How to sell a job advertisement more effectively...

To persuade someone is to give them a reason or an incentive, or to induce a mood, in order to change what they think or feel. But how we would able to persuade a job candidate to choose us through the clutter of job advertisements?

As I stated in my previous post, a job can be considered as a product. Treating the job as a product can help hiring managers to market the product in a more effective way to attract suitable candidates. A good salesperson (whether it is internal HR or external recruiters) need to design the product not only to find a right candidates, but also to positively influence their attitude, so they will stay with the company for a longer period of time.

Following points need to be considered to design a job adv to attract customers, but more importantly make them to be your loyal customers.

Define your target market

If you clarify characteristics of your target market (age, lifestyle and etc...), then you can customize the message to the targeted group in a more effective way. Try to be as specific as possible. 

Clarify the unique product features  

Perhaps, a sound understanding of your competitors’ offerings can help you in this context. You should differentiate your offering from competitors’. It could be through emphasizing the company’s culture, offering distinctive benefits, or the way you structure the job advertisement.   

Communicate effectively

To communicate effectively, you need to paint a realistic and accurate image from your company, and the benefits you are offering to the customers. An example of inaccurate information is the potential salary income up to xxx$ which advertise by some companies. It raises the candidates’ expectations. The job candidates would also form a negative attitude towards the company, once they realized the suggested salary is hardly achievable. The ultimate goal is to create a realistic and  accurate picture of workplace, a role overview and benefits in candidate’s mind, so they would be able to make an informed decision.

Consistent connection with target audience

Applying for a job may be seconds for a person who is actively looking for a job, or years for an employed person who doesn’t get what he wants from his existing employer. There are a significant number of people who are not actively seeking a job, but they would do at some point in the future. So you need to find a way to connect with them. It can be through a website where job candidates can register their interests, or through social media where they can keep updated regarding job openings and news.

I would like to take the chance to thank Tony Wiggins (Director Organizational Development at QLD Health), Morgan Stewart (Group People & Learning Manager at Dooleys Lidcombe Catholic Club Ltd), Khalifa Ahmad (International Relations graduate from Griffith University) and Ada So (MKT graduate from Griffith university), for becoming a fan of the blog. Thank you. 

How to deal with difficult people?

A.    Communicate effectively: The most important thing is to communicate effectively with difficult people. There are 5 critical points that I will mention below. I also named the model “OPENS” so you can remember it easier. I’m probably ready to participate in the “letters and numbers” game show. Ok. Enjoy reading it and don’t forget to share it with a person who needs it.

1.      Be Objective: You need to use objective language when you are addressing the issue. You can find a difference between objective and subjective language by looking at following example:

Subjective: your behaviour is annoying. Objective: You interrupt your team mate when they are talking.

2.      Positive language: You need to address the issue in a positive way. It can help to cool off the situation and make discussions more productive. Here is an example of the difference between Charged language and positive one:

Charged language: You must stop being a bitter enemy. Positive language: You need to build a strong working relationship.

3.      Use examples: Remember, the person’s behaviour is obvious for you and may be others but not for the person himself. It is not unusual if the person tells you, "what are you talking about?". So to deliver your message more effectively, you need to use some examples. To do so, you need to have a good recording skill. Record what you observe. Here is an example of using example in discussion:

Yesterday, at the managers’ meeting, you answered your mobile and interrupted the speakers three times.

4.      Nonverbal language: You need to be aware of nonverbal signals from the person. Sometimes, we see but we don’t observe. This might cause some misunderstanding. The good communicator has a good ability to read others nonverbal language.

You need to be aware your own nonverbal language. In fact, we form our impressions of others and interpret ambiguous messages in a rough ratio of 7% from actual words, 38% from tone of voice, and 55% from nonverbal communication (body language, dress, grooming). So what you need to focus more on is tone of your voice and your nonverbal signals. I’ll address this issue in details later in the blog. 

5.      Be specific and accurate: Sometimes, we exaggerate things to make our points but the points might be lost in the shadow of exaggerations. Consider the above example, you would say: The other day, you answered your mobile and interrupted the speakers about 10 times. Being accurate can foster trust and motivate others to change their behaviour.

B.     Be confident:  It is evident that human being is the most intellectual being ever walked on the earth; however our behaviours sometimes are based on very basic “hunter and prey” theory. Simmilar to animal predators who cull the weakest prey to hunt, difficult people look for a weak people or weakness in you to be dominant. So the key element is to be confident.

