Leveraging automation in recruitment messaging can be a huge time- and energy-saver when done correctly. However, many HR leaders and recruiters don’t realize that automated messages can be personalized, too.
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It can be as simple as merging the candidate’s name, title, and current company strategically into messages and turning the focus onto the person. With smaller pools and senior-level candidates, automation isn’t as effective. You should be dedicating much more time toward understanding your target and creating a highly personalized message.
Stop Overthinking
I understand that many recruiters don’t feel like they’re the best writers. But this is really just a cop-out. Salespeople and recruiters often think they have to use big words, eliminate contractions, and make sure everything is perfect grammatically—but they’re overthinking it.
Personalization is about writing how you speak. Now, that doesn’t give you the green light to use swear words and be sloppy, but you also don’t have to appease all the grammar Nazis out there.
Sometimes, using all caps and bolding certain phrases actually get a better response rate because it looks different from a canned paragraph. People prefer bullet points over long, boring paragraphs. You need to frame things in a way that compels action. It needs to feel natural and unforced. A great reference for recruiters is How to Write Copy that Sells by Ray Edwards.
Personalization also depends on your audience. If you’re going after a CFO at a Fortune 500 company, your message should be a little more buttoned-up and professional, but it should still reflect the way you actually speak. If you get on the phone with a candidate and sound very different from your written message, it may come off as disappointing.
Tap into Emotions to Personalize
As humans, we buy emotionally and justify rationally. It’s a common experience to go to a store, fall in love with a pair of shoes, drop $500 on them, and then go home and wonder why you paid that much. It’s precisely because of that emotional attachment. It’s because we looked damn good in those shoes—and that’s the emotional response we seek.
Similarly, candidates will buy into a position emotionally and justify the change later. All too often, recruiters start with the rational: title, compensation, job duties, etc. Marketers, on the other hand, know to start with emotions. They’ve been doing it for years. It’s how Apple gets us to spend $1,200 on the new iPhone®. It places the product in the frame of “why” we should buy it, not “what” we should buy.
Apple sells us on changing the status quo, being different, and challenging the industry. As a result, customers feel they are actually cooler because they have an iPhone. It’s tied to our emotion, not practicality. Otherwise, we’d buy the cheaper Android.
When it comes to recruiting, the traditional approach is to be practical and start with the job description. But what if you started instead with something like, “Hey, I know the pain you’re feeling in this role because in most organizations, technology and digital marketing are separate, and it raises the following issues …”?
This approach identifies the pain points that an individual is feeling and aims to help solve them. There is no discussion of the nuts and bolts of the job. Instead, it focuses on the context of what’s going on in the industry and the position.
The change in approach is about changing how you position the opportunity. As a recruiter, you’re trying to sell all kinds of jobs. You want to know what makes candidates tick and what pains they are feeling so you can discover their emotional drivers. You don’t want to come across as a used-car salesman and convince people they have problems that they don’t. Instead, you want them to agree on problems that already exist and try to address those problems. These problems usually start with emotion and end with a practical action.
Start with People
Recruiters must start with people, identify the industry problem that everybody recognizes, and then identify the pains or emotions attached to that problem. After that, think about the ripple effect because of that problem. What other issues does the problem potentially cause? Try to find out ways that these pain points can be resolved, and consider the possibility of certain solutions. Don’t say your position is the solution; ask the candidate to consider the possibility that there is a solution.
When we identify possible solutions, we appeal to the emotional side, the pleasure—again, this is because we buy in emotionally and justify rationally. After addressing the candidate’s need for pleasure, paint a path to this potential pleasure through conversation about a particular organization or position.
It’s never easy for someone to change jobs or think about the practical aspects of employment, which is why we must first uncover the candidate’s emotional drivers and then present the opportunity in a way that addresses those emotions. By taking a personalized approach that shows you understand their issues, you’ll increase your chances of connecting with the best candidates.
This article was adapted from the book Recruiting Sucks…But It Doesn’t Have To.
| Steve Lowisz is a recruiting industry veteran and talent optimization guru with more than 2 decades of experience helping companies find and unlock the performance of their teams. He is an expert on talent acquisition, talent assessment, talent engagement, diversity and inclusion, and business performance, which has allowed him to serve hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals across the globe.
As the CEO and founder of the Qualigence Group of Companies, Lowisz regularly contributes to industry events and publications and has been featured in Fortune magazine, CNN Money, and the Detroit Free Press, as well as on Bloomberg Radio. |