Job seekers’ problems drive them to consider career changes. How much has your organization considered what problems job seekers have and whether your career offers can provide a solution for them?
When you frame your career offer as a solution, not just a commodity job offer, your offer becomes more valuable in the eyes of your target audience. People are willing to accept value-added career offers for less compensation because they understand the additional value provided by your organization. This way, you don’t have to compete with salaries.
Understanding your ideal job seeker’s problem
If you think your target audience changes jobs because you have a hiring need, think twice. Job seekers only move when they have enough reason to do that. Changing workplaces is both time and energy-consuming, and we are unlikely to jump on such a change process unless something in our lives, not just work, drives us to change.
To turn your vacancy into a value-added career offer, you need to be on top of why people in your target audience tend to change jobs. Some of the reasons are common sense:
- Students need temporary internship positions
- Graduates need full-time employment matching their education and qualifications
- Career-driven professionals are looking for the next phase in their professional and career development
- Parents returning to work may be looking for less demanding roles or a more sympathetic work environment matching their need for a balance of work.
Understanding your ideal job seeker’s problem that is driving them to seek a career change helps you communicate your offer as a match or solution to that problem.
If you are unsure, ask your job candidates what exactly compels them to change jobs and document those reasons as your insight. When you start recognizing patterns between reasons and candidate demographics, current levels of responsibility, length of work and stage of life, you can match those reasons with the added value your organization can offer them in the forms of benefits, leadership culture, value, purpose, meaning of work, training, career development, locations of work and so on.
When you apply this technique in your recruitment communication, messages, and marketing, you are highly likely to attract the talents you want to hire.
How to turn your career offer into a solution to your ideal job seeker’s problem?
When you identify your ideal job seeker’s problems and understand why they start to consider making a move, you can begin tailoring how to connect with them on social media and communicate your career offer as a solution.
The paradigm shift here is to start treating your career offers as products and the value-added as the benefits and features of those products. Start drilling down into an employee’s career journey in your company.
- What pain points will your onboarding remove?
- What struggles do the key elements of your culture and ways of managing people take away or make better?
- Do you have unique benefits that can improve the balance between work and home life?
- How can your culture, values and benefits support employees with small children, pets and aging parents, or those who live further away from the office?
- How does employment in your company make your people’s lives better today and for their future?
When you thoroughly understand the typical reasons that turn into your job seeker’s problem, you can use the information to identify how a career in your company can solve those problems; your recruitment messages will communicate your value way more effectively than a standard job post.
Stop talking about what your company needs, expects, or requests, and start communicating how a career in your company will improve their lives and fix specific problems they are likely to struggle with.
What else can we use from product marketing in recruitment marketing to increase the attractiveness of our offer?
When it comes to addressing a job seeker’s potential aspirations, desires, and pain points, I always like to probe a client company’s culture, ways of work and benefits deeper and see if we can bundle benefits, like in product marketing.
You are probably familiar with a typical app pricing strategy, for example. You are usually presented with three tiers or options, the middle being the “most popular.”
If you look at those pricing tiers, you notice how the price increases with the features, services and benefits. Now, look at those compensation packages your company offers for your vacancies.
What if you created three compensation packages—options for the roles you hire that mix your various benefits and value-added opportunities with the salary? You could offer a higher financial compensation with fewer other benefits and value-added options or a lower financial compensation with more other benefits and value-added options, bringing the total monetary value up even higher than the fixed salary in the highest option.
This type of semi-tailored compensation package available for everyone in the role with the same qualifications makes your company’s value-added way more transparent and the negotiations feel more equal as your candidate feels they have a way to influence their total compensation based on what matters to them the most.
Just like in product marketing, where pricing makes a delicate dance, compensation makes an equally delicate tango in talent acquisition and retention. Being more flexible and creative – in a strategic way –can impact your employer brand appeal, make your company culture and values more transparent and add huge value for your recruitment success.
It is all about matching your offer with what your target audience is looking for and then using communication and messaging to tune your recruitment content to their wavelength.
Contact us to chat more if your talent acquisition and retention needs this.
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More about understanding the job seeker’s problem and how to tackle it with recruitment marketing
How our minds work when we activate as job seekers
Crafting recruitment messages that resonate beyond clicks on the job board
