Candidate persona mapping gives you a clearer view of your ideal employees for better targeting.
The competition for talents is expected to resume soon as companies look to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic downturn. Add that to the already existing problem of low retention rate, and you’ll see that recruiters need more than traditional strategies to get the attention of qualified job seekers.
A candidate persona mapping serves as one of the most efficient modern solutions to this problem. But what does this term mean and how to integrate this into your hiring process.
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.
Since candidate personas help you know how your ideal candidate think, you can use it to improve your recruitment process in the following ways:
There are three standard steps to creating candidate personas; these are:
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)
Demographics (Gender - Age - Income)
Male
Personal preferences
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.
Write down the motivators that you believe should drive your ideal candidate.
Goals (Primary goals - Secondary goals)
Challenges (Primary challenges - Secondary challenges)
What can we do (to help our persona achieve their goals? to help our persona overcome their challenges)
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.
Real quotes (about goals, challenges)
Goals:
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?)
Now, convince the ideal candidate that your company is the best place for them to be.
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