Want to Know How to Create the Ideal Candidate Profile? Here’s How!

There is undeniable pressure to find the ideal candidates to fill the job openings you have available. In the last few years, this has become undeniably more difficult. At the end of July, over 10.9 million companies had job openings. This record high number should make you realize just how hard it is to attract the right employees.

It’s no longer enough to post general job descriptions with little or no information and expect many applicants because it will not happen. Instead of reading through countless resumes and relying on your gut feelings, you need to optimize your time and utilize candidate recruitment services to help you create an ideal candidate profile to help you find the right person for the job. 

In order to draw suitable applicants, you’re going to need to have excellent candidate profiles. This is much easier said than done, especially if it’s your first time doing it. In order to create the most eye-catching profiles, you need to collect information about the job opening, find what sets traits the employees have that stay, and then put together the candidate profile based on this information. If it sounds like it can be time-consuming, it is. But in the long run, putting the time into finding the correct type of employee will save you time and money.  

Below we have put together the steps in creating the ideal candidate profile. If you want to stop hiring the wrong employees and start hiring the right ones, then keep reading. 

Gather Data About the Job Opening

This is best done with your hiring team to save time. You and your team should gather all the available information, including the skills you need and the skills you want. You can narrow this information down later. This step should only be about facts and not about your gut feelings. 

Ask yourself the following questions.

• What are the primary duties of the position? For example, if you hire an app designer, their primary responsibilities will be creating, maintaining, and implementing source code.    
• What essential requirements are needed to do the job, and what qualities would you like to see. Sticking with the example of something necessary for an app developer is they must be good at math, and a quality you may want is they are likeable. 
• Why would someone want to work for your company? Maybe you hire within the company, or perhaps you offer an excellent benefits package. 

Develop Your Culture Profile

The best people to ask about the companies culture and vision is to ask the hiring team or the employees. They are the ones that’ll know what personality traits will fit in the best with the team and those that won’t. They will then have to determine what type of characteristics would help advance the company. 

Some questions you want to ask your team is

• The character traits best fit into the team
• What skills do they need to have
• What their primary motivation should be
• How would you describe the work environment

List Required Hard And Soft Skills

Hard skills can be taught, while soft skills are typically not easily taught. Hard skills increase as you learn on the job. For example, if you work in the digital marketing field, your skill improves with practice. Soft skills, on the other hand, are considered qualities such as personality characteristics. An example of this is someone who doesn’t have good people skills… they probably wouldn’t be the ideal candidate to work with the public. 

Now that you have created a list of essential hard skills, you need to separate them into different categories. Separate the hard skills into piles first; the must-have and teachable skills. This is crucial to building an ideal candidate profile. Those that are teachable, are skills that you want.

Once you’ve separated the hard skills, you need to do the same with the soft skills. Soft skills are likely unteachable, so you need to be selective when choosing these. You’ll use the soft skills when you’re writing your job post and during the interview. 

Put Together Your Candidate Profile

Now that you have all of the information, you need to gather it all and create your ideal candidate profile. Remember, your end goal is to hire someone who will be a good fit for your company and help fulfill your company’s goals. You need to make sure that instead of focusing on the job description, focus on the type of individual you want to hire. 

You can post your candidate profile on your website or wherever else you advertise for qualified candidates. This simple step will help you to limit the number of resumes you receive filtering out individuals unsuitable. Finally, you can use this profile during your interview process.  

Cover Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels