How To Recruit A Genius

Recruiting genius candidates that will help your company expand and utilise its full potential is a difficult task. While it is a well-known fact that the number of candidates heavily outweighs the number of vacancies, few HR managers take active steps in decreasing the quantity and increasing the quality of applications they receive.

Here’s an illustration of the point. Let’s say you’re in the mood for a nice meal out, so you google “good restaurants”. You’ll get approximately 7 million results… but you only need one. Make the search more specific like “Italian restaurant Mayfair London” and you will get about 9 times fewer results. On the top of that the results on page one will be so much more relevant to your query. So this is what we are going to examine here – how to attract higher percentage of strong applications and recruit your genius candidate.

Make your job advert stand out

If you want your job advert to attract geniuses, then it should give the applicants strong reasons to apply to your company. Before they try to win you over, you need to win them first. In our upcoming post “How To Fill A Job Vacancy” we’ll examine what makes a great job advert so you’ll have the best chance of putting together a winning formula.

Start the post by briefly presenting the company and what makes it different from the rest. By stating the company’s values and goals you are off to a great start as talented individuals generally want to work in a driven team with a shared long term vision.

Next, outline the responsibilities in a clear concise way, bullet points are a great way to get your point across as its easier to read, and you can clearly define the most important aspects about the role. This will show the candidate that you know exactly what you need and will provide extra credibility for your company.

Finally, point out the skillset that the candidate(s) should possess. Break it down to essential (candidates without those abilities will not be considered) and preferred (giving the candidate competitive advantage). You might even ask the candidate to start the cover letter in a particular way, such as “I want to work for XYZ Ltd, because”, which will separate a “bulk application” from a specific, tailored one. It will further show that the candidate can follow instructions and has read the whole advert.

Use Online Resources and Social Media Channels

In a community hugely driven by social media it is no secret that you need to utilise those channels. This is especially the case if you are looking to recruit someone in the Marketing department. While many recruiters use LinkedIn, the vast majority seem to ignore Facebook and Twitter. Those are powerful networks as they are equipped with great targeting tools. You can easily create adverts that will show up to candidates in a particular area with certain interests.

In some instances you might even consider advertising to your subscribers by uploading the list on the social networks or you can advertise to a lookalike audience. Those people are already interested in what your company does (or will have interest in), so they will have that extra motivation to apply for a position in your company.

Conduct a Telephone Interview

About 80% of the interviews nowadays are in two stages. The HR manager screens the CV and the Cover Letter, after which the potential candidates are invited for a first and last interview. Adding a telephone interview might sound time consuming and something you might not particularly benefit much from, but that’s not the case. Speaking to more candidates can help you may find that diamond in the rough or candidates with plenty of potential and in an ideal scenario your genius candidate! These pre-screened validated candidates will be more closely matched to your job specifications and have a better chance of contributing to the success of the company.

As you can see you don’t need to be a recruitment genius to attract great applications. Some preparation with a good plan of action can go a long way in filling the vacancy with the right candidate. At the end it all boils down to knowing exactly what kind of person you need and then tailoring the whole process in finding that candidate.