This advent calendar presents practical tips from Potentialpark's research on how to improve the candidate experience. With a link to a free research presentation and event tickets at the end.
Today I opened Facebook and scrolled aaall the way back: to the year I opened my account. This is what I looked like back then, one of the first photos I ever uploaded:
This was with the Potentialpark team in Stockholm. (See the Chinese font of an Entrypark shirt in the back.) Facebook was 4 years old, and it had been 6 years since our first candidate survey at Potentialpark. You do the math...
So I thought, while everyone is making "trends" lists, but the same old Xmas evergreen songs are playing on the radio, what are the anti-trends, the talent evergreens? Things that have proven to be consistently true, year after year, about how talent ticks?
So fast forward, this is what I look like today (this is in Portugal with husband and friends):
As I'm writing this Calendar Door 21, I have been part of 21 years of candidate research. So what are the top 21 Talent Communication evergreens? Such that if they were Xmas songs, they would play on the radio all December long?
They are taken from the many surveys, employer cases, and hundreds of client projects and discussions. All in all I hope they will be helpful and also lift your spirits for the holidays:
1. Employer Branding is not mainly about how you are attractive, but how you are different. This should be reflected in all your communication.
2. Don’t try to do it all, but to beat your competitors. Remember, when a bear chases you and a friend, you only need to outrun your friend, not the bear. Identify who your competition is and prioritize what it takes to beat them.
3. The goal is not to make all talent like you, but the right talent. Someone will always complain. Identify who matters to you.
4. The tables have turned: candidates know more about you than you about them. Even when you interview them, they are actually interviewing you. Use job descriptions and application processes as your sales pitch.
5. Act as the voice of the candidates (internally): if you don’t lobby for change to make your organisation more talent-friendly, nobody will.
6. Act as the voice of the candidates (externally): no one represents the heart and soul of your organization better than you and your people. Choose partners and providers who complement your capacities and help you do your job, not those who promise to do it for you.
7. Internally, balance autonomy with cooperation: you have your own mission, audiences and goals, and at the same time valuable support can come from Corporate Comms and other internal partners.
8. Don’t design application processes that you would not want to go through yourself. Every hurdle and friction costs you talent, starting with those who need you the least.
9. No one likes to wait. And no one likes to enter a dark room. Meaning - be quick and transparent at every step of your recruitment processes, or you lose applicants and everything you invested in attracting them. Contiuous communication ensures candidates never feel like you forgot them.
10. Experiment, test and measure: without data from and about candidates, you are only guessing and don’t really know what works. And by the way, critical feedback is a goldmine.
11. Show don’t tell: it’s one thing to say you foster values like personal growth, respect or diversity. It's something else entirely to show how you do it. Actions count more than words.
12. When you have an idea for a campaign, name or slogan, be sure to Google it (including Google image) before using it. Ensure it's as unique as you were hoping.
13. You get out what you put in: costly signals can be effective precisely because they are costly. For example, dedicated career accounts on social media. Sure they cost more time than sharing accounts with Corporate Comms, but they also show true commitment to candidates. The same goes for having contact persons, career email addresses and hotlines to show you are approachable. Candidates feel when you cut corners.
14. Regularly create marketing strategies and campaigns even if you don’t have the budget to run them: “50% of the value of advertising is the process you go through in deciding what to say and who to say it to.” (Rory Sutherland.) Planning campaigns and target group propositions is valuable for honing your messaging and understanding your audience.
15. It’s usually a lot more costly to be first-mover than second-mover for new trends, technologies and channels. Second-movers benefit from the experience and hindsight: they can select what works and do it the way it has proven to work.
16. Twitter’s hashtag, Snapchat’s ephemeral stories, TikTok’s short videos: when a new social network hypes, look at what it does differently. This way you will be prepared when all the other channels copy it. New players change user behavior on social media in general.
17. Your best arguments are stories and examples from your people. Ambassadors, especially in contested talent niches, are powerful persuasion tools.
18. Word-of-mouth travels fast and far. Very far. Especially when it’s negative.
19. Trust is won slowly, and where it’s lost, very hard to regain.
20. Recruitment and Employer Branding are an investment. If your company treats them like a cost, you are doing it wrong or follow the wrong KPI.
21. Assume no one understands why Employer Branding matters the first 10 times they hear about it. But keep lobbying. Changing the mindset in an organisation takes time. But it happens, sometimes when you didn't expect it. You are on the right side of history. HR teams have moved mountains, again and again. Keep it up!
Hope to have you back for the next Door tomorrow.
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