What’s more, the recruitment marketing ecosystem is evolving at an accelerated pace. Tactics that worked in years past may no longer move the needle with candidates. So, how can employers better attract, engage, entice and hire top talent? In this ebook, Recruitment Marketing – How to Stand Apart in the Battle for Great Talent, we explore how employers can build a world-class recruitment marketing program.
In this ebook you will learn:
Establishing your brand narrative as a north star
Building authenticity and trust with your employees’ voice
Connect to talent with data-driven insights
Differentiating your brand through human experience
Cut through the noise and get the attention of top talent with a recruitment marketing program, including programmatic advertising, nurture campaigns, social media and content marketing.
Download this fact sheet to learn how PeopleScout’s recruitment marketing solutions can help you attract the talent you need.
Our latest research shows a detailed picture of the current state of skills in the global workforce and how HR leaders are preparing for the impending skills crisis
Sainsbury’s: Transforming a Traditional Retail Role with Recruitment Marketing
As customer experience becomes the battleground for retail differentiation, Sainsbury’s turned to PeopleScout to help them hire the next generation of store managers.
19,000Applications Received in First 12 Weeks, Beating our Target by 171%
4,500Hires Made, Exceeding the Target of 2,400
1MCandidate Engagements
Shopping habits have changed. And in the highly competitive UK retail sector, customer experience can make or break results for retailers. To capitalize on this, Sainsbury’s, one the UK’s big five supermarkets, decided to transform one of its traditional roles—and reimagine store management in the process.
Their goal? To create a simpler, more rewarding experience for staff and customers alike. Sainsbury’s wanted to replace the traditional role of retail store manager with a new role, Customer & Trading Manager.
This new role gave managers the freedom to get out of the weeds and really lead teams—creating a new era of retail management. This required new skills and a different mindset. Some of their retail professionals would be able to transition into these new roles but some wouldn’t have what it takes. So Sainsbury’s turned to PeopleScout to help them attract new talent from the outside.
Turning Negatives into Positives
From the start, we faced some significant challenges:
The role was entirely new to the market, so we had to explain the new, unfamiliar employment proposition clearly to audiences both inside and outside of retail.
The role of retail manager had an image problem. It was seen as a transactional role that often saw you stuck on the registers.
The media was confusing the issue. We needed to counteract several misleading, negative reports of large-scale retail redundancies.
Sainsbury’s considered this to be one of their biggest recruitment challenges. They asked us to challenge and overturn negative public perceptions of retail management, introduce an entirely new type of role and hire 2,400 managers, from 24,000 applicants—in just six months.
The Core Message
First, we took apart the job profile to challenge the requirements. It was clear that the single most motivating benefit of the role was the potential to be a leader and to get the very best from a team. This suggested that the best candidates for this new type of retail role didn’t necessarily need retail experience.
We wanted to reconnect people with the emotional core of what’s great about management. It meant presenting the role—and Sainsbury’s—in a new light. So, we stripped away the language associated with the day-to-day tasks and instead put the focus back on employees as people.
We developed an overarching campaign message, Leading Starts Here, to clearly state our employment offer.
And to bring it to life, we used the following concept as our organizing thought: We all need someone to inspire us.
This universal, relatable truth was what used to capture the moving stories of individuals who have overcome huge obstacles—everything from low self-esteem to disability—with the help of inspirational leaders.
Making it Authenitic
Video was our chosen vehicle. Our diverse cast reflected Sainsbury’s approach as an inclusive employer and included people from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, people with common mental health issues and people with disabilities. While some of the responses were scripted, the strongest were spontaneous reactions to the simple prompt, tell me about someone who inspired you.
The campaign featured a blended approach of active and passive channels on- and offline:
Active channels included Indeed and a wide variety of other job boards as well as Google Search and Google Display Network.
Passive channels included billboards in key locations near major offices, newspapers, social media and other online destinations.
We used geo-location and behavioral targeting on search and social media to put our videos in front of audiences across the hospitality, travel, cabin crew, leisure and care industries.
We created 69 individual pieces of artwork, a campaign landing page with the hero video and an in-store toolkit, which included pull-up banners, poaching cards, posters, leaflets and stickers —everything a store needed to amplify the campaign.
The Results
Less than 10:1 application-to-hire ratio of high quality candidates.
Over 19,000 applications received in first 12 weeks (beating our target by 171%).
4,500 hires made, exceeding the target of 2,400.
