In yesterday’s Advisor, we discussed the idea of creating candidate personas to assist in your recruiting efforts and why employers may want to do so. Today, let’s take a look at how to create a candidate persona.
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How to Create a Candidate Persona
Theoretically, a candidate persona could be created for every role that the organization needs to fill—both now and in the future. If this is too cumbersome, start with candidate personas for each type of position. For example, you might create a candidate persona for entry-level accounting positions or one for key sales roles, etc.
When creating a candidate persona, start with research. This will allow you to create a persona that accurately reflects the characteristics that the organization values. Look at the characteristics of your top-performing employees that you would like new hires to emulate. Those are some of the characteristics that should be assigned to the candidate persona.
Be sure to consider things from the candidate perspective as well—what would motivate the ideal candidate to want to work for your organization? What do they value? What are their goals? What are their interests? What employer benefits are they looking for? How should you approach them? When the persona is complete, it should include information not only detailing the ideal background but also the overall picture of that person.
Also, don’t forget to research things like what concerns a candidate might have with the organization. This can be critical information to allow the recruiting team to know how to improve employer branding. If you’re not sure where to get this information, consider surveying candidates for your organization—these are people who are already interested in your organization, but their perspective is less biased because they’re not already immersed in your work culture.
Overall, the key is to base the persona information on real data, not on untested assumptions of the hiring team.
If you’re at a loss of what to include, there are plenty of templates available to create a persona online. But your organization can opt to create the persona in any format you find useful. Some organizations use PowerPoint® slides (or other presentation software) with one persona per slide. Others prefer to use their own existing HR management software—utilizing the same format as existing employee profiles (assuming such a format would allow the team to incorporate all of the persona data).
Once you have all of the data, compare the data from various sources to discover the real trends. This is where the persona begins to come through. Put together a persona that includes the ideal candidate’s current job level, experience level, interests, values, demographic characteristics, and any other information you find useful. Then discuss the ideal profile you’ve created with the rest of the hiring team to ensure everyone is on the same page, and make any necessary adjustments before putting it to use. Once you have the candidate persona, it can help the hiring team in crafting job descriptions and benefit packages that will help entice the best candidates to apply. And one more tip— don’t forget to review the best sources for candidates. Do an analysis of where some of your existing high-performing employees have been originated. In other words, which channels correlate to the best quality hires? This can assist you in putting your candidate persona to work in the most effective places.
Remember, this process will take time—don’t shortchange it. You’ll need to interview multiple people to create each persona. Not only will you (ideally) interview multiple people who are representative of the role, you’ll also need to get input from the other stakeholders to get a complete picture.