Attracting candidates to your vacancy

Attracting the right people

Creating a suitable candidate pool from which to select is important. Too big and you waste a lot of time; two small and you will not know if you have got the best candidate possible.

Creativity and imagination are important at this stage of the process - the more ideas you have as to sources the candidates the better and if the sources are ‘less apparent' the greater your chances of finding people that your competitors have not found.

Think also about your team and the need to have balance in terms of the mix of backgrounds, and approaches if you are going to achieve high performance.

Some Key Questions

• Have you the necessary budget and authority to recruit?
• Where is the target population?
• Which pool of candidates will give the right number and quality?
• What do your current succession plans say?
• Is there anyone who would benefit from the development opportunity?
• Is it better to look internally first and then externally?
• Is an external search needed from the outset?
• Are you going to be able to find what you are looking for or do you need the support of a recruitment agency?

Recommended Practice

• Take good account of all sources of internal candidates.
• Check around with colleagues and see if they have anyone who would be suitable
• Make full use of existing succession plans
• Check with you HR function since they may know about candidates that would be suitable
• Be imaginative.
• Think about your competitors and what they do to attract people