69 content pieces produced.
£71 attraction-cost-per-hire achieved.
Close to 1 MILLION people engaged with the brand as part of the campaign.
After 12 weeks, the campaign had generated 376,986 clicks across online paid media. This has been achieved at an average cost per click of just £0.59.
The core film has been played 462,168 times and counting, receiving extremely positive feedback, praising its inclusive message.
At a Glance
COMPANY: Sainsbury’s
INDUSTRY: Retail
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
LOCATIONS: 600+ supermarkets across the UK
About Sainsbury’s: Sainsbury’s in the second largest supermarket chain in the UK. Their focus is to bring high quality food and household goods to consumers in-store and online, supported by their brands, Argos, Habitat, Tu, Nectar and Sainsbury’s Bank.
Vodafone: Overcoming a Powerful Consumer Brand in Graduate Recruitment
To overcome misperceptions about their mission, Vodafone engaged PeopleScout for employer branding and a recruitment marketing campaign to support its early careers recruitment program.
16,000Applications Received, Beating our Target by 60%
23%Increase in the Numbers of Female Candidates
27Places Jumped on the Times Top 100 Rankings
Counterintuitive as it sounds, strong consumer brands can hinder recruitment. Applicants can get an idea of what to expect that doesn’t match the reality of the careers experience being offered. This was the case with Vodafone. For consumers, the organization is a high-profile mobile phone retailer. But, behind that perception sits a multifaceted tech innovator with a mission to make the future world a better place.
In order to achieve this, Vodafone turned to PeopleScout to help it become a youth employer of choice, because changing the future meant gaining the buy-in of those who would be influential within it for years to come.
Research
As part of our research phase, we took a deep dive into Vodafone’s future jobs strategy. The client wanted to overcome high levels of youth unemployment by providing up to 100,000 young people with a digital workplace experience at Vodafone. Plus, given that one-in-five young people say they feel under-prepared for the digital economy, the business set another ambitious goal to support 10 million young people with access to digital skills, learning and employment opportunities.
So, how could Vodafone attract Millennials, Gen Z and beyond? These generations are big achievers whose ambitions soar higher than working in mobile phone retail. We needed an attraction strategy and recruitment marketing campaign that changed their audience’s perceptions about Vodafone and all the different kinds of careers—and impacts—they could make there.
The Brief
Vodafone asked us to create a campaign that would spark conversations and stand out as part of their instantly recognizable brand. They needed to generate 10,000 applications to fill 150 graduate roles and 100 intern/industrial student placements across the business. Plus, the overarching goal was to change misperceptions of Vodafone, showing it as a major tech company, not a retailer, and build its reputation as a youth employer of choice. Importantly, we were asked to reach a more diverse audience and increase female applications.
Audience Insights
Of our target audience, 90.4% regularly used social media. On top of this, 91% of all social media users access channels via mobile. So, we developed a mobile-first, social media friendly campaign. Further research revealed that many students with the right background and personal qualifications were put off from applying due to a lack of confidence. So, we needed a message that was bold, relatable and empowering.
Just as important as the audience insights were the strategic considerations. Candidates are also customers. When buying products, they expect a streamlined, user-friendly, friction-free process, and they had the same expectation when making career decisions. So, we made every touchpoint (especially the application) as slick and easy as possible.
No contemporary attraction approach can be just about advertising. Long-term connections are far more powerful. So, central to our strategy was to set Vodafone up to engage in conversations and initiatives with high-potential university students throughout their full university lifecycle. In short, the strategy was to start on day one, not year three.
The Core Message
Our message, #GenerationPossible, aimed to capture the spirit of change and possibility and draw on the opportunity young people have to make an impact on the world for the better. Our visual approach used photography that reflected our target audience combined with bold headline statements.
Social media and career site content featured current grads and interns sharing their advice for the next generation of Vodafone employees, with a #GenerationPossible video at the heart of this campaign. Our six-month social media strategy for mobile consisted of 104 social posts with 20 mini-videos/GIFs. We posted, tracked and analyzed this content on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Get to Know Us Videos
Our research had identified that our target audience felt like they weren’t good enough or lacked the skills to take on these roles. So, we created a series of videos featuring current Vodafone graduate recruits and interns. Filmed in and around Vodafone’s main campus, these videos gave real-life insights into what they could expect when it came to work, wellbeing, social responsibility, innovation, the assessment center and the interview process.
