Why You’re Getting Bad Applicants

You post the job. The applications come in. But the people raising their hands just don’t feel like the right fit.

If you’ve ever wondered why the talent you’re attracting doesn’t match the company you’re trying to build, this episode will challenge the way you think about recruiting.

In this Maven Monday conversation, Caleb looks at hiring through a different lens—one that most businesses overlook. The way your company shows up in the marketplace doesn’t just influence customers. It quietly shapes the kind of people who want to work for you, too.

Because by the time someone finds your job posting, they’ve already formed an opinion about your company… whether you meant to send that signal or not.

If you’re growing your team, frustrated with the quality of applicants, or trying to build a workplace that attracts great people naturally, this episode will help you see the hiring process in a completely different way.

Sometimes the problem isn’t the job listing.

It’s everything that happens before it.

#Hiring #Recruiting #TeamBuilding #Leadership #SmallBusiness #CompanyCulture #EmployerBrand #BusinessGrowth #Entrepreneurship #TalentAcquisition #HiringTips #BuildYourTeam #WorkplaceCulture #BusinessLeadership #MavenMarketingPodcast

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Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

Join the Maven Marketing Mastermind to get actionable advice from the team at mavenmethodtraining.com

Do you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!

Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Transcript

When Growth Creates Hiring Pressure

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Your marketing worked. The phone's ringing, customers are coming knocking, and your company is growing. But now you've got a different problem. You need more people and to grow your team to serve all these new customers you've gotten. We know that marketing can have an effect on new customers, but we also know marketing has an effect on the people you attract and are able to hire. For people who don't know you, you will pay as much as 50% more just to reach them when they're looking out for jobs, when you're trying to recruit. Today we're going to audit your hiring process through the Maven method so you can be a company that people see and want to work for. This is the place where we help you eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business, and achieve the big dream. I'm Caleb Agey, and today we're going to talk about your hiring process and really how you attract new team members. A lot of times hiring is done in this little corner where you've got HR over here and they're doing the recruitment and they're putting job ads up or job descriptions up. And then you've got marketing happening over on the other side. And the reality is both of those things are actually very related. We know marketing helps and should help get you more customers, but we also know it can help you attract new team members. And a lot of times when you're going out and you're trying to hire a high-level technician or an entry-level employee, an installer, a manager, a doctor, it doesn't really matter what you're looking for, if their first interaction with you is on some job board or they see some sort of transactional post of your job, they are starting from zero trust. If they've never heard from you before, they are starting at zero. And what we have to overcome and precede is that trust, that mental trust that they would have in you as a company in your name, so that when they see you, they already have good feelings about you. And so we're gonna we're gonna talk about this. Um in case you didn't know, we look at the Maven method, it looks at three types of customers. The today customer, this is the person who's out looking for you right now. Um in the business side of things, they want your business or service or product right now. And we're gonna ask where can we reach them, the people that are buying right now. There's tomorrow customers. Tomorrow customers are people who are not actively looking for what you're selling now, but they might and will one day. And then yesterday customers are people who've already done business with you, and we want to get them to come back for repeat and referral business. But what if we applied that same lens to recruitment? Today, uh, talent is out looking for jobs right now. They've decided for whatever reason they're changing and they're looking around. Um, we're gonna ask where do we need to be so that they can find us, right? Uh, if we have a job opening, it needs to be pretty easy to find us and to take an action. Uh, tomorrow talent is not necessarily looking today, but at some point they may have a chance to make a move. And so what we want to do is we want to be a part of their lives long before they have that moment of need, where be long before they decide, ooh, I think I'm going to change. And it's not like we're out poaching people or anything like that. It's that we're out connecting with them based on shared values so that when that happens, we're the first one they're gonna think about. And then a yesterday customer, we're gonna talk about this. A yesterday talent, that's the team you already have. And it is far more expensive to not take care of the team you already have uh and have to go find new people. And so we're gonna talk about some ways to keep them uh keep them happy, keep your culture strong, keep them in your in your company. So let's start with the today talents. This is your recruitment frontline. Um, first of all, we've done we've done conversations about this. If you look at past episodes, uh, where the first problem is that most people write job ads. Actually, I'm gonna call them a job description on LinkedIn or Indeed or ZipRecruiter or whatever. I'm gonna say you probably need to be in these places, but those are probably the last places you want to have to be, right? And so um a lot of times they're writing a list of demands, a bunch of chores that you have to fulfill, uh, not fulfill, but it's just like you must have five years of experience, you must have these tools, you must know these things. And it's not really describing the person, it's describing the job. And we have to remember now we're putting on our marketing hat and we're talking to today talent. Our job is to talk to a human and describe the job that this human wants, right? This is a person on the other