Many think more applications are better. Why isn’t that true?

THE KEY TO GETTING BETTER CANDIDATES

A magnet."Many people think that the more applications, the better.

Why is it untrue?" Because more applications mean more work.

If I'm honest, who wants to do more work?Then, why would I want many applications? That's foolish.

Meanwhile, some say: "That's right, it's enough with one good application." Personally, I agree, it is enough with only one good application.

And job advertisements have a lot of power on that.

I have two kinds of clients: the ones who claim they don't get any applications and the ones who are overwhelmed because they get too many.

That clearly depends on the state of the market and on the target group.

It has to do with the sector where people are searching.

There are still sectors such as care giving and handcrafting which are directly struggling because there are simply not enough professionals.

I'm from Business so I can say this, they want to attract more people but we already have enough business management professionals.

We don't need that many candidates.It's funny how incredibly often they apply.

That's what an advertisement can do. I look at those that have very few applications. Why doesn't it draw attention?

Why can't people find it?That's the first thing. How can we get more candidates?

How can we get more views on the offer and thus, generate more applications?

Views are achieved through the optimization of the position and presenting it in an appealing way.

That means naming the position and please, specifying the tasks as clearly as possible.

We try to think of key words that are searched.You can look them up on GoogleTrends.

Do people really search for my advertisement?For the title I have written, the words I have chosen...

Unfortunately, internal job titles are often used which sound fancy and fun but no one really searches for them.

We can be more demanding on the first place,if we write the offer much more specifically regarding the tasks.

That is a must, because that way we improve the functionality of the advertisement.

That way we can get more people to say:"This is not the job I expected." But it rarely happens, if I'm honest.

That's why we could refine the requirements,and directly add new ones besides some strict criteria.

And then there was a long period in the market when many companies found very few candidates and reduced their requirements.

In other words, they often stopped requiring uploading a CV or similar documents.

I personally tell my clients who have few applications to ask for their names, last names, phone number, email address...

And they have prepared a brief form but they have more work to do as a company.

Because they need to call those applicants.And when you realize that there are too many and it's not possible to phone everyone, they say: "I wish they could have uploaded their CV into the form.

Or maybe a cover letter." For a while, I advised not to demand them a cover letter under any circumstances.

No one likes having to write one.But if you get 100 applications for each offer or job vacancy,then it is fine asking for a cover letter.

However, I strongly recommend adding the questions you want answered to the advertisement itself.

Adding two or three questions right on the advertisement is quite useful.

Because that's how you know when they read the whole advertisement.

That's the first part of the recruitment process.Secondly, they have answered the questions you were interested in.

And it's fine to ask specific things.This can be done if the application is through a standard platform,through a candidate management system that could ask:"Please, answer these three questions on your cover letter." A form generator like Typeform can also be used as well.

After all, it's the conundrum of the technological solution.

You have to see what works best for you and for the internal processes How am I going to manage this workload?

Because it's a lot of work to review all the applications.

That's why it's not better to have plenty of applications and attract many people.

In fact, the amount of work can get out of hand and more mistakes can be made.