Campus Events
Away from social media, we built a series of 41 on-campus events to connect students directly with Vodafone employees. We carefully chose our campuses based on those with the highest female-to-male ratios for tech degrees, as a way to help us drive up female applications.
Results
The campaign comfortably exceeded Vodafone’s expectations.
We generated over 16,000 applications – beating our target by 60%.
We increased the number of female candidates by 23%.
We increased Instagram impressions by 89.3% (post-campaign vs. pre-campaign).
We saw 1.5 million Facebook impressions.
We gained 6.8 million impressions on organic posts on LinkedIn.
We created a hyper-targeted paid Facebook campaign which produced 390,510 impressions and 2,541 clicks – all from the target audience.
These numbers are backed up by audience sentiment. We improved Vodafone’s reputation as an employer significantly, jumping 27 places in the Times Top 100 rankings. As a result of its success, Vodafone asked us to develop the concept for their apprentice campaign audience and roll it out through a new assessment process design.
At a Glance
COMPANY: Vodafone
INDUSTRY: Telecomms
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
ABOUT VODAFONE: Vodafone is a British multinational telecommunications company. They provide connectivity and digital services for over 300 million people to work, learn, stay in touch with friends and family, access healthcare and more.
NCA: Reaching Investigators Through Targeted Recruitment Marketing
The National Crime Agency (NCA) turned to PeopleScout for a recruitment marketing campaign to help them stand out in their search for crime fighting investigators.
15,703Applicants Across 143 Roles
225Job Offers Extended
800+Candidates in a Talent Pool for Future Openings
The National Crime Agency is responsible for leading the UK’s fight to cut serious and organized crime. The agency’s focus is on the big threats—targeting and pursuing serious and organized crime and criminals who pose the greatest risk to the UK. The work is hugely complex, high-level and large scale. Officers operate at the forefront of law enforcement, building intelligence, pursuing the most serious and dangerous offenders and developing and delivering specialist capabilities for partner organizations.
It could have been an impressive proposition for the 1,500 investigators and other professionals the NCA wanted to recruit. But the NCA was competing with MI5, MI6, GCHQ and police forces for this talent. The intelligence organizations could be considered “sexier” brands. The police forces are better known and understood.
The NCA had been flying under the radar and needed to arrive on the scene with a bang. They turned to PeopleScout for a confident, attention-grabbing campaign to put their employer brand front-of-mind for their target audience.
Key Research
We conducted wide-ranging qualitative interviews and focus groups with key people across the agency in order to really get under the skin of the human experience of working there.
The key insights were:
When NCA investigators succeed the impact is huge and far-reaching. The criminal activity they stop covers everything from child sexual abuse to illegal firearms trafficking, cyber crime, kidnapping and extortion. The police, by contrast, have to deal with everything from shoplifting upwards.
A lot of the criminals the NCA targets feel they are untouchable. It’s very exciting to prove they are not.
The work is exciting, and we shouldn’t underplay that.
Investigators are often serving police officers or have strong links to policing. They rarely engage with usual recruitment channels, so we needed to think differently.
The agency saw location as key—they were keen to recruit candidates close to the locations of their regional offices.
The Core Message
To work in crowded streets and packed transit stations, our campaign needed to have immediate visual impact. The NCA hunts the big fish of the criminal world. So, we chose the shark as a perfect visual metaphor to illustrate the level of criminality the agency handles; it’s the ultimate hidden predator with a fin that creates an emotional reaction.
Our visuals show a huge shark fin bursting through the ground, towering over well-known landmarks and wreaking havoc in recognizable, urban UK locations in London and Manchester. Each visual represented the scale of damage caused by high-level crime, while storm clouds provided a suitable dark and menacing backdrop. These visuals were complemented with a simple message: No predator too big.
Media Strategy
We focused the recruitment campaign on outdoor media to reach the widest possible audience in our target areas. We identified outdoor locations that serve police officers on their daily commute—for example, Manchester Piccadilly station and the Metro line to Greater Manchester Police HQ—in addition to specialist online media.
The Results
We rolled out the campaign for digital, data, tech and specialist firearms audiences. The results were very impressive:
29,684 candidates to the NCA landing page. 15,703 applications across 143 roles. 2,228 candidates invited to interview. 225 job offers. 825 held in talent pool awaiting job offers.
