Who do you think you are?
Positioning in recruitment
Positioning is a strategic marketing activity that creates an image of your business in the market relative to your competitors.
The classic recruitment one is “Why would you use a Reliant Robin of a local agency when you can use the Rolls Royce that is Bircham Wyatt Recruitment, snort”.
Feel free to fire me if you catch me using that line.
Positioning defines how you market yourself, with activities such as target market analysis, competitor analysis, USP, your elevator pitch, and how you consistently market yourself across all channels.
And it’s a fundamental activity in how you recruit.
Recruitment positioning is a little different from marketing, although it has many of the same principles – I’ll show why that difference matters later.
Without a clear position, you can’t effectively differentiate yourself as an employer, you can’t accurately define what good is candidates, you can’t craft effective recruitment messaging or what value you offer as an employer.
None of these are deal breakers - you might fill your jobs just fine without them.
But they will hold you back.
Ironically many employers have the answers stuck in their heads and don’t communicate them.
I don’t know about you but my mind-reading skills really took a dive after the Covid jab.
How do you safely extract these principles out of your brain box and in a format that makes sense to others?
Conversation is the simplest way to find the answers, and typically they stem from straightforward questions I ask in my consultation process:
How do your team describe your culture?
What’s it like to work there?
Why do you work there? What drives you?
Why did you start your business?
What problems does your output solve?
Why would someone buy your product over a competitor’s?
What’s this role actually all about then?
What outcomes are you aiming for?
How does that reflect a realistic requirement?
What kind of people succeed at ABC corp?
What are their common values and behaviours?
Why wouldn’t people succeed?
How does this all compare with other employers who ostensibly do similar things, but from different positions?
It’s contextual and your questions may vary.
That last question is really important because it helps define what good is. It’s likely you won’t have the answer to this yourself, but finding out the forms and functions of similar companies will help differentiate who might be successful and who won’t.
For example, if you’re a start-up Tech company, you might be drawn to an exec who’s succeeded while working at the jewel in the crown of your industry.
However, while the skills, attitudes and values might be the same, an incongruous position might rule them out.
What system of work do they have? How specific is their mandate? Who supports their success? What about the systems and processes they work to?
All these things together might mean what appears a great hire is the wrong one.
If their success comes from a team of 40, in a highly structured and systemised business – why would that transfer into the multi-hat-wearing ambiguous chaos of start-ups?
Would they even enjoy moving across?
It might be the right hire – but drilling deep with the right questions and establishing how positions compare is a critical part of a key hire.
Your position as an employer and theirs as a candidate should suitably complement each other.
I’ll use a recent conversation with a top bloke and content creator as an example of why positioning is important in recruitment.
He writes great LinkedIn content, with a huge following. Recently he posted about a new role in his small team, rightly taking the mickey out of the standard form of announcing a vacancy while directing readers to the full advert.
Everyone reading the post said ‘What a great advert!”, because the post was well written and he is highly regarded. Billions of likes. None of the readers were viable candidates though, just fans.
I DM’d him saying there were a couple of practical issues he should fix. One was that he wanted something akin to a high performing rockstar, on a salary of £22k to £25k.
Bear in mind the lower end is a smidge above the national living wage and will soon be overtaken by inflation.
I highlighted the national average for his role was £35k.
To which he replied ‘This is an entry-level role, and I will train them fully up to speed. It’s capability I want, not experience. We also offer <unusual benefit> which no one else does in our space’.
Yet none of this is in his advert. Simple information that positions his role for the right person – who would know?
It’s entirely possible he’ll fill his role anyway. His social capital is such that those who can afford his salary may apply without knowing what’s really in it for them.
But that’s not how I’d advertise his role. I’d position it for the right audience, on the basis they might rely only on the content of an advert.
His marketing position is excellent. His recruitment position works against him.
Align your position to your target audience and you’ll solve part of the puzzle that is recruitment.
The next issue is on continuous improvement in recruitment, and how you can work iteratively to always get better.
Regards,
Greg
P.s While you are here, if you like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services:
- Go-to-Market, operational and technical key hire recruitment. 100% fill rate, 4 year average retention, and regular feed back they deliver.
- manage part or all of your recruitment on an individually designed basis for one client. Get access to an expert recruiter without the cost of a full-time hire. Save money, save time, and hire better candidates
- recruitment coaching and mentoring
- recruitment strategy setting
- outplacement support
Email me at greg.wyatt@bwrecruitment.co.uk if you're curious how I can help.