Looking good: what employers look for in a candidate

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Looking good: what employers look for in a candidate



It’s a common fallacy that employers look mainly for technical capabilities when they are recruiting. Most candidates structure their resumes so that the emphasis is on the ‘what’ of their previous role and a lot of effort seems to goes into explaining what the person did day to day, but not why they chose to make specific decisions, what they learned, and what they would do differently next time. Not very much gets said about continuous improvement, making things easier for the business or the customer, or about leadership.The fact is that your technical skills will probably be the least of their concerns when employers are shortlisting candidates for a role.

And all this is a serious error. You might ask why, because surely you’re being recruited to do a job today? The reason is threefold.

The expense of recruitment

Recruitment, as a process, is very expensive. The employer will be expecting to spend roughly 150% of your annual salary to recruit you. Ongoing costs will include superannuation and payroll tax. If a candidate leaves the firm early, then that investment is simply wasted. A common reason for early departure is not a lack of technical capability, but rather a cultural mismatch or a behavioural issue.

Maximising their investment

A closely related reason is that an organisation will seek to maximise the investment they make with a candidate; hence the fact that employees with the potential to grow with the organisation will be more highly regarded than those who will remain developmentally stagnant.

The ‘war’ for top talent

Finally, the employer is duty bound to find more than their fair share of top talent in the job marketplace; and if they can do that for less money than their competitors, then they’re likely to win in the long term. A candidate that can perform at a higher level than the basic requirements of the role will provide the organisation with this competitive edge.

In 2014, the ability to do what you do – be it reconcile a general ledger account, litigate for a client or perform a geotechnical analysis on an oilfield – is assumed by the fact that you’re a professional in that field. That’s the baseline set of skills that is implied by the title on your resume. The things that you qualified for in colleague or University are unfortunately not the things that will get you the job.

So the question is – what will? A succinct answer can be found on the website of In The Black which has a good article describing the things that accountants need to have in order to attract attention. These attributes also apply equally well to every other profession as well. The original article can be found here.

Always remember – differentiation is key. It’s not whether you are qualified for the job. It’s how much better you’re looking than the 50 other people you’re competing against.

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