This was a hugely successful campaign which drove a large number of applications. We exceeded NCA’s expectations, raised awareness of the NCA as an alternative employer for serving police officers and improved perceptions of the NCA as an employer with a unique offering.
At a Glance
COMPANY: National Crime Agency (NCA)
INDUSTRY: Government & Public Sector
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Talent Advisory
LOCATIONS: Regional offices in the UK’s urban centers
About NCA: The National Crime Agency (NCA) is a national law enforcement agency in the UK focused on fighting organized crime, trafficking, cybercrime and fraud.
Amazon: Sourcing Hundreds of Candidates Across Six Countries in Record Time
Across Europe, Amazon were experiencing large levels of growth across their customer base. They turned to PeopleScout for RPO to fill roles in new fulfilment centers across Europe.
6Countries including Germany, France, UK, Spain, Czech Republic and Poland
8%Reduction in time-to-hire
Multilingual Recruitment & Advertising including German, French, Spanish, Polish and English
Scope & Scale
Across Europe, Amazon were experiencing large levels of growth across their customer base. This had a significant impact on their worldwide operations business, the area of the organization that is responsible for delivering packages and products to the customer’s door.
Amazon’s heavy investment in new fulfilment and delivery centers across Europe, including Germany, France, UK, Spain, Czech Republic and Poland, resulted in a significant increase in headcount across management positions in these centers. These ranged from graduates to experienced managers running the centers themselves.
With Amazon, speed of delivery and their obsession with data feeds into everything they do, and their approach to recruitment is no different. As they can executed new super centers at a flick of a switch, their templated approach to building them created hiring spikes that had to be met in a small window of time.
Situation
Engaging a large volume of candidates across multiple countries speaking different languages and operating under different employment laws presented a unique challenge. Amazon have a large internal talent acquisition team who speak multiple languages, however the sheer volume of roles meant their needed a boost to truly engage the market and candidates in a way that matched their values.
Giving a great candidate experience is paramount for Amazon. Plus, the urgency of the roles and complex nature of the situation, motivated Amazon to engage PeopleScout to partner with them to meet these demands.
Solution
PeopleScout have two established delivery centers in Bristol (UK) and Krakow (Poland). These centers have multilingual recruitment consultants who are experts in sourcing and engaging candidates on our client’s behalf. Having understood the immediate and urgent need from Amazon we quickly mobilized a team of German, French, Spanish, Polish and English speakers across the two centers.
Amazon arranged briefings with us for the various roles and again expressed the urgency required due to the operational go-live dates of their fulfilment centers. Using our experience of recruiting across Europe, plus the understanding of the roles, Amazon’s culture and their process, we were able to build strategies to engage talent pools quickly. This included custom job adverts in each language and candidate engagement in their own native language.
Results
Our multi-national set of stakeholders are happy with our delivery from a quantity and quality level. Our activity resulted in delivering:
576 candidates submitted
443 invited to interview
112 offers made
8% reduction in time-to-hire
At a Glance
COMPANY: Amazon
INDUSTRY: Ecommerce Retail
PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS: Recruitment Process Outsourcing
LOCATIONS: Fulfilment centers across six countries including Germany, France, UK, Spain, Czech Republic and Poland
It’s no secret that the pandemic greatly impacted the labor market over the past year and a half. First, job openings plummeted, and unemployment skyrocketed. Now, we’re amid the Great Rehire and organizations are finalizing plans to reopen offices and get back to business as usual.
As lockdowns ease, vaccination numbers rise and consumers get back to spending, job openings are at an all-time high—as a result of millions of prime-age workers leaving the labor market or switching to part time. Employers in industries like leisure and hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing and more are struggling to fill open positions with qualified talent.
So, with all these open jobs, how can employers stand out above the competition to attract the next generation of top talent? It starts with focusing on key ideal candidate touch points—from your employer value proposition (EVP) and employer brand to your recruitment marketing strategy, careers site and application process.
In this article, we’ll take you along the candidate journey and touch on each aspect you should address to make your open roles stand out in a sea of job openings.
Create an EVP and Employer Brand that Speaks to Your Ideal Candidate
Your EVP and employer brand carry a lot of weight for the next generation of top talent, because they serve as differentiators between your brand and competitors and allow you to align your organization’s purpose with your candidates’ passions. It is important to do your research and be aware of what candidates hold in high regard, such as the opportunity for growth personally and professionally or the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. Learn what drives your ideal candidate, identify what drives your organization’s mission and values, and establish an EVP and employer brand that speaks to both.
