Tips For How Small Companies Can Use Avatar Profiles To Hire

This is the First of a series of "How To Recruiting Strategies" designed specifically for Smaller Organizations with limited HR Resources to successfully hire which is critical for scaling their businesses.

What is an Avatar
For anyone unfamiliar with the term "Avatar" in the Business World it refers to the profile that fits what an organization deems as their "perfect customer".  However the term is universal and can also be used in the HR World for describing a organization's ideal employee.
For the strategic roles within an organization such as Sales/Marketing/Technology/Leadership it would be smart for an organization to determine what their Ideal Employee OR Avatar would look like. The reason being these are the roles that put a brand on your organization to their client base and helps drive success!  
It has been proven over and over again that organizations who hire based strictly on skills without considering whether that person fits the particular company culture will have a higher turnover rate.  The reason is even if someone can do the job, when they don't fit or don't like the company culture they won't be happy and if they are NOT happy well I think you can guess the rest of the scenario.

How To Create Your Company Avatar
-Determine which Job Families or Roles are critical to your organizations success
-Conduct an analysis of your current staff in those roles to determine the strongest players
-Create an Avatar which is a deeper dive than General Profiling on a personality type that fits that position.  You want to determine all of the characteristics of that employee including personality type so that you have this mold of exactly what a perfect Sales Employee or Technology Employee looks like in your organization only.  The goal here is not to be general on what any organization looks for in the role.  It's what they look like for your company based on successful employees you have.  This is important!

How To Use Your Avatar To Recruit For Your Organization
-Now that you have your Avatar Blueprint of what your ideal employee looks like this will set the tone for your Employer Branding Strategy
-Based on knowing your Avatar's Deep Thoughts and what they  like, that information can be used to craft specific messages on your website, your Social Media and your Job Descriptions.  This will help increase the rate of people your organization is targeting will respond.
-Knowing the characteristics of your Avatar will help you determine where they are located, what they read, what Social Media Platforms they are on etc..
-Craft a message that is specific to them letting them know your organization is doing strategic hiring for a critical role to the organization and that you wanted to make a connection for near term or future opportunities.  The goal of the message is you want to get to know them before you pitch them about a specific job.  DO NOT fall into the mistake that most recruiters make with sending a job description assuming that will attract the candidate.  
-Companies that build rapport and relationships with their Avatars will find it easier to get their message return rate raised.
Hope this article helps and please let me know what you think.  Stay tuned for the next article in the series!

​Written by:
Steve Rosen-Recruiting Consultant

---