Branding & culture = one process

In this blog I have talked about the importance of a good candidate experience and that currently most companies are not getting it quite right. This is especially important to note as each candidate can either preach for or badmouth your brand. Therefore, it is paramount to improve the candidate experience and create future ambassadors for your brand.

In this blog I will give you some solutions towards how to improve your candidate experience and fix possible problems; to find or attract the right people and to give them the best experience of your brand.

Fixing the basics

So how do you improve your candidate experience, avoid candidate backlash and become a better employer overall? Well first, let’s look at the basics and start off with the recruitment profile. The recruitment profile is, in modern day companies, maybe one of the most recycled documents. Not only in terms of layout, but often also in terms of text. Now this in and of itself does not have to be a bad thing, but try and be specific in what you are looking for and avoid general qualities that we expect all functioning human beings to have. Remember, the recruitment profile is not only important to find the right person, but it is also a profile on which you should base your communication (more on that later).

In your recruitment profile you should be brutally honest in what you need and very specific in what you are looking for, so don’t beat around the bush. Only then can you find the right candidate and can the right candidate find you. Furthermore, this has the advantage that you can always open up your scope later on if you cannot find the right candidate initially (trust us, this is better than a general profile which attracts 50+ candidates daily).

Another point here is that you might realize that you need something different than the candidates you have seen to fit the profile so far. Then don’t be afraid to change it and keep the profile as a base for the recruitment.  

Last but not least, if you want to attract new talent, then let others review the profile as well. Their insights and criticism might be crucial for something new and revolutionary. This is especially true if you need to replace a leaving employee with a new hire. In that case, you might not want more of the same, but something new and transforming.

Communication

Secondly, let’s talk communication. Marriage counsellors, salespeople, my mom and dad, almost everybody believes that the key to a good relationship is clear communication. Communication within recruitment often comes in three forms:

1. Digital communication (emails)
2. Telephone and video calls
3. Interviews and in-person meetings

Therein there are two things very important: speed and clarity. As this blog shows, most candidates believe that their experience would have been better if the communication (from the employer) would have been better. This includes responding and giving updates when there is nothing to give an update on, for example; when you are waiting for feedback. Try to keep the candidate up to date with the knowledge you have up until that point even if that is barely more than you have informed them last time.

One way of doing so could be automatically triggered messages which get send to the candidate once something happens to the status of his or her application. The reason is simple; the candidate feels involved and heard. They feel that they are a part of the relationship and the process. So be fast and be clear. That is what candidates are longing for.

How you design you communication is dependent on three factors:

1. the recruitment profile (you might address a VP of engineering differently than an intern)
2. the form of communication (emails, phone calls or face-to-face meetings)
3. how far the candidate is in the process (you can reject somebody in the beginning stages with an email, in final stages nothing less than a phone call is acceptable)

When in contact with candidates always show apathy and understanding for your situation. Every candidate has spent at least three to four hours on his or her application and they are very invested in your company. So, try to place yourself into their situation and treat them with care and hospitality. Understand that you are not only dealing with them, but also with their private life, preferences, values, their entire situation. It could be that a candidate had a rough day and is therefore easily frustrated, so be prepared to show understanding on a professional level. Try to connect as well besides just the job role and to create a bond with the candidate. Small things could be the weather, holidays or other events of that sort. Try to avoid religion, politics and social issues as you never know what their stance or background is on that. In that sense you have to stay professional and without bias.

This shows already that it is very hard to fit a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution and that is where we want to get at. This is not going to be an easy and simple fix, but there are solutions, which brings us to our third point: personalized standardization.

Personalized standardization

In the world of messaging there are mainly two ways of sending messages, either personalized or standardized. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Personalized messaging will create a better bond but it takes time and standardized messaging is easier to execute on mass, but it makes for a less strong bond. Therefore, I would argue to take best from both worlds.

