Post, Source, and Amplify
Overview
You’ve gone through the planning phase and now you’re getting ready to make the job announcement available to the public. Attracting highly qualified talent for digital service teams requires more than simply posting a role on your organization's careers website. To maximize exposure to qualified candidates, it has become increasingly important to leverage internal and external channels to reach your target talent pool.
Build and Publish the Job Announcement
A job announcement should succinctly outline the role, use engaging and inclusive language, and adhere to legal employment standards. A job announcement becomes more compelling to a candidate when it clearly articulates the value and impact of the role, demonstrates potential for growth opportunities, and reflects organizational values that align with their personal values and professional goals.
The Job Announcement Examples page has government examples that can be referenced
Compelling and effective job announcements should aim to achieve the following:
Provide Clarity: It not only articulates the role’s duties and expectations, it also highlights unique benefits and career growth opportunities.
Highlight Impact: It conveys the significance and potential impact of the role within the organization, emphasizing how the position contributes to overall success and mission fulfillment.
Meet Legal Standards: It complies with employment laws and regulations, reducing risk and ensuring fairness in recruitment practices.
Utilizing inclusive language
Job announcements should aim to use inclusive language that deliberately avoids terms that may infer bias or unintentionally deter highly qualified applicants from applying. There are several paid and free tools available in the marketplace that will assess your job descriptions for inclusive language and/or bias.
Sourcing and Active Recruiting
A well crafted recruitment strategy can level up your approach to hiring by expanding the potential talent pool to a wider, more diverse audience. This can help greatly improve the overall quality of the applicant pool and become an additional competitive edge in securing top talent.
Candidate sourcing is an important element in a proactive recruitment strategy. It involves establishing and implementing a plan for researching, identifying and contacting potential candidates who have the specific skills and desired experience needed for a role.
Sourcing without Recruiters
Teams without dedicated Talent and/or Recruiting teams can organize group activities with current staff or procure support from an external vendor to bolster sourcing and recruitment efforts. Activities you can try with current staff include:
Sourcing Jams - A focused event or activity where team members assemble for a set period of time with the goal of identifying/uncovering as many potential qualified leads as possible for a given opening, usually a particularly challenging role to fill.
Network culling - Similar to a sourcing jam, except team members are individually asked to cull through their own professional networks (LinkedIn, etc) to identify potential qualified leads.
Networking via niche platforms - i.e. joining specific Slack communities or Reddit communities (r/techjobs) to promote job postings and engage with job seekers.
Engaging with potential candidates
First impressions can make or break the connection when reaching out to passive candidates. Any outreach to potential candidates should be done in a friendly, respectful, succinct, and to-the-point manner. Outreach can be done any number of ways, but is most typically via email or social media.
Messages to candidates should be personalized (don’t spam/bulk send), relevant, and should speak to not just the opening you are trying to fill, but the mission of the organization and/or a clear picture of how the opening fits into that picture. In-demand talent are typically receiving multiple emails per day from recruiters, so it is important to try to create a unique and engaging approach.
Outreach can be done by those who have a direct personal or professional connection. Alternatively, Hiring Managers or those designated to manage candidate outreach can also be good options.
Employee Referrals
Many government agencies establish referral bonus programs to recruit highly qualified talent for “hard to fill”, mission critical and high value positions.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), states that “a referral bonus is an award given to an employee who helps the agency recruit new talent by referring someone for an advertised, hard-to-fill vacancy. A referral bonus may be paid after that person is hired by the agency and performs successfully in the job.” Referrals should be required to complete the exact same hiring process as all other candidates.
Important questions to ponder when considering using referral mechanisms:
What is our process for employees or other stakeholders to submit referrals?
Is there a clear, user-friendly mechanism in place, and are there any incentives for successful referrals?
If formal referral programs are not available, do we have content we can provide to employees to voluntarily share with their networks?
Key Information to Develop a Recruitment & Amplification Strategy
Use the questions in the chart below to start gathering the key information that will be used in developing and delivering on your recruitment and amplification strategy.
Internal Visibility
Are we ensuring that the job posting is accessible to current employees? Where are you making it available internally, and have we ensured that all internal channels (e.g., intranet, internal job boards) are updated?
Career Landing Page
External Platforms
On which external platforms or job boards will we be posting the job? Are these platforms relevant to the specific role and industry?
Social Media
Referral Mechanisms
Does our agency offer a referral bonus award program? What is the process for submitting a referral?
ListServes and email Groups
Do members of our hiring team have access to ListServes or email groups (example: college alumni associations) that include talent we’d like to attract? If yes, would they be willing to share the announcement with those communities?
Proactive Candidate Search
Recruitment Partnerships
Have we considered or already engaged private or public sector organizations who are experts in recruiting for digital service teams? If so, have we provided them with clear criteria, expectations, and our unique value proposition to share with potential candidates?
Vendor Collaboration
Are we collaborating with any vendors or third-party platforms to boost the visibility of the job posting or for any recruitment-related services?
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