Note From The Editor It’s COVID’s 1st birthday! Happy birthday, you sonuvabitch. Hats off to you for changing the ENTIRE WORLD within a few weeks, for keeping us on our toes, and for making me gain 10kgs. Impressive. Reflecting back over the past year … is insane. To think this time last year we thought…
I wrote this as a blog post back in January, when bush fires were blazing, Covid-19 didn’t yet have a name, and I was recently returned to Australia from a holiday in Bali. It feels like a whole year of years has passed since then. I could not have known then the sheer bravery I…
There is a love story between candidates and recruiters/sourcers. Google SEO tells us that we are searched as stupid, waste of time, liars, lazy, and many other negatives adjectives. Why do candidates feel this way about us? When talking to candidates, they state we contact them with irrelevant job offers or job-offers that lack information.…
There is a love story between candidates and recruiters/sourcers.
Google SEO tells us that we are searched as stupid, waste of time, liars, lazy, and many other negatives adjectives.
When talking to candidates, they state we contact them with irrelevant job offers or job-offers that lack information.
Other feedback I received is that we don’t know much about the job we are recruiting. We also tend to ask candidates mechanic and annoying questions. Questions like, where do you see yourself in five years? And what are your strengths/weaknesses?
Many candidates we recruit work in a candidate-driven market. They shouldn’t have to answer mundane questions simply because we approached them for a job.
We are all motivated and inspired to take action on similar things. To understand and consequently persuade your potential candidates, you might need to understand mental triggers to motivate candidates and how they work when approaching potential hires.
Two mental triggers help us to recognise people who we can trust and can lead us to the next level in our lives.
These two mental triggers are EMPATHY and AUTHORITY.
Will you spend your time talking to someone who doesn’t listen to you?
An empathetic recruiter not only puts himself on the other person’s shoes but also anticipates what the person might need or ask.
In recruitment, you need to be prepared to answer all your candidate’s objection before even he/she asks. This is a kind of sense of responsibility and shows you care about your candidate.
Empathy also ensures that you are paying attention to all details that candidates expect from the recruiter.
When we talk about empathy, we indirectly speak about having an interest in them. Understand how they feel, and what might potentially concern them.
If you go through an in-depth process of empathy with them, that will bring us to a state of affinity with them, which makes them more open to discuss and be sincerer.
People trust people who understand, and they also believe recruiters who follow them.
As itself, empathy is a straightforward concept that can be summarised in looking, listening, and understanding the person is in front of you. Understanding their frustrations, their motivations, their problems, fears, needs, and as far as possible and provide them with solutions is all empathy about.
A recruiter with authority knows what they are doing. Authority is about owning the process and having vast knowledge about the company and job that they are attempting to offer to potential hires.
Authority is about being able to answer these questions: Does this person worth giving him my time? Can this person help me in my next career move?
In the end, it is a question of providing the necessary trust we all need to accept making business with someone.
Authority brings us to the right status to become the person who will lead them to make the change they want to do.
We all need a person who guides us in a moment of transition because for some people; a job transition is scary. Transitioning from a well-known comfort zone with all its privileges aiming to go into a potentially-better situation is unknown. Probably, you already experienced some people deciding last minute to stay at their jobs because of fear.
When changing jobs, candidates expect guidance from a person who facilitated this process to a new company. We help them to make sense of the action they took when they showed interest.
As you can see, these two triggers are essential to keep them in mind not only in the recruitment business but in other areas of life. Empathy and authority is a powerful way to increase the trust needed by our potential hires.
Cover image: Shutterstock
This article first appeared on SourceCon on 3 September 2019.
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