Successful Hiring Framework

Whenever I have a client, or even any HR professional come to me and ask me to help improve their hiring process, I give them this super effective 6 Step Hiring Framework. I don't know if you've noticed, but I have quite a few frameworks I like to implement into hiring processes but this particular framework I can't quite claim as my own. In fact, it's not even technically a hiring framework, it's a 6 step process that I stole from marketing.

So, you're probably wondering what on earth hiring has to do with marketing? Well let me give you a little background on me first, and then I'll tell you why the two are actually more alike than you think.

If you've been here for a while you know that I didn't get my start in HR. I originally entered the business world by means of accounting. From there I went on to get my MBA, and it was in that time that I really found my love of marketing. To this day I would consider myself a marketing guy first, and a hiring guru second. Luckily for me, I've discovered that the two are pretty similar.

So, in today's video we're going to walk through how I, as a marketer, would approach hiring.

Video: The Framework for a Successful Hiring Strategy

6 Step Hiring Framework

1. Define your target hiring audience.

This is super important, hence it's the first step in the equation of successful hiring. If you're trying to be everything to everyone, you're going to be no one to all of them. Really take some time to find your target audience and then go one step further and segment that target. Look at your hiring process and build out segments so well that you can put on their lens and see how they'll view the hiring process.

2. Figure out what job seekers are looking for.

To do this, I usually take the segments from Step 1 and build out a job seeker persona for them. A job seeker persona is a lay out or an outline for what they're looking for in a job. We want to take this persona and get to know everything about them. What are these job seekers looking for in a job? Why do they work? What do they like doing? What is it that they are earning the money for? What type of company are they looking for? What are their goals in life, what are their goals in their career?

3. Why choose us to work for?

Why would the job seeker (personas from Step 2) want to work for you? I call this the product. Ask yourself, what is the job opportunity or what is it like working at your company? If your personas don't match up well with the product, then your target audience is not going to want the job you're hiring for.

4. How are job seekers going to hear about it?

Now that we know what the product is, it's time for you to figure out how they're going to hear about it. You'll want to be sure you're tracking source per hire in this instance. If you have questions about what exactly that metric is and why you should be tracking it check out our source of hire video.

When it comes to advertising for the job, you need to start thinking about where these job seekers are at? What are they looking at? How are they going to hear about the job? What type of language do they use when they're searching for jobs? What are the job keywords they're looking for?

5. What's the job ad or the content?

When the job seeker - aka that target audience we talked about earlier - does come across the job ad what are they going to read? Does it speak to them? Does it make them want to apply for the job? The goal here is to create a job ad that makes them say "Wow this sounds like the perfect job opportunity for me!"

6. How and where do they apply for the job?

In marketing we call this the "call to action", which is basically outlining the next steps this person should take. In this case, you'll want them to apply for the job. But how do you get them to apply? Make it easy. Use a job board profile. Walking into the store? Have them text a number and send a text back letting them know how to apply. Are they hearing about the job from a friend? Refer them to the right page that will track the employee referral source back to the friend who originally referred them.

Now here comes the tricky part: You're going to want to walk through these last four steps for each one of the personas that you created in Step 2. Each of these personas will be a little different meaning you'll have different answers for each of the last four steps.

Once you've completed this framework, put it to the test and start advertising your jobs! Let me know how this plan worked for your company, or what changes you made to make it successful. Happy Hiring!