The best way to start attracting quality applicants to your open jobs requires reflection on your current business operations. You need to know who you are targeting, where to look for these ideal candidates, and be aware of how they are looking for career opportunities like yours. After answering these questions, it will develop a clearer picture of how to attract best-fit hires for your hourly roles.
In Canada, there are over 1.74 million individuals who have the necessary hard skills for an hourly store-level position. From that talent pool, it is important to decipher the necessary soft skills and characteristics that make an applicant successful in your open role. What is your ideal candidate profile? An easy way to determine your winning formula is to research the combination of behavioral characteristics your top front line performers have and to find like-minded applicants. For one of our major enterprise sporting goods clients, it is necessary for all hires to value and practice living an active and healthy lifestyle. Research revealed that hires who valued a healthy lifestyle saw more success because of their natural alignment with the company’s values and culture. Hires supported by Mindfield for this client are able to speak comfortably about the products and services while sharing their athletic interests with the customer. It personalizes the customer experience and demonstrates a passion and understanding that exceeds the qualifications listed on the job description.
Knowing who to look for is the first step. The next step is to know where to find these great people. It is crucial for you to have a good understanding of the regional talent breakdown for your retail stores. Get a good grasp on the local market by researching the regional demographics and how that falls in line with your ideal candidate profile. Each region, province, and city differs in availability of talent. The more granular you can get on talent availability, the better equipped you are at making best-fit hiring decisions at the store level. An example would be to know which job boards or search engines are most impactful within the province or city for talent sourcing. Your strategies for attracting and sourcing talent need to be tailored to the specific markets you are searching for.
Lastly, attracting best-fit store level talent includes understanding how your ideal candidates are searching for open roles like yours. Are they using job boards, search engines, careers sites, word of mouth, or even social media? It is necessary to know how your brand and corporate culture are presented on all of these channels. What search terms are candidates using to look for your open roles, and when in the week or day are they looking? There needs to be a clear and distinct message that candidates get of your corporate brand when they are doing their research. In order for you to better equip yourself, A/B test, measure and track all your efforts on these channels. Always be looking for ways to tailor, improve and tweak your current processes to increase quality applicant conversions. Due to job title optimization strategies and A/B testing from a 3 month period, we were able to improve our total jobs viewed for our customers by 18% and improve our total number of job application starts by 30%. By constantly monitoring and adjusting your search efforts, your company can have a firm grasp on your ideal candidate talent pool. This will give you insights to optimize your sourcing tactics to help increase the flow and the quality of applicants.
To learn more about how Mindfield helps Hourly Employers improve the quality of their workforce, click here!