21. 4 Hiring Hacks to Get The BEST Applicants

Hey there, my name is Michael King. Welcome back to the Connected Accountant. If you've ever posted a job listing before, you've probably had your inbox absolutely flooded with people that aren't qualified and a lot of them aren't even really that interested in the job that you've got. So what can you do to get better applicants in your inbox? Today, I'm going to share with you four hiring hacks that will help you get better applicants. Let's dive in.

The first hack that I'm going to share with you is that you've got to treat the entire hiring process like sales and marketing. The reality is there are thousands of job postings out there right now and it's truly a job seekers market and the competition that's there to get that top tier talent is super fierce. So you've got to treat this like you would sales and marketing. You've got to put right in the job description more than just the bullet points of what you need the person to do. You've got to talk about why your company is amazing. You've got to talk about what's in it for the potential job applicant. You've got to really sell them on why working for your company is head and shoulders better than working from all those other bad guys out there that are trying to bring them into their company. You really have to look at this like I like to tell people, like, treat the job posting like a Super bowl ad. You've really just got a couple of seconds to attract that, that top tier a player's attention and convince them that they should apply for your job. So make it sound intriguing. Sell them on why your company is awesome and really tell them what's in it for them more than just what you need from them. My second hiring hack is actually my favorite hiring hack. Right in the middle of the job posting, I'll write a phrase that reads something like this. If you're truly interested in this job, write the word finance at the top of your application. And this serves two important functions for me. First, I want people on my team that are really into attention to detail because of the work that you and I do. And in our firms, I want to make sure that all the applicants really read through things and take the time to pay attention to detail. The second thing that it does is it weeds out those people that are just quickly scanning and firing off 100 job applications in a day. Normally those people aren't the type of people I want on my team. So by having this right there in the middle of the application, we what it does is it creates an easy filtration tool for me. Now what I do is once a day or every couple of days, I'll have my assistant go through all the job applications and she just auto deletes every single application that doesn't have the word finance at the top of their resume. This leaves me with the select few people that took the time to really read the job posting and to follow directions. This third hiring hack actually comes courtesy of somebody in my mastermind. She was recently hiring an accountant for her firm and she put together a standardized competency test for everybody that applied. And by giving them this competency test, she made sure that those people that applied actually knew what they were talking about. She wouldn't get on the phone to do the phone interview unless you passed the competency test. And she shared with me that this actually filtered out about 75% of the people that applied for the job and saved her hours of interviewing people on the phone that weren't even really qualified. The fourth hiring hack I wanna share with you is really key if you're hiring for a role where the person needs to have a good customer presence. So this is gonna be somebody that's talking with clients on the phone or somebody that's on zoom calls. So maybe it's an assistant, a custom person, maybe it's a fractional cfo. But it's one of those roles where they've got to really do a great job with communication, verbal communication. What I like to have them do is just record a simple 60 second loom video that explains why they're passionate about the type of work that we do. And again, this is a great filtration for two reasons. First, it makes sure that they have that good presence. Can they articulate themselves? Can they talk well? Are they going to represent my firm and my brand well, with the way that they show up? And second, it honestly filters out people that aren't that serious about the job that they're applying for. So for me, there's two things they got to do. They got to have that word finance at the top of their application, at the top of their resume, and they've got to submit that 60 second loom video or zoom video that explains why they're passionate about our industry. If they don't do those two things, I'm not going to take the time to get on a call with them and because I just know that they're not serious. So there you have it, four simple hiring hacks. That will help you get better applicants. I hope this was helpful. If it was, please consider sharing it with a friend. In the meantime, I can't wait to see you back right here next week. See you then, my friend.