After collecting data through interviews with key stakeholders, it’s time to analyze it and identify trends. This will help you to successfully define a candidate persona map for each pipeline or role. For example, you might discover that all successful technical hires attended a select list of universities. This is a trend you would then include for all relevant technical candidate profiles. Or you might identify a specific set of skills that these hires have, so you could skim your talent pool and engage with candidates that have them.
Pull together the answers from your initial interviews and employee persona questions, as well as the trends you identified, to create a 360-degree view of your ideal candidate. All of this information should provide you with a detailed persona map. Establish a candidate persona template to follow so you and your team are consistent when it comes to carving out your ideal profiles. Then for each role, eliminate any non-essential qualities, determine five to ten criteria needed and put them down on paper.
Having a documented candidate persona strategy leads to more informed recruiting day-to-day. It can also help improve numerous processes, including employer branding, sourcing passive candidates, creating and placing job descriptions, and improving time-to-hire and employee turnover rates.
Candidate personas can also serve as a guide for junior recruiters to know who to really focus on. Once your candidate profile examples have been developed and committed to paper, share them with your talent acquisition team so everyone is on the same page.
