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Candidates Persona - Go Beyond the Job Description

Today's talent selection comes with a number of challenges such as attracting the right professional, having a more diverse organization, and lastly, doing it quickly by involving all stakeholders in the process.

For example, the software industry employs around 120,000 professionals in Argentina and according to OPSSI (Argentina’s Software Industry Observatory) data, the turnover rate of professionals in the sector in 2019 alone was more than 30%. In this scenario, choosing the right talent is essential.

However, to attract more professionals it is not enough just to generate a detailed Job Description or to promise a large economic offer. On the contrary, it is essential to know who we are addressing, to develop a profile of our ideal candidate and to concentrate all our efforts on speaking to that PERSON.

Now, how to do it correctly? Here are some techniques popularized by the Design Thinking method for the selection of professionals that can help not only to choose the right person for a search, but also to share your vision and to align teams.

Candidate Persona

The Candidate Persona method is a variation of the Buyer Personas technique from Marketing, which allows modeling users based on the description of their characteristics and demographics. It takes into account different parameters such as your goals, frustrations, competencies, skills, experience with technology or context.

We are probably already using this technique for our interaction intuitively and without knowing it. And this is so because we communicate and relate to mental models formed from our previous experience. By describing a person we are providing information. In this way, that person will be representative of a certain universe or group, in short, an archetype.

Many times as recruiters we only follow the technical specification of the Job Description, neglecting what our external or internal client wants for that position. That is why it is important to remember that this search generally goes far beyond mere technical skills. It covers attitudes, ways of communicating and non-technical skills to take into account.

Benefits of creating a PERSON for our search

1. Generate more attractive and effective job descriptions.

2. Understand which communication channels work best for each ideal candidate.

3. Align the selection strategies with the vision and mission of the team.

4. Optimize the experience and perception of the candidate with the company.

What should we take into account to implement this strategy?

There are thousands of formats and templates to develop this technique. In the first place, we will put into our Candidate Persona the personality, interests, skills and technical abilities data and also the reasons why he/she would choose our project and company. It is also important to give that archetype a name.

Research is key in this process: knowing about their life beyond work, knowing their tastes, affinities, hobbies, personal goals. But be careful! It is important to clarify that the objective is not to include all potential candidates with this representation, but rather, to focus on the needs of the most important groups.

Conclusion

In an industry where the main capital is talent, the use of work tools and frameworks from other verticals (such as Design Thinking and agile methodologies) are a key and differential value in order to reach the right professionals and achieve a culture solid in our organization.