Today’s guest blogger is Nicholas Hutchison, our membership marketing associate. Thanks for the timely topic, Nick!
In my consumer behavior class, we have been covering the ever-shrinking attention span and how it affects conversion ratios. If you had to guess how long you had someone’s attention for, what would your number be in seconds? I’ve heard guesses of 30 seconds and I’ve heard guesses of 3 seconds. It truly depends on the reader, but studies show that the average attention span for humans is now 8 seconds. My question to you is, what are you doing as a recruiter or hiring manager to maximize those 8 seconds. If you haven’t thought about it then ask yourself these questions:
What are my goals when I get a candidate’s attention?
The goal for most recruiters and hiring managers would be to get a job applicant or gain new clients. Secondary goals would be to gain a follower or provide an avenue for a referral to occur.
Having advertisements that stand out and are simple to use will help you achieve these goals.
Do my job/client advertisements stand out?
If your advertisements don’t stand out, look at other agencies and companies to see what they are doing. We all know one person that is ultra-successful with social media recruitment and as the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So look at their page and utilize some of the idea and make it your own. Some sort of imagery is the best way to quickly gather attention and trigger emotion. If you need help for design work, utilize Canva which is a free graphic-design tool.
Did I make it simple?
For client advertisements, is it an easy process where they click to view a form, where they only have to enter their name, phone number, and an email? Take this approach: If you have their email and their name, you can use LinkedIn or the domain name from their email to look up the company and do your research before contacting them back.
For job advertisements, after a candidate clicks the link on your posting, is your ATS integrated so they can “easy apply”? It will allow for more conversions and you won’t lose candidates who might passively be looking at positions.
What are you doing to maximize those 8 seconds? I’d love to hear of your success on the topic below!
Interviewees should not have to persuade the employer to hire them but rather the employer needs to persuade the right applicant to accept the job offer. Only the employer can know which applicants will be successful if hired. Since an applicant cannot know if she’ll be successful if hired, she must ask questions to learn if the employer knows, but most do not.
Applicants need to ask the hiring manager, “How do you know that I will be successful if I am hired?” If the answer is just a review of your resumes, education, experience, and interview performance, then you can be sure they don’t know if you’ll be successful, in which case be very careful since your job tenure depends on their answer.
well done Nick!