How to Get Job Candidates to Say Yes More Than They Say No

Note: This article is part of a pilot series that I'm participating in for LinkedIn. Hit the subscribe button and you'll be notified when my weekly posts goes live.

Are candidates turning down job offers more often than they are saying yes? If so, you’ve got a problem.

Think about the time, money, and effort you’re investing in your recruitment efforts only to come up empty-handed. Who wouldn’t be frustrated with these kinds of results? You can do better. Here’s how.

Get clear in terms of what you are looking for in a hire. By doing so, you’ll be able to target the right people for your job openings. Think about it. You don’t see McDonald’s marketing their restaurants to vegetarians, do you? That’s because McDonald’s is clear on the market they are pursuing. Are you?

For example, trying to recruit a city gal to take a position in a town that’s located 100 miles from the closest airport is just plain silly, which is what happened to me.

I remember when I was getting ready to graduate college. One of the big oil companies flew me to a rural town in West Virginia for a job interview at one of their plants. They did the same with a young engineer from Philadelphia, whom I met in the hotel bar. The two of us spent the day interviewing and the evening planning our escape. We couldn’t get out of town fast enough.

This company would have had a much higher rate of yes’s from recruits, had they made a concerted effort to seek talent from schools that were more in line with the locations where they were aiming to place people. Make sense?

Stop trying to over hire. What about qualifications? Are you trying to fill jobs with college graduates when these jobs don’t necessitate a college degree? Are you asking for ten years of experience when two will do?

I’m going to assume the people you are trying to hire are fairly bright people. They can read through the fluff in your job descriptions and figure out if a particular job is nothing more than a glorified clerk. If the job is that of a clerk, then state this. By doing so, you’ll stand a much better chance of someone saying yes to the right job for them. And more than likely, they will remain in that job a lot longer than someone who feels they’ve just been had.

Pay people properly. There are too many available jobs today (7.3M according to the July 2019 JOLTS report) to try to low ball people, in terms of pay, and expect them to say yes. And if by chance they do agree to your offer, no doubt they’ll bolt the moment someone offers them more money.

Do your homework. Understand what the market is paying for the position you are trying to fill. Then take your best shot. Offer people a competitive wage for the job they’ll be doing and more often than not, they’ll say yes when you say, “You’re hired!”

 ? Matuson Consulting. All Rights Reserved.

For more tips like this, subscribe to my newsletter, The Talent Maximizer?.

Interested in having a conversation on hiring top talent? Reach out to me at [email protected] and we'll get a call on the calendar.