Building an Employer Brand for the Lawyer of the Future
The Situation: Linklaters approached us with a talent problem for the ages. They needed an entirely new type of lawyer. The profile Linklaters recruited for in the past would no longer bring them the ideal candidates necessary to secure and expand on their position as a heavyweight global law firm.
The Research: We conducted one-on-one interviews and focus groups with hundreds of professionals in 20 Linklaters offices across Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific. The output of these interviews gave us everything we needed to create the EVP and the framework of the brand on which to build our global advertising campaign.
The Solution: We created an employer value proposition that was a combination of big picture philosophical and a Linklaters-specific selling point.
GREAT CHANGE IS HERE
Message: Change is healthy and exciting, as well as unavoidable. Join this modern, international, hugely diverse cohort and you’ll have a truly influential voice that redefines the legal sector and sets you up for an ever-evolving career.
The Results: Glassdoor scores for Linklaters have risen by 8% in the last two years and, importantly, applications from female lawyers – which was a key objective – have increased since the EVP launch.
When it comes to increasing awareness with recruitment marketing, you want to reach ideal candidates and promote your organization as desirable. To ensure you are marketing yourself properly, it can help to create content that drives a potential candidate to come back to your site, even if they aren’t actively looking for a job.
For example, acknowledging company accolades and awards can spark interest in your organization for both active and passive candidates, like this Instagram post from HubSpot. However, content at this stage does not need to be directly correlated to your organization to be effective. Content regarding professional development and motivation can also lead ideal candidates to inquire further on your website, such as these resume tips from Nestle Purina.
Stage Two: Generate Interest
Now that you have increased awareness, the next step is to generate interest. You have succeeded in showcasing your organization’s knowledge and place in the industry, now it’s time to show what it is like to work at your company. This is where you stress your employer brand, especially via social media. This can give potential candidates an inside look as to what it’s like to work for your company.
Social media is a powerful tool that not only generates interest but can also increase applicants for vital roles. For example, PeopleScout helped this manufacturing client increase the number of female applicants and hires in a male-dominated industry. Through the usage of employee spotlights, videos and stories to showcase how women are integrated into the culture and integral to the company’s success, the client was able to increase female hiring by 3% annually from 2018 to 2021.
Stage Three: Nurture the Decision
After increasing awareness and generating interest in your company, it is now time to promote open positions and the benefits, perks and compensation that will come with these roles. The promotion of open roles within your organization will lead the candidate to your careers site, which will play a pivotal role in the candidate’s journey toward employment with your organization. Here, it is important to do research on your competitors to see what they are offering for similar open roles. If a competitor is offering better pay, benefits, or perks, that can be a deciding factor for an ideal candidate to choose them over your organization, despite your strong recruitment marketing strategy.
Build a Careers Site that Stands Out
At this point in the candidate journey, the potential applicant has made their way to your organization’s careers site. It’s important to remember that a careers site is not only an area for job postings, but it is also home to many opportunities to stand out above competitors. For example, your careers site is a great place to reiterate the employer value proposition you built out in your recruitment marketing strategies to ensure that message is carried through every step of the candidate journey. Your careers site should be inclusive of everything a potential candidate would like to know about what it would be like to work for your organization. Consider these key areas of opportunity when refreshing your careers site:
Ensure Accessibility
In the digital age, it is important to make sure your careers site is user-friendly for those on a computer or a smart phone, especially since 61% of applicants applied to jobs via a mobile device in 2020. If a candidate struggles to navigate your careers site, chances are they won’t be staying on that site for long. It is also important to make sure your careers site is accessible for those with disabilities. Here are some suggestions from SHRM on how to make your careers site accessible for all:
Screen reader compatibility
Alternative text for images
Color contrast
Keyboard accessibility
Controls for moving content
Captions
Controls for timed content
Labeled forms
Accessible downloadable files
Plain language
Search Engine Optimization
It is important to utilize search engine optimization on your careers site. This can play a pivotal role in your careers site showing up first over a competitor on major search engines. The usage of keywords and traditional, highly searched titles will play an important role in helping your roles stand out above your competition. Research of popular keywords can boost your place among major search engines, leading potential candidates to your careers site first. Google Analytics and UTM tracking codes are important tools to utilize in your SEO journey to track and report where your clicks are coming from.
