Your Weekly Checklist for “The Summer to Evolve” – July 27-31
We talk a lot about reaching “the right candidates at the right time”. And while it takes a strong alignment of people, processes, and technology to make that happen, a HUGE part of hiring the right people starts with targeted audience planning.
Here’s what you need to know to get started targeting qualified, diverse audiences to make your company stronger.
Hot Takes from Week 7 of “The Summer to Evolve” 
- The idea of building a “persona” was invented about 20 years ago by a man named Alan Cooper, an expert in the field of user experience.
- Companies are starting to see success reaching out to people who have responded to articles, blogs, and social media posts. Even though these people haven’t explicitly said they’re looking for a job, they’re often responding to something written for their persona and would be a good fit for your company.
- When it comes to targeted audiences, there are three types of audiences your organization needs to succeed:
- Key Audiences – This audience is made-up of critical, high-volume, and location-based roles your company vitally needs including RNs, pharmacy techs, retail staff, etc.
- Strategic Audiences – These types of audiences can include your diversity and inclusion, executive, military, and veteran candidates.
- Relationship Audiences – These are candidates you already have relationships with like alumni, current employees, referrals, etc.
Once you start to build and understand these audiences, you can start creating personalized content that relates specifically to their motivations, needs, and qualifications.
Top Ways to Get Started with Targeted Audience Planning THIS WEEK
Conduct short interviews or send out surveys to your silver medalist employees to start building strong personas that attract similar candidates.
See if you can discover new or under-explored spaces your target audience spends their time. Do they like to read a certain magazine? Consider placing an ad in it. Do they hang out at specific restaurants or bars? Try posting a sign for a career fair at those locations.
Review your job descriptions and look for opportunities to make the language, qualifications, and requirements more inclusive and keep your target audience in mind.
Top Ways to Get Started with Targeted Audience Planning THIS MONTH
If you aren’t already, start creating short videos that give your audiences a real picture of what it’s like to work at your company. It’s important that diverse audiences can picture themselves working there.
Start developing a mentoring program that matches employees with others within their target audience so they can support one another as individuals and in their career mobility with your company.
Revisit your recruiting metrics and make sure you can track and measure the most important KPIs. Keeping a pulse on these numbers will help you understand if you’re targeting the right people in the right ways:
- Application Rate
- Offer Acceptance Rate
- Time-to-Hire
- Retention
Thanks for joining us for Week 7!
After you’ve spruced up your personas and started engaging with the right targeted audiences, you’ll probably have things like hiring, onboarding, and training on the brain. You’re in luck, because next week, we’re talking about “Offer to Onboard”!