How To Create The Content Your Candidates Really Want

What do candidates want? If you’re picturing the infamous Notebook scene right now, you need not. Appealing to the wants of prospective talent, fortunately, isn’t as difficult as Rachel McAdams deciding between two beyond eligible bachelors. 

In actual fact, candidates know exactly what they want. We talked all about it in our latest EVP blog, where we delved deep into building an attractive EVP that appeals to exactly that! To summarise (we’re kind like that!), we talked about the importance of diving into the hearts and minds of your people to understand what truly motivates them to bring their best selves to work. And we can’t stress enough the importance of this before you start producing your recruitment marketing content. 

Why?

Well, how often have you seen an organisation’s beautiful social content and proclamation of how wonderful their workplace is, only to peek Glassdoor to discover that there is some serious disparity when it comes to expectation versus reality? 

This is because the organisation hasn’t taken the time to find what their employees’ value about working for their organisation before going to market and they’ve gone far too salesy with their employer branding initiatives, rather than being (buzz-word alert) authentic! Add in that 96% of job seekers say it’s important to work for a company that embraces transparency and you begin to see the importance of getting your EVP and messaging right.

So, you’ve got your EVP nailed, now what?

Okay, so you understand why your team gets up in the morning and comes to work. You have an EVP tailored to exactly that. Now you’re ready to articulate this to your talent personas, aka your perfect hire and target candidate in the hospitality and leisure sectors.

The first thing you need to know is where your candidates hang out. It’s a given that they’ll visit your careers site before applying for a role, so it’s essential to have an informative site that communicates your EVP. 

But did you know that a high percentage of of job seekers say they are likely to use social media in their job search? A further 64% of candidates said they’ll research a company online and 37% said they’ll move onto another job opening if they can’t find enough information on the company (Careerbuilder). Yes, this means it’s time to get on TikTok, or Reddit, or whatever social channel is your persona’s preference!

The Importance of Personalised Communication

EVP. Check. 

Channels. Check. 

Messaging? It’s crucial to communicate your EVP in a way that is real and consistent and it’s easy to bring to life a restaurant, pub or hotel right?. 

Telling candidates that you offer rapid career development isn’t going to have the same impact as the genuine stories and lived experiences of your employees. Remember the saying people buy people? It most definitely applies when it comes to recruitment marketing. Involve your teams, ask them questions surrounding their experiences surrounding your EVP and listen. You’ll find some real gems that can be shared on your careers site and social. 

It’s also key to make sure that your messaging is consistent across social, particularly as you scale up with recruitment and you hit volume requirements. Without this consistency you run a serious risk of creating a disjointed candidate experience. It’s okay to tweak your tone slightly for the audience, but your key messaging should remain consistent. Harri can help you maintain consistency in your messaging.

What Does a Strong Employer Brand Look Like?

A strong employer brand enables prospective talent to envisage themselves working for your organisation. Your EVP is an important component in this as it enables candidates to understand the value the organisation offers them through the eyes of those like them. A successful employer brand comes from the effective activation of this, bringing it life across the whole recruitment strategy, through employees and recruitment marketing channels and then on through the whole employment journey. 

There are many ways to measure the success of your employer brand, however, it’s important to remember that it’s extremely complex. For example, did you know that it takes, on average, 9 touchpoints for candidates to decide to apply for a role in qualified positions? Now you’ll understand why career site conversions to application aren’t a good indicator of how well your employer branding initiatives are working. 

We recommend a combination of the following based on the aims of your business:

  • Time spent on your careers site pages
  • Social media engagement (forget followers and impressions)
  • Hiring manager feedback
  • Expectation vs reality surveys 
  • Employee referral rates 
  • Employee engagement scores
  • New hire retention rate

Want to find out more about career branding and media and its impact on candidate and employee experience? Olajide is hosting the second in his series of webinars this week click here to register.