Dan Crowder, Founder of Craft, on why the best candidates aren’t impressed by hiring announcements, and what ambitious creative businesses should be doing instead.
“We’re growing!”
“We’re hiring!”
“Excited to announce we’re looking for an amazing Senior Designer to join our team.”
Sound familiar? That’s because this is the type of stuff that crops up on LinkedIn on a daily basis these days, and every time I see it, I have the same thought.
Why would the person you actually want to hire care?
This might sound a little bit harsh (and perhaps ironic coming from someone in recruitment) but the fact you’re hiring isn’t actually interesting in itself. Simply opening a role isn’t enough to get people excited.
What a lot of people don’t realise is that recruitment isn’t really about announcing a vacancy. It’s an attraction challenge.
The question isn’t: “How do we tell people we’re hiring?” It’s: “Why would someone very good, and very happy where they are, leave their job to join us?”
Those are completely different conversations.
The best candidates usually aren't looking
The strongest candidates often aren’t actively searching for jobs. They’re busy doing good work and are invested in their current teams. They’re also probably being looked after reasonably well.
Ultimately, your hiring post isn’t competing with every other hiring post. It’s competing with comfort, familiarity and a job they already enjoy.
A generic “we’re hiring” message is never going to cut it.
Most hiring content is written for the wrong audience
A lot of hiring communications accidentally focus on the employer.
We’ve won new business. We’ve grown the team. We’ve opened a new office. We’re looking for exceptional talent.
While that’s all useful context, it’s not the thing that makes someone move, because the candidate is asking different questions.
What will I get to work on? What will I learn? Will I be better in two years because I joined this business? Will I be trusted to do ambitious work?
Creative businesses that answer those questions before they talk about themselves have already made themselves ten times more attractive to great talent.
A job description isn't a shopping list
The same problem often shows up in job descriptions, with too many of them reading like a list of responsibilities and software requirements.
Five years’ experience
Expert in this
Confident with that
Ability to juggle multiple priorities.
You could swap the company logo at the top and half of them would be indistinguishable.
So what do good candidates want instead? They want to know things like why the role exists and what success looks like. They want to understand why is this a more interesting place to do that work than somewhere else.
Clarity is attractive. Being generic rarely is.
Recruitment is advertising
Attention has to be earned, and the best design studios understand this instinctively when they’re building brands.
They know audiences care about what something means for them, not just the business behind it.
Why then, when it comes to hiring, does all that creativity suddenly disappear? Because recruitment is essentially a form of advertising.
You’re asking someone to change their working life. Potentially their commute, their routines, their team relationships and their future. That’s a much bigger ask than clicking on a campaign or buying a product.
Treating it like a noticeboard announcement is such a missed opportunity.
Give people a reason to care
If you want to attract the best people, the method is actually quite simple.
Show what makes your company different and talk honestly about the work you do. Explain what that person can own and communicate future ambitions for the role and the company.
And perhaps, most importantly, understand that the role itself is only part of the story. The opportunity is what matters.
Ask better questions
I don’t mean interview questions. If you’re ambitious in the level of talent you want to attract, it’s time to question yourself.
Instead, ask yourself: “If our ideal candidate saw this today, would they seriously consider leaving a good job for us?”
If the answer is no, the problem probably isn’t the candidate. The strongest teams don’t grow because they announce vacancies. They grow because they create opportunities people genuinely want to be part of.
