to:

• Play the part. Recognize that job candidates are interviewing your company, too.
• Be transparent. Give job candidates a full view of your company and what their job will be like so they can tell if it falls in line with their ideal vision.
• Ask more questions. Dig deeper to find out what people want from work.

You aren’t the only one hiring during the recruiting process. So take steps to make sure you’re company’s best shines through, too.