Provide a Personal Touch
On your career site, adding a personal touch, such as a welcome video, can go a long way. It can help the candidate see the human side of your business; it can offer an inside look of the facility and it is also an opportunity to showcase where these applicants may fit in within the structure of the organization.
This is a great chance to sell the applicant on working for your company and really showcase your company culture. Offer insights, quotes or firsthand experiences from senior leaders to newly brought on employees. Highlight opportunities for growth both personally and professionally and provide examples of success stories from your existing employees.
Let Applicants Know What to Expect
If the process to apply and interview is not given or discussed at all, many applicants can be led to believe their application will get lost among others. Be upfront and transparent about what the application and interview process is like and offer timelines for the applicants.
Streamline the Application and Interview Process
Although the candidate has made it this far, you’re not done yet. After all, 80% of the time, candidates don’t finish filling out job applications, according to Glassdoor. To ensure candidates complete your application and interview process, focus on these key aspects to help you stand out:
Mobile-friendly application
Quick response time
Virtual interviews
Automated chat and scheduling
Consider how technology can help streamline your process in each of the categories listed above. A mobile-friendly application, easy interview scheduling and quick response times can all be enhanced by AI and automation and provide a superior candidate experience.
Standing Out Beyond the Application
Despite having a well built out EVP and employer brand, recruitment marketing strategy, careers site and application, the deciding factor for an ideal candidate to choose your organization will often come down to a strong employment offer. It’s important to keep in mind that if your compensation, perks and benefits (like flexible work options) don’t match up to competitors, ideal candidates in today’s market have the ability to choose to work elsewhere.
That said, by creating ways to stand out and showcase your EVP and employer brand at each stage of the candidate journey as outlined above, you will be one step closer to securing the top talent your organization needs.
Many employers have begun to think about employer value propositions (EVPs) as a transaction, as if an EVP is a contract between an employee and an employer or a “deal” expressing what an employer expects from candidates and what candidates receive in return. But, although it’s an easy way to think about the concept, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
At PeopleScout, we define employer value proposition and employer brand as the following:
Employer brand: Your employer brand is the perception and lived experiences of what it’s like to work for your organization.
Employer value proposition: Your employer value proposition, or EVP, captures the essence of your uniqueness as an employer and the give and get between you and your employees.
However, when you look at an EVP simply as a “deal,” you leave out the uniqueness – the human side of equation. That’s because candidates are unique individuals who assess prospective employers based on what’s important to them at that moment. For instance, for one candidate, that could mean finding a workplace that’s like a family to make them feel safe and secure. Alternatively, another candidate at another point in their life could thrive in a fast-paced environment where they’re always staring down a new challenge.
Furthermore, candidates now have unrivaled access to information online and are more mobile. Plus, they’re also accustomed to consumer brand interactions that are personalized, anticipate their needs, and demonstrate cultural values that benefit individuals, communities and the environment. At the same time, candidate expectations are changing in line with our expectations of consumer brands: We want a job to pay the bills, but also one that provides us with a fulfilling experience. As a result, an EVP must address the complex emotional needs of candidates in order to strike a chord – and, notably, the need to align meaning and purpose is becoming the most crucial differentiator.
So, at PeopleScout, we’ve developed what we call the “Purpose, Passion and Mindset” model. This approach enables employers to draw in the candidates who will succeed and provides flexibility for individuals as their needs and desires change throughout the course of their employment. In this article, we’ll explain how this model works in relation to both candidates and employers, as well as how you can use it to find and hire the best talent for your organization.
Purpose
Purpose is a candidate’s alignment with and willingness to contribute to the vision and values of an organization. In fact, one study reported by McKinsey found that, out of 100 variables, employees reported that seeing purpose and value in their work was their most motivating factor – even more so than compensation.
Therefore, from an employer perspective, the idea of purpose should be simple to understand and to define: Why does your business exist? Why did it start? What is the vision for the future? Who are the people you need to deliver on that purpose? These are foundational for an employer, but they should also be effectively communicated in employer branding materials; on career sites; and through the employer’s website, social media and other channels.
Conversely, from a candidate or employee perspective, purpose is more fluid. If you ask a candidate where they derive purpose, you may hear answers about five-year goals or work/life balance. And, depending on the circumstances of a candidate’s life, they may be living to work or working to live. Perhaps they’re focused on career growth and looking for a challenge. Or, they may be balancing personal and family obligations with work. In any case, the way a candidate answers that question will provide insight into the type of employer and culture that the candidate is looking for. Therefore, as an employer, you need to understand how your purpose aligns with what candidates want and need – and you need to effectively communicate that to candidates. What are the values that drive your approach to business and your culture?
