For higher education institutions, recruiting and hiring can be a complex and challenging process.
Attracting top talent in a competitive market requires making the most of recruitment marketing tactics, embracing digitization, and building a thoughtful candidate experience—but it also starts earlier than that. Before a role is posted—and even before a position description is finalized—there is an important step your team should be taking. Hear a top hiring tip from an internal PeopleAdmin expert below.
Gaining Consensus on Hiring Profile 
Ramonica Emerson is a Senior Business Partner at PowerSchool, PeopleAdmin’s parent company. With a decade of human resources experience, she shared one tip for hiring that she thinks makes all the difference:
“Start the hiring process with a meeting between recruiters and hiring managers, or department leads, or someone else close to the role being hired for. It’s important to get those groups in the same room so that those dealing with candidates and candidate communication have a strong sense of the characteristics of an ideal candidate. Providing a thorough description of the knowledge, skills, and abilities that are imperative in meeting the expectations of the role is critical. In addition, the hiring team should work closely with the manager of the open role in determining the target market for recruiting. Having a defined target market streamlines sourcing and usually can provide a strong network of individuals with similar backgrounds of the same profession.”
Specific, Targeted Job Descriptions
When hiring managers or recruiters have a comprehensive understanding of the needs of the open role, the position description will be more targeted and refined to attract candidates who fill the most vital needs of the role. While it might be tempting to recycle old job descriptions, it will serve your team better throughout the hiring process to create specific, updated job descriptions every time you post a role. Outdated postings can discourage candidates from reaching out, while a good job description will evolve over time and give a well-rounded sense of the role.
Identifying a target market can help hiring teams narrow down a candidate pool, and can give direction to recruitment marketing efforts. Leveraging PeopleAdmin’s tools (like Applicant Tracking System and Marketplace of Connectors) makes it easy for your team to post job descriptions widely and target specific candidate pools with job boards, social media, and more.
In addition, this initial meeting to parse out the bottom-line needs of a role can help hiring teams quickly decide whether to bring in or eliminate candidates based on certain criteria, eliminating the extra back-and-forth communication to find out what credentials or skills are vital or are nice-to-haves.
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Use the tip above to refine the hiring process for roles across your institution. For more recruitment marketing and hiring support, check out our resources or reach out to our experts!