A candidate persona or candidate profile is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal candidate formed by defining the characteristics, skills and traits that make up your perfect hire. While it might be relatively new for many talent acquisition teams that are in the process of implementing recruitment marketing strategies, buyer personas have long been used by sales and marketing teams with great success.
You might think you have a pretty good idea of the kind of candidate profiles that you’re looking for when it comes to building talent pipelines full of target individuals. But when you begin the process of developing candidate personas, your approach should be based on research rather than assumptions. Interview current employees, main stakeholders in the hiring process (e.g. hiring managers), as well as candidates, to start building a profile of who you’re trying to talk to.
Take your time during the process and try to collect as much data as possible. You should ideally develop a candidate profile for each talent pool connected to a role you’re trying to fill. After all, the more specific you can get, the more likely it is that you’ll end up with qualified candidates.