end. And so what we always do when we're doing good marketing, good messaging, we're gonna think about the the avatar of that typical customer. And so what you need to go look around. Who's who in your office or who have you had in the past that was like the perfect person for this role? And write this ad to them. Don't write a job description where it describes the roles, responsibilities, all of that. Yes, you can include that, but you need to make sure you write an ad, a love letter, a message to them. They have a mortgage, they have a family, they have a need, and you need to make sure that you're connecting with them as a human. Um, the other thing I think in today's world is that there will be friction points. And a lot of times, um you need to overcome these things because they're going to uh be looking you up. If they had zero trust when they found you, so let's say they're trolling indeed, they're looking for a new job as an installer or a manager or something like that. They're trolling through, and then they see this job pop up. First of all, what does it say? That's what we just talked about. What's what's the description, the ad? What's that say? And then the second thing they're gonna they're gonna ask, or probably should ask, is who is this company? Do I want to work for them? And so you need to go and check your reviews and see what it's see what the world says about you. Does Indeed have reviews about you? Does Glassdoor have reviews about you? Um, does Google, Facebook, all of these things, what do those reviews look like? And are you a quality company? And if not, let's let's get on a plan to fix that. Um The other thing that you need to do inside of this today talent acquisition um is make it easy for them to take the reasonable next step. This is something we talk about in the Maven method. A lot of times we ask from people for people to go from zero to a hundred inside of one ad. And sometimes we can do that. Sometimes if it's something they truly need, they truly feel the felt need, we can go from zero to one hundred. But a lot of times there's kind of a sub step, a pre-step that we don't have to ask them to sign in blood today, like you're definitely gonna buy this. And that's a lot of times what we feel like we're asking of them. Um, but I wonder if we could make it a little bit easier for people to take the first step. So um a couple options would be you know, uh fill out this short form uh for a five-minute intro call. Uh text job to this to hear about the thing. Um, maybe you say, tell me more about this job, and you just give them an option to not fully apply. Um, sometimes you might need people to fully apply right off the bat, but some people may not be completely sold on you because they had no preconceived thought about you. And so you need to give them a chance to bond with you, to feel something for your company and and to give yourself a chance to speak to your reputation, to the culture, to the to who you are. And so we're gonna offer them a more reasonable next step as the first step. Um, in some of our recruitment things, we might just have them email, like a careers type of email. Uh, and this offers people the ability to take a little bit more of a detailed first step. Um, if you have a job that requires an immense amount of detail, another quick and maybe you're getting a lot of applicants for it, this is actually a way to get less less applicants or quickly filter them down. We do what we call an Easter egg, um, which is where we typically put some sort of hashtag in the very end, kind of tucked away in a paragraph, will be like, hey, since this is a detail-oriented job and you are a detail-oriented person, you're gonna put hashtag pitter patter in the middle of your resume or cover letter. And basically, we throw out anybody who doesn't do that, we're just gonna throw out their application because they didn't follow the instructions or take the time to read the whole ad. And so we can quickly throw those out. But for the for all intents and purposes today, we're talking about how to get more applicants and of quality. Uh, and so that can help you just quickly with your message, you can actually self-identify some people. Okay, so that's today customers. You have to do that, but to be honest, those today talent people, um you have to be there so they can find you at the end of the line when they're ready to make that switch. But that's actually not hopefully the first place they hear about you. Uh, we talked about it at the beginning. Uh, LinkedIn did a study and found that you will pay 50% more, or or the inverse is people are two times more likely to apply for a job when they've heard of the company before they make the application, um, before they see the job ad. And that means if you have no brand, if you have no awareness in the community at large that precedes you, you're missing out. Or else you're basically paying double for the same applications. Let's say you're you're boosting on Indeed or LinkedIn or something like that. You're paying double to find those people because they don't know you and therefore they don't have a chance to trust you. It's not that they don't trust you, it's not that they're cynical, it's just that they didn't have a chance because you didn't give them a chance. And so that leads us to tomorrow marketing. If you've been around the Maven method for any amount of time, tomorrow marketing is the secret sauce. It is the way for exponential growth. Today marketing, today customer marketing is it's like renting your house. Uh, you're just you're just borrowing, you know, the space until uh if your rent check doesn't clear, it just turns off the next month and it's gone. That's how today marketing works. Tomorrow marketing is an investment, and your your investment, your equity is happening in the minds and the hearts of people, of humans in your community. And so what we need to do, both for our recruitment and for new customers, is we need to be speaking to a tomorrow audience. People who might want to work with us long before we've decided. Uh, and so what this can look like, it's it's interesting because this actually overlaps with your overall marketing strategy quite a bit. But this is where I want HR team, hiring team, I want you to go talk to marketing and say, hey, what are we doing in the way of tomorrow marketing? And tomorrow marketing is where you talk to a large audience, the largest one your budget can reach daily. We're talking