There is a love story between candidates and recruiters/sourcers.
Google SEO tells us that we are searched as stupid, waste of time, liars, lazy, and many other negatives adjectives.
Why Do Candidates Feel This Way About Us?
When talking to candidates, they state we contact them with irrelevant job offers or job-offers that lack information.
Other feedback I received is that we don’t know much about the job we are recruiting. We also tend to ask candidates mechanic and annoying questions. Questions like, where do you see yourself in five years? And what are your strengths/weaknesses?
Many candidates we recruit work in a candidate-driven market. They shouldn’t have to answer mundane questions simply because we approached them for a job.
We are all motivated and inspired to take action on similar things. To understand and consequently persuade your potential candidates, you might need to understand mental triggers to motivate candidates and how they work when approaching potential hires.
Why Would a Candidate Who Doesn’t Know You, Give You His Time?
Two mental triggers help us to recognize people who we can trust and can lead us to the next level in our lives.
These two mental triggers are EMPATHY AND AUTHORITY
EMPATHY
Will you spend your time talking to someone who doesn’t listen to you?
An empathic recruiter not only puts himself on the other person’s shoes but also anticipates what the person might need or ask.
In recruitment, you need to be prepared to answer all your candidate’s objection before even he/she asks. This is a kind of sense of responsibility and shows you care about your candidate.
Empathy also ensures that you are paying attention to all details that candidates expect from the recruiter.
When we talk about empathy, we indirectly speak about having an interest in them. Understand how they feel, and what might potentially concern them.
If you go through an in-depth process of empathy with them, that will bring us to a state of affinity with them, which makes them more open to discuss and be sincerer.
People trust people who understand, and they also believe recruiters who follow them.
As itself, empathy is a straightforward concept that can be summarized in looking, listening, and understanding the person is in front of you. Understanding their frustrations, their motivations, their problems, fears, needs, and as far as possible and provide them with solutions is all empathy about.
Empathy naturally brings us into a state where the other person noticed we are like them. This is what understanding implies indirectly: we both look at each other from equal to equal what results in a very nice interaction.
When we approach candidates, we are new people to them, and they might prejudge us. If we practice some empathy since the beginning, all the doubts about why they should trust us or might have in general, are gone. It is like we build up a familiar territory or shared values, which allows us to be connected and aligned.
AUTHORITY is the second trigger
What makes someone have AUTHORITY?
A recruiter with authority knows what they are doing. Authority is about owning the process and having vast knowledge about the company and job that they are attempting to offer to potential hires.
Authority is about being able to answer these questions: Does this person worth giving him my time? Can this person help me in my next career move?
In the end, it is a question of providing the necessary trust we all need to accept making business with someone.
Authority brings us to the right status to become the person who will lead them to make the change they want to do.
We all need a person who guides us in a moment of transition because for some people; a job transition is scary. Transitioning from a well-known comfort zone with all its privileges aiming to go into a potentially-better situation is unknown. Probably, you already experienced some people deciding last minute to stay at their jobs because of fear.
When changing jobs, candidates expect guidance from a person who facilitated this process to a new company. We help them to make sense of the action they took when they showed interest.
As you can see, these two triggers are essential to keep them in mind not only in the recruitment business but in other areas of life. Empathy and authority is a powerful way to increase the trust needed by our potential hires.