What are candidate personas?
Candidate personas are semi-fictional depictions of what you want the ideal candidate for a job to be. They are created by using hiring trends and research to predict such candidates’ minds, personality traits, career goals, and identity. A well-crafted candidate persona will help you identify the perfect candidate to fill an open position.
How can you use personas?
Since candidate personas help you know how your ideal candidate think, you can use it to improve your recruitment process in the following ways:
- Create better job descriptions
- Source for active & passive candidates
- Improve recruitment metrics
How do you create candidate personas?
There are three standard steps to creating candidate personas; these are:
- Gather information: Start by gathering data from your past hiring record. Then research about the targeted candidates’ demography, qualifications, skills, etc.
- Interview: Hold discussions with potential candidates and employees, especially the high performing ones. Get to know their motivation, goals, interests, and driving factor.
- Do more research: Research the latest hiring trends, what these talents want, and other factors like their preferred job application sites.
- Collect data, analyze them, and put your persona profiles together
Candidate persona template
Section 1: Who?
First, give your ideal candidate the personality traits you want them to have. You may give the persona a name to make it more authentic and even add a picture.
Background (Current job - Qualifications - Experience)
- Software Engineer
- B.Sc. in software engineering, information technology, or computer science
- Three years of extensive experience working with Python, C++, Javascript, and other programming languages
Demographics (Gender - Age - Income)
Personal preferences
- Flexible work schedule
- In-person communication
- Follow tech news
- Independent but friendly
Tip: Conduct research into the skill sets, demography, income, etc. of the average Software Engineer. Join niche job boards and follow the discussions in online groups to get a clear picture of what Software Engineers want.
Section 2: What?
Write down the motivators that you believe should drive your ideal candidate.
Goals (Primary goals - Secondary goals)
- Build well-known and useful applications or websites for users.
- Become a software development team leader
Challenges (Primary challenges - Secondary challenges)
- Limited tools and resources
- Problems keeping up with the latest industry trends
- Basic English skill
What can we do (to help our persona achieve their goals? to help our persona overcome their challenges)
- Provide training and seminar opportunities to help employees learn from industry giants
- Invest in tools and resources
- Create a mentorship program to help new Software Engineers learn fast and develop leadership skills
Tip: Interview candidates and consult the hiring team when creating this part of the persona mapping. For the employees, get insights from the exceptional ones among them as they are who you’d want the ideal candidate to be like. Use the details from the interviews to build this section.
Section 3: Why?
Real quotes (about goals, challenges)
Goals:
- “I want to spend my day working on applications and websites that would be helpful to many users.”
- “My long-term goal is to be a leader in the field, steering a software development team in their quest to create state-of-the-art products.”
Tip: Your quotes should be a composite of the different things the people you interview told you about. Choose the most common goals and challenges.
Common objections (Why wouldn't they join your company?)
- We are a small start-up
- Slightly below-industry income
Section 4: How?
Now, convince the ideal candidate that your company is the best place for them to be.
What can we offer
- Great workplace culture
- Fast career progression
- Work-life balance
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