Creating Personas is a game that we’ve all played during our childhood and enjoyed it and we’re quite good at it. If we’re being completely honest when we’re creating JDs it requires creativity and skill that needs to be acquired if you don’t have it already.  Don’t you agree?

While we’re creating JDs we need to ensure that we catch the desired applicants with the right calibre. Hence our popular Wednesday discussion focussed on, “Creating Candidate Personas on two point’s i.e. –

1. What aspects should be considered when Creating Candidate Personas?
2. How important is Creating Candidate Personas before starting a search?

As suggested by our Bangalore Group member Manav and here’s what we came across…

Based on the discussion above we can say that the task of creating Candidate Personas just became a lot easier as the pointers that need consideration and its importance have been highlighted. But let’s make it even easier to create Candidate Personas by outlining the key guidelines for you…

Guidelines to creating Candidate Personas

• Focus on details like experience, negotiable skills and culture fit
• Pay attention to the important aspects of the role such as tech skills vs people skills, learning adaptability, agile culture vs process oriented
• Candidate personas to be created as per organizational culture and assess the “whys” from the candidate’s perspective
• Fill out the key responsibilities of the role to gain a clear idea of what the position entails
• Maintain a checklist to find out what to shoot for and how to engage a candidate
• With the help of a checklist you’ll know what approach to follow i.e. a Social Network or to revert to old school cold calling
• Be sure to carry out your own research and document your ideal candidate extensively
• With the help of your research and documentation will help you gain surety of what you’re looking for
• Ensure that the personas you are documenting are constantly evolving
• Make sure you change the Persona if required  when you interview people

Challenge

• Creating candidate personas from an agency point of view is difficult as agencies have a translucent view of how an organization functions

Solution

• Spend time with the agency explaining about the company
• Get insider information by talking to candidates that are already inside the client system

Importance of creating Candidate Personas before Sourcing

• Creating Personas is important in order to target the right audience
• Get detailed information from the right decision makers and avoid assuming things
• Ask relevant questions at the start of the assignments and posts that start the search
• Give the candidate persona and a sample profile to the customer to save time and gain a clear understanding of what is required.

Well there you have it all the information you’d require when creating a candidate persona and why it’s important to create the persona before Sourcing for Talent with the desired calibre. If you’ve found this information relevant and if your queries about the topic at hand have been resolved then be sure to leave your views in the comments section.

If you’d like to know more and be updated with the current trends followed in the Talent Acquisition sphere then join the WhatsApp discussions and to add to your knowledge be sure to follow us @SourcingAdda.