to people who we can be in their lives every day. Now, this is a singular audience, okay? And we talked about tomorrow marketing in a lot of other episodes, and you can go back and look at that. So I'm not going to go super deep, but what we really want to do is make sure that we're talking to the same people every week, 52 weeks a year. And once a small percentage of those people look for a job, we want them to ask, should I work with you? That looks like a good company. Simon Sinek talks about people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And your why should show up in your tomorrow marketing often. And people will feel the difference in your reason, your value as a company, the value you bring for your customers. And that value translates to, I would like to work for you as well. Make sure you're doing that just practically. A lot of times that shows up as broadcast media, could show up as uh broad social ads, YouTube, um, it could show up in signage, print, um, lots of different things where you are a staple in somebody's life for the long term. You are not expecting an immediate result from tomorrow marketing. You know that it's an investment in a long-term result. And you're not gonna go and invest in this for one month and hope that uh and pull out just because it didn't yield an immediate result. You know that people and every good thing in life happens over consistency and over time. And so what you're gonna do is make a commitment. You're gonna say, I'm gonna do this for 12 to 18 months without expecting an immediate one-to-one result. But I know that it will help me gain more customers and it will help me gain more talent overall awareness in the community, and therefore we're gonna commit to it for the long term. So that's tomorrow talent acquisition, tomorrow talent marketing. And then that leads me to my favorite of the three, which is yesterday. Yesterday talents uh I would call your current team. And so uh Tim Miles, I love this quote. He called your current employees your first customer. If you treat your employees like your most important customer, how you treat them becomes evident in how they treat the customers. I'm gonna say that again. How you treat your employees becomes evident in how your employees treat your customers. So if you treat your employees well, if you create a culture that is attractive, it will it will have a profound effect. And we all know that keeping your current team happy and allowing them to see you for who you really are, see you as a company that has value, that has um a culture where they are valued, um, that is the most important of all three of these. And so a couple of things. Um pay attention to your internal culture. Make sure that everyone is able to be heard. These are these are basic things that I know that you know, but I think sometimes it's the the simple truths are the ones that we need to hear the most. Um, celebrate often. Whatever you celebrate, I'll I'll ask you, you know, what's the last thing you celebrated? Um, that'll tell me a lot about your culture. And if you haven't celebrated anything in a while, that tells me a lot about your culture as well. Um, make sure you call out people who are doing well, you highlight wins, make sure you celebrate personal things. These are real people, just like in marketing, just like in what we talked about before, these are real humans, and they are not just um, I think in the HR world they talk about like human capital, and it's like ugh, that's such an awful word because these are people, they're not capital, they are individuals, each with their own lives. They are the hero in their own story. And as much as you can at whatever scale your business is, you need to allow them to be the hero in their own story. You need to recognize them as the hero in their little part of the world. And so making sure that they get recognized for what they do. Um, make sure that they feel like they are consistently coached and challenged to grow. A lot of um A players will leave because they don't they feel like they've hit the top of where they can be with you. And so what you need to do is point them to a picture. It doesn't necessarily mean title changes, it doesn't even always mean salary changes, but it means that they feel like they are developing as a person, as an individual, as a professional inside of your company. And you need to make sure you make it clear how they do that. That's something I'm constantly thinking about and wondering about for our team is growing. So um, what's that all mean? What we're gonna do when you go to hire, first of all, I'm gonna do this out of order. First of all, before you go to hire, you have a brand that precedes you. This is your tomorrow talent acquisition. Then when people do need, when you do need uh to hire for a specific role, or maybe you've always got one open, you do the basics. You make sure that you're able to be found. You make sure that on your website it's easy to apply, to make a move. Um, but then most important of all, the people you have inside of your four walls, you are challenging them to grow. You are keeping them happy, you are hopefully paying them well, and you're building a company. Uh, this is my favorite line. You're building a healthy company because healthy companies allow for healthy people, and healthy people build healthy companies. So take a look at your marketing plan for hiring. Take a look at it from that lens. Are you doing a good job at each of these? Uh, I'll be honest, we're actually hiring right now. This is challenging us to take a look at this. Um, and then think about how you can grow or encourage this to grow. Plant some seeds for the future and make sure people have a chance to trust you long before they ever see you on that job board, long before you post that job. So hope this was helpful for you today. Um, if you have any specific questions, I'd love for you to drop them in the comments below. Uh, that'd be really, really helpful. Um, and they they help us just continue to grow this podcast, and and we like to have a lively discussion inside of this. Uh, forward this to somebody you know that's in hiring and ask the questions. Hey, are we are we giving a focus to all three of these these customers, all three of our talent pools? Um, and don't forget that we'll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing and advertising questions because marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie. See you next time.