How To Tailor Your Business’s Communication Strategy To Meet Job Seekers’ Needs

Communicating your message depends on a lot of things: the delivery method, the target audience, the end goal, and of course, the message itself. Whether it’s giving a speech or reaching out to candidates, how you say something is just as important as what you say, even if it’s to tell them “no.”

In the field of recruiting specifically, how long it takes you to say something can make all the difference. As the CEO of a marketing and advertising firm that helps companies tailor their employment brand and recruiting messaging to find top talent, I know how a communication strategy can make or break a job search, an encounter with a colleague, or even a client interaction.

Take the following three situations, for example:

Missed Employment Connections

A young man applies for several jobs on a local job board. He’s just graduated from college and is in a hurry to get his first job, but he doesn’t hear from any of the companies to which he’s applied. Discouraged, he takes the first offer he gets, for $10,000 less than he had been hoping. Two months into his new position, he begins receiving letters from the other companies he applied to, two of which inform him he was not suitable, and four asking him to give their recruiter a call.

A middle-aged woman has been seeking employment for four months. In a last-ditch effort to locate a position, she shows up at the office to personally drop off her application and resume. The receptionist takes the resume right as the recruiter walks by. The recruiter, busy and about to take her lunch, is put off by the woman’s intrusion and never follows up on the resume.

Lastly, a capable HR representative for a small manufacturing plant needs to hire a vice president of sales. Her boss keeps changing the requirements and salary for the position, forcing her to put potential candidates who have interviewed for the position in a holding pattern. One candidate calls her three times a day to get an update on the position. His persistence eventually wears her patience thin and she decides not to pursue the candidate due to “cultural fit.”

Read: Build an Internship Program That Actually Benefits Your Business

What Went Wrong?

These are all real situations that I have encountered in the last quarter. In all of these cases, the question of whether or not the candidate was capable or qualified never even came up because communication between the applicant and employer was so flawed. Messaging, timing and delivery on both sides did not match what the other expected, and in every case, it turned out poorly for one party.

In the first case, the job seeker had every right to expect an electronic response regarding the status of his applications. The responses he received, by and large, did not align with his initial expectations of the companies. Because of his assumption that recruiters and HR pros would respond with some sense of urgency, he decided to go with one company over the others.

In the example of the woman who dropped by, her mistake was assuming that her eagerness would be read as a positive, instead of as an intrusion on an already busy day. In this case, she did not get the job because she didn’t tailor her message properly, nor did she pay attention to her timing or delivery.

In our final example, a lack of preparation on the company’s part brings out the worst in an otherwise capable candidate. He was interviewed, so he must have some of the desired qualities. However, in his persistence beyond the reasonable or comfortable, his resume immediately went from the desk to the wastebasket in the company’s search for an executive with a sense of boundaries. Both parties failed in their attempts to communicate.

Finish reading the rest of this article on Forbes.

Maren Hogan

Maren Hogan is CEO of Red Branch and general Bad@$$

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry. Maren started Red Branch Media and, before she hired all the smiling faces you see below, she ran it on her own. In marketing for over 15 years, she has deep experience in strategic campaigns and a long-term, results-based operational approach.