Sometimes, an employer’s view of purpose and a candidate’s view of purpose can overlap in clear and obvious ways. For example, a healthcare organization dedicated to providing the best patient care would be an obvious fit for a nurse who derives purpose from providing the best care for their patients. However, it isn’t always so simple. Talent acquisition leaders need to understand the gaps that exist between employer purpose and candidate purpose. And, it can be far too easy to fall into the trap of only focusing on an employer’s purpose and not recognizing the needs of candidates. Rather, employers should focus on how a job can help a candidate achieve their goals and find purpose in their lives.
Passion
Passion is easy to understand on a human level: What gets you out of bed every day? Do you like solving problems? Connecting with people? Helping others achieve goals? Are you passionate about being creative? Telling stories? Creating a perfect product? Helping a team run seamlessly?
Passion is a candidate’s enthusiasm, enjoyment and commitment to mastering the requirements of a role. When an employee is passionate about a role, they are engaged. According to Gallup, 85% of workers are not engaged in their current roles. And, Dale Carnegie Training reports that organizations with engaged workers outperform their peers by 202%. Even so, most employers don’t have a method to effectively understand what a candidate is passionate about.
However, for an employer, passion comes down to the non-negotiables – the pillars of an organization or the three to five things that help a business fulfill its purpose. When thinking about these pillars, many employers talk about “a sense of restless innovation” or “continuous personal development.” But, instead, talent leaders should think of passion as something that allows an employer to connect with candidates and employees around what the candidate or employee is personally passionate about – whether that’s coming to work for the social interaction with customers; creating a culture of belonging; or working with people who treat each other with respect. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, developing new skills and having an influence.
Bringing these two elements together and aligning the employer and candidate passion tells a candidate that what they can bring to the table will be valued here. So, don’t be tempted to talk about your EVP in terms that are filled with business jargon or seem to be on an epic scale. Instead, speak in human terms about the things that are important to you as a business and help candidates connect your value set with their own.
Fixed mindset is the belief that one’s talents are innate gifts and not malleable.
Growth mindset is the belief that one’s talents can be developed through education and effort.
When we talk about mindset from a candidate’s perspective, it’s about a candidate’s belief about themselves and their basic qualities. These beliefs are rarely measured by employers.
Meanwhile, as an employer, you can create an environment that fosters one or the other. An employer that fosters a growth mindset is one that invests in its employees, providing development opportunities and stretch assignments. The employer doesn’t just allow people to learn and grow and move within the organization; rather, it’s a culture where employee growth and development is a defined goal.
Granted, it can be tempting to think of mindset as a factor that comes to life in the execution of an EVP – as something that is put into place after an EVP has been defined and employer branding materials have been created. But, you can’t foster a growth mindset if it’s the last thing on a checklist.
Instead, employers should approach the concept of mindset as the core of their culture; it should be a thread woven through your EVP. By going back to the concept of EVP as a “deal,” employers that create an environment that fosters a growth mindset will attract candidates who want to learn, grow and contribute more to the organization during their time there.
And, by focusing on purpose, passion and a growth mindset, employers can build an employer value proposition and employer brand for the future. Because when employers take their EVP beyond the transaction and “deal” to focus on the core of the unique human relationship between employee and employer, they’ll be able to attract the right workers to achieve the mission and purpose of the employer – all while providing a sense of purpose for employees.
Employer Brand: Helping the Right Talent Choose You
Engaging and retaining your best performers has become increasingly difficult due to the normalization of shorter tenures. Now more than ever, a strong employer brand is critical to attracting top candidates, keeping your employees engaged, and retaining your talent for the long term.
In this ebook, Employer Brand: Helping the Right Talent Choose You, we explore how organizations can build and maintain a strong employer brand to combat talent risk.
In this ebook you will learn:
What goes into a cohesive employer brand and how it can help attract top talent
How your organization should be managing and caring for your employer brand
How your employer brand can impact cost-per-hire, recruiter efficiency, and employee advocacy
How to measure success from your employer brand efforts
Our latest research shows a detailed picture of the current state of skills in the global workforce and how HR leaders are preparing for the impending skills crisis
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