You probably think you know what you want when it comes to your ideal team members, but have you ever taken the time to actually document it? Let’s stop thinking and start doing so you can finally surround yourself with the people who can help you 10X your business.
At the end of the day, when it comes to hiring good employees, you have to be perfectly clear — with yourself and in your job post — about what it is that you want. You need to write down the exact things that you’re looking for. If you don’t take the time to do this, well, you’re not gonna get what you want. Period.
What do I do to clarify what I want, set expectations, and create a framework for my ideal candidate? No matter what the role is, I create a job post checklist. No fluff. No job technicalities. Just the essentials. You certainly can tailor this content to reflect your own business’s image, but with each addition I would challenge you to reflect and ask yourself, “Why?” “Why is it important to add this?”
We’ve hired an incredible team and have amassed a fast-growing network of members based on this technique. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it is proven to be effective — partially out of trial and error, and partially out of using data that is already out there.
According to Inc., the five most important considerations candidates make when considering job offers (your goal is to find someone you want to make an offer to, right?) are, as follows:
- Salary and compensation
- Career growth opportunities
- Work-life balance
- Location and commute
- Company culture and values
If you’re not including details that pertain to the above, then you’re not including information that your candidates care most about. And if we’re going to create an effective job post, then we need to think about mindset. Yours and that of your ideal candidate. Listen, when you’re writing a job post, you shouldn’t be doing it from the perspective of a hiring manager or a human resources representative, you need to be a marketer! In this instance, your candidates are your potential customers. What are the features, advantages, and benefits of a career in your organization?
Look at competitor job postings. Look at similar job postings across comparable industries. How can you differentiate your organization from the pack to get the best possible talent vying for your attention? How are you speaking to career growth opportunities? You’re reading this because we share an alignment in growing our businesses through growing our people, so clearly spell out how you do that in your job posting.
So, for the purposes of this checklist exercise, let’s create it based on our wanting to hire a Chief Financial Officer. Here are the exact things I’d include:
Position summary
Three to five sentences outlining the purpose of this role. “This role creates this ideal outcome.” Don’t know this information? Then I’d question why you’re hiring for it in the first place. You’re adding staff to your company because they’re going to create a specific, critical quantifiable value or set of quantifiable values. Set those expectations here.
Company summary
Now, this is more strategic than you might think. We don’t include a summary about Cardone Ventures in order to promote Cardone Ventures. We include our company summary to filter out the candidates that we don’t want while exciting the ones that we do. Seriously. There’s intentionality behind it. We want people who have the same level of ambition, problem solving skills, and thirst for growth that we do.
This portion of the job post should get them researching and absorbing everything they possibly can about the organization so that when I ask them, “What do you know about Cardone Ventures?” they can express their enthusiasm, curiosity, and self-motivation through their answer. If they can’t — and some of them definitely have not — then they’re not the right fit. Use your mission, vision, and values statements to guide you. Be intentional with your words. Filter out the fluff.
Objectives
The objectives outlined in a job posting should give focus to the specific work of a specific role. Each one of these objectives should be built upon him or her achieving certain outcomes based on the departmental goals, and desired team and individual outcomes. This means you not only need to be intentional about the objectives you’re including in the job description, but also in terms of priority. Again, it’s filtering. If the candidate can’t fulfill the first objective, they certainly aren’t going to be able to achieve those that come afterward. You also want this list of objectives to be realistic. Ten to fifteen are likely achievable in a year. Twenty? Twenty five? That’s where things might get unwieldy, and you should consider scaling back.
Competencies
The difference between objectives are competencies? Objectives are things you’re expected to accomplish, whereas competencies are the skills that an employee brings with them to the organization in order to achieve their objectives. An example would be negotiating skills if the role you’re hiring for requires negotiation in order to achieve their objectives. A tip on identifying the competencies that I want is by evaluating some of our negative experiences with team members that I’ve ultimately parted ways with. The things they were lacking to get the job done go in the competencies list, and, of course, we prioritize those, too.
Education and experience
The education and experience section is pretty straightforward, and, depending on the type of role you’re hiring for, is only as important as you think it needs to be. At Cardone Ventures, most of the time, we don’t place too much emphasis on education. We’re looking for intelligent, driven people, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone has to have an MBA. It depends on the person.
It depends on the role. It depends on what they have to offer. In some instances, a person with a high school diploma will be more valuable than someone who has finished several degrees. If you’re willing to do the hard work, get the results we need, and keep striving, then that’s what matters most to us.
Physical requirements
This is even more straightforward than the education and experience piece. Is this person in this role going to be sitting at their desk all day long? Will they be on their feet? What are their travel requirements? What are the physical requirements needed to do the job that’s being advertised?
Commitment to diversity
I can’t overstate the importance of this section. You need to be explicit that your organization is committed to diversity while actually being committed to diversity. Having a team of people from all different types of backgrounds and viewpoints will help your organization thrive, be stronger, serve a broader base of clients, and be more innovative. It’s just that simple.
Call to action
Of course, any job post — whether you’re using a recruiting platform or your own internal HR team — needs a strong call to action for candidates who are interested in being a part of your organization. But what we like to do is include small details in our job posts that inspire the real go-getters out there to differentiate themselves from the rest of the applicants, to create an opportunity to stand out. Similarly, look for those applicants that are doing something beyond what’s normal, standard practice for applying for a job. Those people that are going against the grain — whether their sending video with their resumes, figuring out how to reach out directly hiring managers and organizational leadership, or flexing their worth in some other unusual way — are showing you one of their competencies. Pay attention to these special people.
At Cardone Ventures, I add the following statement to every job post: “If this position caught your eye, send us your resume! For best consideration, include the job title and source where you found this position in the subject line of your email to careers@cardoneventures.com. Already a Cardone Ventures candidate? Please connect directly with your recruiter to discuss this opportunity.”
This gives an opportunity for the high performers to self identify. A pro tip: track the source of every hire. Just like client leads, your team leads are important in order for you to get more of the good and less of the bad.
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