C.     Learn a lesson: Imagine you have a team assignment and one of your team members is a difficult person.  You've never faced with this type of difficult individual before and don’t have experience how to deal with him/her. Anyway, she/he would negatively affect the final team performance. You are very angry and blame yourself why things went this way. Here, my advice is to stop blaming yourself. Instead you can consider this experience as an opportunity to learn new things. You should be thankful that the difficult person motivated you to become a better and more knowledgeable person.

D.     Treat them like they are your customers: This is good strategy to deal with difficult people even if he/she is your co-worker, subordinate or boss, try to treat them as they are your customers. We usually put our feet in customers’ shoes to understand them better. This can be done in related to other people as well. I believe this attitude can help you to deal with them in a more effective way.

E.     Be professional: If you think talking behind the person makes you feel better. First of all, more you talk about sometime, more you notice it. Secondly,  it just makes things more complicated as difficult person might talk against you as well. Remember, they are more experience and some of them have played this game for ages, so playing their game is not a smart move. However, you can talk face to face with the person, in a very respectful and confident manner to solve the problem. 

 

F.      Focus on action not attitude: It would be better to focus on people’s actions rather than their attitudes. Don’t worry if your team member or employee is not the loveliest person in the world. If he/she delivers great customer service or submit her/his assignment on time, that’s what you need to count. 

Applying marketing concepts to enhance HR services

Using marketing techniques to implement HR services more effectively:

Nowadays, one of the main concerns of companies is to differentiate their products and services from those of competitors. From the HR point of view, the products can be considered as services offered by HR department to employees. In fact, firms can apply marketing concepts and techniques to offer distinctive services to employees. I will briefly elaborate marketing concepts and techniques that can be used by HR practitioner to achieve this objective.  

Marketing mix

Many of us are familiar with concept of “Marketing Mix”. This concept is often used to evaluate the external marketing strategy. Interestingly, Marketing Mix concept can be used by HR people to evaluate all aspects of the HR plan implementation. I will explain the 7Ps Model (Product, Price, Process, Promotion, Participants, Physical evidence, Place)  and demonstrate how they can be used to identify, evaluate and integrate HR services.

Product

Products are the HR department’s offerings. In the strategic level, product can be the corporate‘s vision or at the tactical level, competencies and attributes needed to implement the strategy can be considered as a product. Other services such as training courses or new performance measure are HR products as well. At the very fundamental level, the jobs are themselves are HR products. Designing the jobs is so important to improve employee’s motivation and productivity. Treating jobs as products can help HR people to market the product in more effective way to attract talented employees.

Price

Price refers to actual costs of implementing of the new offerings and psychological costs of adopting of the offerings (e.g. opportunity costs). The psychological costs are difficult to measure because employees may tent to overestimate the costs and resist changes.

Process

Process refers to how employees receive a product. The question is how the offerings are delivered to employees. In fact, the entire supply chain process should be examined. For example, the supplier of new policies might be government or new policies may introduce through negotiations with unions and so on.

Promotion

All the promotional activities such as incentives, magazine, advertising, face to face presentation to individuals or groups can be used to promote the offerings.

Participants

Participants refer to both those who are involved in delivering the offerings and also those receiving it. For example, employees, line managers, top managers.

Physical evidence

It refers to the environment in which the offering is delivered and also tangible goods such as memos, manuals.

Place

It refers to the channels (or third parties) that are used to get products to employees. For instance, place could mean meetings, conferences, etc. where policies are announced and also channels can refer to third parties (for example, consultants and training agencies) used to deliver the offerings.

Market research

One the most important element in implementation of HR services is to assess employees’ needs and monitor the impact of the HR policies on them.  Employee attitude surveys are the most common type of market research which date back to the 1930s, when the National Institute of Industrial Psychology in UK started using them to study labour turnover, but nowadays are used for a wide range of issues, including attitudes held on supervision, remuneration, working conditions, specific personnel practices, incentive schemes and so forth. For example, the Gallup 12 questions survey or Sear’s 10 questions survey can be used to measure the employees’ mindset. Unfortunately, the importance of market research is often underestimated by HR practitioners. It is estimated that only 10 percent of firms invest in market research.

Market segmentation

Market segmentation is a process in which the HR people group employees based on their similar characteristics, needs and wants.

Positioning

Internal positioning involves providing an appropriate mix of differentiated benefits to a specific employee segment that will motivate it to achieve effective implementation of marketing and other strategies (Ahmed & Refiq 2003, p.27).

I would suggest 2 steps to position the HR offerings:

1-    How are competitive offerings positions?

Beside, popular benchmarking ad using best practices, I would suggest to use a perceptual map or snake diagram to ease the comparison.

2-    How should our offerings be positioned?

The aforesaid market research can be used to understand what image a new offering should have in the eyes of employees and what messages will effectively support this image.