Some (parts of) messages always remain the same “Thank you for your application”, “We look forward hearing from you”, “We are reaching out to you because of your experience at XYZ” etcetera. So, feel free to use standardized messaging, but always use a small personal twist in them so the candidate feels that you are trying to establish a better bond with them and that you are not simply copying and pasting every message to each candidate. This can be small talk about their application, something specific they wrote in their letter or CV, or something completely unrelated, just remember: it needs to be easily accessible for the candidate and politically correct. Holidays are a personal favourite of mine but try and figure out what works for you.

If you find something that works, stick with it, even if it becomes repetitive for you, because what is repetitive for you is not repetitive for each new candidate you get in touch with.

Higher integration and prioritization of recruitment

For most hiring managers recruitment is a necessary means to an end. They need somebody for their team and therefore they need to go through (the mostly unwanted) process of recruiting. That attitude needs to change.

Recruitment needs to be an ongoing part of the work of a hiring manager, even if there is no urgent position to be filled right now. At Google every employee is bound to spend 20% of his or her time on hiring (read more about what we can learn from Google here) and so should your hiring managers. Only that way you can find the talent you need. Weekly recruitment meetings need to be established wherein vacancies, candidates and feedback are discussed.

Direct feedback processes need to be created wherein the feedback does not go via a recruiter but comes from the hiring manager or reviewing expert themselves. This requires some training and practice, but yields better satisfaction as the candidate is directly getting feedback from the experts and able to ask them questions directly. This takes time of your HR employee’s hands which they then can use for sourcing better candidates and to look after their needs.

Involving the team will also create a better understanding for the struggles which accompany recruitment and makes the team also more understanding if some recruitments take longer than expected. This integration and prioritization of recruitment in your organization will ultimately affect the speed by which you communicate with your candidates, and that is ultimately the best thing one can improve according to candidates themselves.

In conclusion

Candidate experience is hard to improve, but necessary. It is an important aspect of your employer branding and requires careful planning and altering. The main points you should be focussing on are:

1. setting up a precise recruitment profile;
2. clear and fast communication;
3. personalized standardized messaging, and;
4. a higher integration and prioritization of recruitment.

If you need help with any of these aspects or if you need us to take off the entire process off your hands? Get in touch with us and see what we can do for you!

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Most people see recruitment as a necessary means to an end and perceive the process with a clear starting point (the internal hiring need) and a clear end (the hired candidate). However, in contrary to popular believe, recruitment is a never-ending process. In previous blog I have already explained why recruitment does not stop after you have found the right candidate. But what if you are already stuck before that stage? What if the perfect candidate never seems to show up? In this blog I will discuss 6 tips which help you to find your future candidate and transform your recruitment operations into a continuously developing process.  

Knowing yourself is important to know what you want

Firstly, we are going to start with the basics. Whenever you are looking out for people, you need to make sure that you know what you as a company stand for. In this sense you need to have a thought-out vision and mission of what you aim to achieve with your company. Furthermore, you need to know what kind of internal culture you have and what values are shared in this culture. This is important because most people nowadays are not convinced by just a pure salary raise anymore. Most people are motivated by companies with whom they can identify with and who share their personal values. Now that you have identified your vision, mission, culture and values, it is time to work with them, which brings us to the second tip.  

Translate and communicate your message

Now that your vision, mission, culture and values are set up, it is important to display them. First and foremost, you should of course display this on your website and LinkedIn, but besides that there are also other target group focussed forums. You can think of websites, conventions or breakfast seminars which your potential candidates often visit. Don’t be afraid to be creative, in this sense it is better to be too active than too passive. Have you ever heard of guerrilla marketing? Well, that just might catch the attention of your future employee, against often budget friendly costs. Besides this, your recruiters also need to be well-trained in understanding, translating and identifying your own vision, mission, culture and values. It is therefore important that they work together with staff from your marketing department to gain those skills and to set up the right messaging towards your potential candidates. Furthermore, they are also the ones that need to identify the candidates whose values align with your own.  

