How Do You Attract the Best of the Best?

With the industry in its current growth mode, finding and hiring the right people to join your team is highly critical. How do you make sure you get the employees who best fit your center and positions? Attracting the best candidates means putting out the right words geared towards the right people. Here are ALLIANCE's recommended guidelines for making sure your job ad brings you the best of the best prospects.

The Definitive First Step

Arguably, the most important movement towards getting the right employees in your center is to advertise the available positions. Your ads must attract the right candidates for the job so that you don't have to weed through piles of the wrong peoples' resumes or deal with high turnover later.

Part of the challenge of advertising an available position is that you want to reach the absolute best candidates for the job – not just the best out of whoever is looking for a job. Remember that you want to hire not just skill, but also talent and good attitude. What good is the most skilled candidate if they have a poor attitude that brings down your organization?

Boring Ad? Boring Results.

Putting out the right ad will narrow down your hiring pool to the best candidates – candidates with the not just the right skills, but also the trainability, coachability, emotional intelligence, motivation, and temperament to succeed with your center. Entice the right candidates with the right words. Clearly state the details of what it takes to be successful at your company, being specific about more than just the skill level you are looking for.

Your ad may read something like, "We are currently seeking a center manager with strong sales and customer relations skills. Must be able to work well with both clients and staff. The qualified candidate will be familiar with MS Word and have management experience."

This ad is essentially nondescript. Job seekers will have no idea what the company is like or how it's different from hundreds of other centers. With this kind of ad, you'll recruit candidates of the same caliber – pedestrian and run-of-the-mill and not what you want. Then you'll have the unenviable job of sifting through all said candidates and trying to find the right one for your center.

Know What You Want

When writing your job ad, consider the skills and traits the ideal candidate would have. A center manager at your center might thrive if they are excellent communicators, sensitive to client needs, and highly energetic team players. Conversely, a low performer for this position might be very individualistic and unwilling to get in a lot of face time with prospects and clients.

Knowing this information, you can write an ad using the words and language that will ignite high performer candidates to note the job as something they'd be interested in doing and will discourage low performers from applying.

Writing It Right

Your ad might now read, "Are you looking to be part of a dynamic, high-energy team that works to ensure the satisfaction of our expansive client base? Are you excited about the opportunity to lead a staff to raise revenues and try out innovative practices within the industry? If you have management experience and enjoy using your interpersonal skills to communicate with both staff and clients in a unique and professional environment, we would love to hear from you. The Center Manager position requires sales work, leading our team of excellent center staff, and relating to clients on a daily basis. Our team-based culture and strong client focus make our company an exciting place to work."

With this ad, you will effectively turn off individuals who aren't who you're looking for. Your hiring pool will actually be one of candidates you really want to talk to and are excited about. Finding high performers to fill positions at your centers will make your job easier.

ABCN's Exclusive Jobline

Only ALLIANCE offers you our exclusive Jobline, which you can access by logging in to the Member Portal. The ABCN Jobline is the best way to tap into candidates who have the experience and skills you need for your center to succeed! Members of the ALLIANCE NETWORK may use this site find candidates you'd like to consider adding as a part of your team. Members can post job openings at your ALLIANCE center and search resumes to find your next great employee! Please click here to visit the Jobline.