Hiring is a bit like dating: in both contexts, you’re aiming for a two-way match. It’s good to be clear about what you need, as well as how you could meet the needs of who you want to attract. Let’s go over the steps to build out a job profile which will help you determine a two-way match in the interviews. 

STEP 1: Build role requirements based on the team objectives outlined (see last blog post)

• Ensure all requirements are realistic and relevant to the job:

  • Can explain how each of these skills, traits, and/or qualifications directly relates to their success on-the-job?

  • Think about the priority of those skills: for example, if you are hiring a sports physio, do you need them to be very strong working hands-on, or will your needs be met more by someone with a very strong theoretical background? Usually a candidate won’t have both - what’s most important for your team?

• Determine Must-Haves and Nice-to-Haves: What a candidate would need on day 1 in order to succeed with achieving the desired 90-day objectives? These will become your “must-haves”. Aim to have a maximum of 5. Ask yourself with each requirement, “what if an amazing candidate excelled at 4, would the 5th still be a “must-have” requirement?” If the answer is “yes”, consider if that last “must-have” is actually a “nice-to-have”. 

• Determine professional development opportunities: Next, take a look at the 1-year desired outcomes of the candidate. Are there any skills which the candidate can learn on the job in order to succeed with these? If so, consider not adding them to the hiring criteria for now, or adding them to the “nice-to-have” list. Consider selling these skills to be learned on-the-job as opportunities to your candidates.

STEP 2: Ensure requirements are concise

The more requirements you add to the list, the more interviews you will need to conduct to evaluate each candidate. 

Stick to just 5 must haves and 5 nice to haves. Why? Concise requirements help attract underrepresented groups.

According to ATHLIN Talent’s market research, only around 14% of people in sports performance roles identify as women. Did you know men apply to jobs if they meet at least 60% of the criteria, but women tend to only apply if they meet 100%? Read more about it here. If your goal is to attract more women into your organization, it could help to stick to our recommended limit.

BONUS TIP: Consider including a clause in your job description encouraging applicants to apply even if they don’t meet 100% of the requirements. 

STEP 3: Consider growth paths for a new hire in the team

The best candidates are looking for opportunities that will help them continue to be the best, allowing them plenty of opportunity to learn and grow. What can you offer a great candidate in terms of long-term career opportunities? Make sure to add this as a selling point to the job description.

STEP 4: Constantly review and improve

Do not stress about creating the perfect list immediately. It is possible to revise and improve the list after initial interviews have been conducted. In fact, some hiring managers prefer to have a relatively large first interviewing round as an opportunity to validate their hiring criteria with actual candidates in the market.

Once you have all this figured out, it’s time to build out the job description. See how to do it in our next blog post.

This post is part of an ongoing series, Hiring High

Performers. To read previous posts, check out the Resources section on our website!

You can also find an interactive G sheet template here which guides you through all the best practices in this series.