Expand your network and nurture candidates

Another thing that you can start to do tomorrow is to get in touch with different recruiters or HR employees from other companies and start making them part of your network to increase the possibilities of a referral. Go to conventions, breakfast seminars and conferences to get in touch with them. In this sense it is important to know that a strong way to expand your network is to do favours for others before you can reap the rewards. This might sound like you are getting more work on your hands, but who knows; what may seem like an impossible profile for somebody else, might just be floating around in your talent pool. When talking about talent pools it is also important to remember to nurture the candidates who you have not hired. An applicant with the wrong profile for a previous vacancy might be the perfect candidate for a new vacancy. You should therefore regularly nurture their excitement for your company and go through your talent pool to see if you can find that hidden gem that you might forgot about. One way to continuously increase your talent pool is to open up ongoing vacancies where people can list their open application.  

Promotion and internal hiring boards

Did you just lose an incredible manager/team leader/senior team member and are you wondering how you will ever fill his or her position? Perhaps an internal promotion is a possibility. Maybe one of the team members is ready to step up and, if he or she is provided with training, be your new amazing superstar. Internal promotion has three advantages over external hiring: it’s cheaper, it’s faster, and the candidate already knows your company/product. Of course, the fact remains that there will be a gap in the team if you promote one of its members, but this, in most cases, is an easier recruitment than the incredible superstar that you lost. If the team members are not an option or if there is not even a team to speak of in the first place, then internal hiring boards could be an option. Internal hiring boards are basically vacancy boards of internal vacancies that not have been externally published yet and where only internal employees can apply for. A lot of managers are cautious for this, because they fear that their best employees might leave their department and they say that this is just a way of moving the problem. I would argue that this is the wrong way of thinking. Firstly, yes, your employee might move from your department, and yes, that moves the problem to your department. However, you should always realize that people are looking for ways to develop themselves, so letting them develop themselves within the company benefits the company as a whole. Again, it might be easier to find somebody for the new gap in your department as it is to find for the gap your company is experiencing right now (there is most likely a very valid reason that somebody is reading this blog right now). Furthermore, I would argue that this shows your employees that there will always be possibilities to develop themselves, which can motivate them to stay instead of leaving for a possibility to develop themselves at another company.  

Internal training and development

Continuing on the previous note, it is important to plan out what your employees are capable of right now and where they want to be in five to ten years. In this sense development plans should be one of the key priorities for any HR department. Firstly, because it simply keeps your employees happy and loyal if they have a sense of development and, secondly, because you can prepare and train them for the more specific and hard-to-fill vacancies which are upcoming in the future. This again intertwines with the first point, that you should know who you are as a company and strategically plan ahead for the future. So organisational charts need to be drawn up, both from the present and where you expect to be. Then you need to identify who can fill the potential upcoming (senior) positions and what he or she needs, in terms of training, to be able to fulfil that position. Actively be engaged with your employees and take them with you on this journey of development. The backend developer of today can be your architect of tomorrow.  

There is a truth in numbers

As with most things in life, there is a certain truth in numbers. The bigger your pool of candidates, the larger the odds that the right candidate is in there. In this sense it might be a good idea to try quantity over quality and expand the parameters that you’ve got from the hiring manager. When you are searching for people the pool of potential candidates increases if you decrease the hiring manager’s requirements. Maybe the candidate does not require a full five years of experience? Maybe experience in a related industry can be equivalent to experience in your own industry? Maybe managing twenty people requires the same type of management skills as it does when managing ten? Try to send through some candidates and resumes with the expanded parameters and see what works for your individual vacancy. It is in this sense also the recruiter’s job to push back a bit on the requirements of the hiring manager, because too often we see that hiring managers are looking for a unicorn that is fluent in five languages, has four degrees, and more than twenty years of experience in the industry. The reality is that unicorns do not exist, but it is our job to show them that and to come with a viable alternative.  

In conclusion

When looking out for your future candidates you should start with the basics and have a good story on who you are as a company and what you are trying to achieve. Then you need to get your message out there, both through online and conventional ways; be creative! After that you need to work with your network, most predominantly: expand it. Find ways to get in touch with fellow HR colleagues in the field and see if you can use their network. Furthermore, don’t forget about internal hiring and promoting your employees, and last, but not least, try to push back on the requirements for the profile and expand the parameters of your search to get a bigger pool of potential candidates.    

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