How candidate personas can improve your hiring decisions

It’s never been more vital to hire the right candidates, with Totaljobs research showing that almost 60% of businesses have experienced difficulties finding workers with the right skills. As a result, improving staff retention and engagement has become a top priority for employers. Many hiring managers are now focused on enhancing the quality of hires and ensuring that new candidates align with their company culture, recognising that these factors are essential for successful onboarding and long-term employee satisfaction. This all highlights just how important it is to land the right candidates for open roles. That’s where candidate personas come in, giving you the profile of the ideal candidate to shape your recruitment strategy. In this article, we will explore what candidate personas are, their benefits, what a great candidate persona looks like, and how you can put together effective candidate personas for your hiring needs.

What is a candidate persona?

A persona is a detailed representation or bio of someone which is fictional yet usually based on research and data. Personas are used in many different contexts within the world of work. Sales teams might draw up personas of their typical customers, design teams create personas of the target user of their websites or apps, and so on. You can therefore think of a candidate persona as an in-depth profile of the perfect candidate for a role. This includes things like skills, qualifications and required educational achievements. A good candidate persona will dive right into things like:

• Communication style
• Personality type
• Motivation
• Goals
• Requirements
• Soft skills

Personas can be used to whittle down a pool of candidates to those who have the technical requirements and fit the company culture you’re trying to build, and are being used by an increasing number of hiring managers to help shape the recruitment process. By using candidate personas, you could improve the job ads you publish, plan interviews better, and simplify the overall hiring process while targeting only the most suitable candidates.

The benefits of creating candidate personas

Recruitment can be a complex process, especially in a competitive hiring market, so you want to find ways to get it right. Candidate personas can give you an in-depth understanding of who and what you need from a new hire. Here are some of the key benefits of using candidate personas:

• Write better job descriptions: If you understand who your ideal candidates are, you can encourage them to apply for open roles by writing job descriptions for them. This means looking for the skills and technical characteristics necessary, but also explaining who you’re looking for in terms of soft skills, attitude, motivation, and experience.
• Reduce bias: When used correctly, candidate personas can reduce bias in the recruitment process. That’s because you’ll be looking for the attributes listed on the bio, rather than letting irrelevant information, like age or gender, influence decisions.
• Improve candidate experience: Hiring may not be easy for talent acquisition teams, but it can be just as hard for candidates. Improving the candidate experience should therefore be a priority, especially if you want to hire top talent who might have other options. A candidate persona can help you tailor communications with candidates so they feel confident you know what you want from a candidate and that you’ve done your research.
• Boost quality of hire: Ultimately, the goal of any hiring strategy should be to improve the quality of hire. By aligning candidate profiles with job requirements, you can bring in new staff who are a good cultural fit for the organisation, resulting in higher levels of productivity and engagement.
• Reduce employee turnover: If your candidate personas are helping you to increase the quality of your hires, this will result in a reduced employee turnover rate. That’s because happier staff who are engaged in their work are less likely to leave, and a strong candidate persona can help to find candidates who are the right fit.

Example candidate persona

While the benefits of using candidate personas are clear, it might not be obvious what one should look like.

We’ve got you covered. Here’s an example for an experienced marketing manager you can use as a candidate persona template.

Name: Kwame Thompson

Age: 42

Location: Manchester

Education: Bachelor’s degree in marketing, Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) certified

Professional Experience: 12 years in marketing, with 5 years in a managerial role

Skills:

• Expertise in digital marketing strategies and campaign management
• Proficient in SEO, PPC, social media marketing, and content marketing
• Strong analytical skills and experience with marketing analytics tools (Google Analytics, HubSpot)
• Excellent project management and leadership abilities

Goals:

• Seeking a leadership role in a dynamic company with a strong brand presence
• Interested in driving innovative marketing campaigns and strategies
• Looking for opportunities to mentor and develop junior marketing professionals

Personality Traits:

• Creative and strategic thinker
• Results-oriented and driven
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills
• Adaptable and able to thrive in fast-paced environments

Preferred Work Environment:

• Collaborative and creative team culture
• Access to the latest marketing tools and technologies
• Emphasis on continuous learning and professional development
• Flexible working options, including remote work possibilities

How to create a candidate persona

Candidate personas need to be carefully thought out if they’re going to be effective. You want to figure out exactly who you’re targeting with a job advert. That takes research, planning, and a clear strategy. Here are the main stages involved in creating candidate personas for specific roles to improve your hiring process.

Define your objectives

Before you do anything, you need to know what the goal of creating candidate personas is. Perhaps you’re looking to use them to change something in your hiring strategy, or to fix issues you’re having in the hiring funnel. Other specific objectives could include:

• Improving the quality of hire, which means how quickly a new hire settles in, how long they stay for, the skills they bring, how productive they are, and how engaged they are.
• Reducing time-to-hire, so you can get your open roles filled quicker, meaning your skills gaps and teams are filled.
• Improving the candidate experience, so that top candidates are more likely to see the recruitment process through and decide to join your organisation.

Understand the role inside-out

Next, you need to get a rock-solid understanding of the role you’re hiring for. This is vital for creating an effective candidate persona because the candidate you’re looking for should be as close to a perfect fit for the role as possible. Think about the job title, description and what the day-to-day responsibilities will be, before moving on to the key competencies and skills required from a successful candidate. Don’t just consider technical skills. Soft skills and cultural fit can be just as important when thinking about who the ideal worker for a role could be. Spend some time working out the dynamics of the team they will be joining, and even the potential working relationship with their managers. You should also ask yourself whether the role will develop and evolve over time, and what career progression opportunities might arise. This will help you to craft a persona that not only looks at success today but in the future.

Get stakeholder input

Understanding the role inside-out will require getting input from the various key stakeholders. These could include, for example:

• Hiring managers
• Team members the prospective candidate will be working with
• Senior HR professionals

You could ask the stakeholders for a short meeting to go over the requirements for the role and who would be the ideal candidate. This could also be done asynchronously through emails or surveys. Remember, it’s important to get a diverse array of perspectives from stakeholders, as just one person’s view likely won’t provide a clear picture of the ideal candidate.

Analyse current top performers

If you’re hiring for a role already being done by other colleagues, you have a great chance to look at the existing top performers to find out what makes them so good at it. Speak to their managers to identify the characteristics of the top performers. If the role you’re hiring for doesn’t currently exist within your organisation, you can instead look at employees who are working in similar positions.

Create a detailed persona

Once you have your research, your stakeholder input, and your analysis to hand, you can now put together the ideal candidate persona. At this stage, you’re looking to identify only the most crucial aspects of a potential applicant, so remove any non-essential qualities before coming up with a final list of five to 10 criteria. You can organise these into sections, for example:

• Skills
• Goals
• Personality traits

Here it’s also vital to consider the cultural fit aspect. Include a section on “preferred working environment” so you can target candidates who will be a good fit for your workplace.

Refine personas over time

Once you have a candidate persona you’re happy with, see how it goes with the first round of hiring. During this process, take feedback on your candidate persona from the hiring team, and continue to iterate it for future open roles. It’s important to adjust personas based on market trends and key metrics, such as:

• Quality of hire
• Productivity
• Employee turnover

Unlocking recruitment success with candidate personas

Incorporating candidate personas into your recruitment strategy can fundamentally enhance your hiring process. By clearly identifying the ideal qualities and characteristics of your ideal candidate, you increase the likelihood of attracting individuals who not only possess the necessary skills but also align with your organisational culture. This tailored approach can contribute to more effective job descriptions, a better candidate experience, and ultimately a higher quality of hire.