How Meaningful Work and Bringing It To Life In Your Employment Brand Changes the Game
Consider the broader implications — and opportunities — for how your company goes to market as an employer and how these elements of your employment brand can help you win over the right talent against any level of competition.
There are exactly 10,000 reasons a candidate chooses one company over another. Has your company ever been picked over for a competitor or, better yet, a larger, global firm? We all have. But have you stopped to reflect on why?
Checking in with your candidate experience should be your first stop. Consider it low-hanging fruit that you should regularly check-in with, evaluate, survey and audit to improve your chances of closing the deal with your strongest candidates.
It’s during this process that you can quickly get a sense of how much your company’s culture — and the communication of that culture through your employment brand — is affecting, for better or worse, the talent coming to and through your door.
Three Keys To Competing For Talent As a Mid-Market Company
Keep in mind the following three essentials as they repeatedly crop up in your candidate experience audits and observations.
1. Nurture your genuine culture.
Culture has become a bit of a dirty word over the past few years. Not because there’s anything wrong with it. It’s simply been misused and overexposed. What’s made “culture” lose its luster, most, is that many employers miss the point. There’s far more to culture than free food, group photos and ping-pong tables.
Company culture is the natural attitude of everyday life inside your firm. It’s the way your teams interact with one another, support each other and respond to both celebrations and crises. Culture is how your employees — from senior leadership through first-day interns — show up for the company and for one another. It’s modeled at every level, and will rise or fall with how well it’s being executed each day.
Moreover, culture is understanding the needs of your employees, no matter their generation, and helping them find their paths toward upward mobility, growth and meaningful work.
People today, whatever their industry, want to feel fulfilled by the work their doing. They want to add value every day — to their lives, to their teams and the world around them.
Nurturing a culture that encourages employees to take responsibility for their work, to own their growth and approach learning curves with gusto will deliver the ROI through longevity, productivity and employee engagement. This kind of culture is an investment in your employees — and your company’s future.
2. Amplify your employment brand story.
When you develop an authentic culture that opens doors for employees to pursue meaningful work and add value each day, you’re letting your employment brand story happen.
Employment brand is the marketplace’s perception of what it’s like to work at your company. Where they get that perception seeps out of your brand from your front doors and nearby lunch tables to newsrooms, review sites and employees’ social profiles.
It’s the ongoing narrative of everyday life inside your firm. And it’s measured by how successfully it can make the right potential candidates see themselves being part of your team and that ongoing narrative.
Without an employment brand strategy in hand, you might feel tripped up on how to tell your employment brand story, especially if you have a great one. Truth is, you also have the tools to get the word out.
People inside your organization are the most effective and authentic way to amplify the true story of what it’s like to be part of your team. In fact, they should be central to your employment brand strategy.
While you can (and should) provide your employees with content, opportunities and encouragement to share your story via social media, networking and referrals, you should also develop an incoming channel to hear their stories, too. Understanding how your culture is described, felt and passed along in employees words, pictures and feelings will help you develop language around your brand that resonates on a level no global brand could ever compete with.
3. Stop recruiting like it’s 1999.
To put it plainly, the most common mistake we see in organizations competing (and failing) for top talent losing touch with recruiting best practices.
Many mid-market firms still rely on outdated job postings, slow communication and cumbersome hiring processes. They’ll post jobs with no employee value proposition and simply cross their fingers the right people will find these jobs and apply.
Is that the type of job you’d end up taking? You’d probably never even catch sight of it. Today’s candidates expected to be courted with a high-touch experience. We live in a 24/7 news cycle with on-demand updates expected from every experience in our lives. That includes the job search.
Optimizing your candidate engagement with automated process updates, customized touch points and more time for one-on-one contact, will put your firm on firm footing to keep up with all levels of competition.
When you combine today’s recruiting technology with human touch, you’re giving your company the opportunity to build relationships with candidates and ensure your culture is communicated in a way that helps you and that candidate know you’re the right match.
Podcast: How Mid-Market Companies Compete With Global Firms For Talent
Advanced RPO President Pam Verhoff joined the HRO Today podcast to share how employment brand, meaningful work and the elegant balance of technology and high-touch experiences help mid-market companies compete for talent. Dig more into this topics and hear Pam Verhoff’s expert insights. Listen now.
