“The Download of Ideal Candidates Is Paused”: What Is a Candidate’s Portrait and How Recruiters Should Use It

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13 hours per week — that’s the average time recruiters spend on sourcing candidates for just one job opening, according to the research conducted by Entelo. And what if we say that quite often this search is not optimized?

To reduce the number of rejections of CVs by managers, improve understanding of the expectations for the position, and improve conversion between stages of recruitment, you can use a candidate’s portrait. In this article, you’ll learn about what kind of tool it is, what tasks it helps with, and what questions to ask the hiring manager in order to set up the search correctly.

What is a candidate’s portrait, and what does it affect?

Imagine you’ve received a request to recruit a middle+ ML engineer for an AI product. The requirements include your standard stack and grade for this position, which narrows the pipeline to professionals with a minimum of 3–4 years of experience in the position. You probably already know that you need to be a true headhunter to get enough resumes for such a vacancy and choose the best specialists. Therefore, you start your search quickly by sending letters on LinkedIn to all the candidates who meet the must-have requirements. Yay! You’ve managed to send several resumes to the manager. But the first candidate was called “weak”, and the second was asked to be put “on hold.” What’s wrong?

Most likely, the candidate’s portrait would have helped you a lot. It is a powerful recruitment tool that helps to achieve a more detailed vision of a specialist that a company should look for to fill a position, from the necessary skills to the nuances and wishes of the manager.

If we expand our example above and discuss more detailed requirements and wishes for the candidate with the manager, it may turn out that they would like to see specialists with experience in computer vision, preferably at the middle-senior level (i.e., more experienced specialists). Also, the team lead has had a rather bad experience with graduates from certain development courses, so he would like to avoid candidates who have taken them. It is the job of a professional recruiter to find out all these nuances and take them into account during the search.

How exactly does a candidate’s portrait affect hiring? It:

• helps reduce the time spent on writing a job description and make it more interesting;
• improves the sourcing strategy and optimizes candidate filtering (you know exactly what you should pay attention to);
• increases the number of candidates who reach the final stages of recruitment, reduces the number of rejections of candidates, and increases the percentage of successful completion of the probationary period;
• speeds up hiring because the manager does not need to analyze the so-called “partially relevant CVs.”

However, there is a caveat: do not become a hostage to the portrait of the ideal candidate. The pipeline of available specialists for some vacancies is only 100–200 specialists. Our company had the experience of filling a vacancy where there were only 10 candidates in the local market. Of course, not all of them will be ready to consider your vacancy. Should we even mention that filtering candidates by zodiac sign, psychological portrait of a programmer, or “shining eyes” in such a case would be a terrible decision? It’s advised to provide the manager with realistic expectations and data about the possible conversion and the recruitment funnel. You should start with the candidates who best fit your expectations and expand your search over time.

How does the portrait of an ideal candidate differ from job requirements?

The candidate’s portrait should not be confused with a standard job description. The latter outlines the main responsibilities, key requirements, and hard and soft skills required for the job. The ideal candidate portrait, on the other hand, focuses on the most accurate, comprehensive (and sometimes utopian) vision of the type of person who will fit in with the team, from experience and skills to personality traits.

The job description is used both for the company’s internal audience (hiring managers*, technical specialists who conduct interviews, recruiters, HR specialists, etc.) and for the external audience, namely for candidates. Your potential employees should not see the candidate’s portrait; it is intended for internal communication only. An exception may be a direct question of the candidate at the interview, “What kind of person would you like to see on the team?”

*The hiring manager is the manager of the team for which recruitment is being organized. They are usually responsible for filling out the recruitment brief, conducting technical/managerial interviews, and making the final hiring decisions.

The text differs depending on the audience — your team VS candidates. In the portrait of the ideal candidate, you can indicate that it is desirable to find a friendly extrovert because the project specialists spend a lot of time together. Or, for example, you know that there are currently no opportunities for vertical growth in the position, so active and ambitious candidates are not the best fit (even if they accept the offer, they will quickly leave your company). However, listing this in a public job description is definitely a bad idea. At the very least, people will misunderstand you and think that this is a bad joke; in the worst case scenario, several articles will be dedicated to you on IT forums 🙃

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An exception to this rule can be made when it comes to the company’s values and other characteristics. A good example of this would be Beetroot, a “cozy” Swedish-Ukrainian company that provides IT services to various businesses. In almost every vacancy, the company’s recruiters indicate “love of borscht” in the nice-to-have requirements.

How to create a candidate’s portrait 

Simple answer: to make a candidate’s portrait, talk to the hiring manager. Here are the steps that you need to take:

1. determine who the company needs;
2. approve the portrait of an IT specialist for your team*;
3. write a job description;
4. form a recruitment strategy;
5. organize search and selection;
6. maintain contact with candidates;
7. conduct interviews;
8. make a job offer;
9. conduct onboarding.

*You will most likely send several CVs for approval to ensure that the recruiting strategy is correct and that hiring is optimized for future work.

Questions for drawing up a candidate’s portrait

In practice, many details need to be taken into account in order to correctly understand who exactly the team/tech lead wanted to see in their team. Below, you’ll find an extensive list of questions that will help you create a portrait of a candidate for your team:

• What is the purpose of the position?
• Why is there a need for a new specialist?
• What tasks need to be performed?
• For which project are we looking for a specialist?
• What salary range can be offered to candidates?
• What is the required grade of the specialist? What is the minimum number of years of experience required?
• What hard skills should a specialist have? Experience with what tools and technologies is needed? Is there a desired level of mastery of them?
• Which technologies from the description are must-haves and are currently being used, and which are desirable or are only planned to be used in the future?
• Is there a preferred list of project topics/domains we want to see in a specialist’s experience?
• Can we consider a lower-level specialist for a lower budget? Can we talk to a professional with a higher level and a higher budget?
• Can we consider a specialist who has experience with alternative technologies and is willing to retrain?
• What level of English is required for the position? How will the candidate be using English — communicating with the team, with the managers, or only when reading the documentation?
• Is higher education important for the position? Do we need to pay attention to certain certifications?
• What soft skills will be useful in the position? What values are we looking for in a candidate?
• What candidates are we definitely not ready to consider?

Useful sources of information

Unfortunately, not all managers have enough time to explain their expectations scrupulously and in detail, even if the vacancy is really urgent. Sometimes, it works like this: 

a specialist is needed because there is not enough labor force → the manager gives the task to start the search → the recruiter tries to show the candidates ASAP according to the minimally described requirements → the manager sends a rejection because the specialists are, in his opinion, not “strong” enough, → the recruiter continues to send resumes → more rejections → the manager has less time for recruitment → candidates are not hired in the team; meanwhile, the development is delayed

Even if you don’t have the opportunity to talk to the manager about their expectations, there are a few life hacks that will help you:

• Analyze the experience and skills of current team members — look at their interview feedback and LinkedIn experience descriptions. Chances are that candidates with similar experience will be a better fit for your position.

• Do deep research into your company’s values, work format, and challenges — what kind of person do you think would fit better into the team? Are soft skills really important now, or is it better to look for technically strong candidates?

• Analyze the resumes that were rejected. What were the reasons for the negative feedback? What patterns can be identified? Consider these factors in your further search.

Wrapping up

A candidate’s portrait is a useful tool for quality candidate selection. It helps attract the best of the best and makes it easier for the recruiter to understand the position. At the same time, it is always necessary to strike a balance between perfectionism and the market of available candidates. The company does not always have the opportunity to filter candidates by micro-criteria and, at the same time, fill vacancies quickly.