Is your Job Ad the weakest link in your hiring process? -Part 2- Communicating company culture

77% of job seekers consider a company’s culture before applying for a job.-Source

48% of people who quit in the first year say it was due to unrealistic expectations of the job.

The #1 obstacle in the application process is not knowing what it’s like to work at an organisation.-LinkedIn

According to SHRM, a realistic preview of an employer’s organizational culture and the job role allows candidates to evaluate their own fit. It also promotes conversation instead of interrogation. As we showed in our first part of the Job Ad making process, what occurs early in the job-hiring process influences the subsequent attitudes and behaviors of new employees. With many new employees also choosing to resign within the first 90 days of a new job, it’s pertinent that both the employer and candidate do better to evaluate job-team-company fit as early as possible. To be specific, an effective hiring process guarantees the following;

• Impact on Job Offer Acceptance
• Impact on Turnover
• Impact on Job Satisfaction

This is because two match-ups occur when a new person is hired: The employer matches its job requirements with the individual’s qualifications and the individual matches his or her needs with the organizational culture and the specific job’s requirements. So what can you do to communicate these two better during hiring? Well first things first;

1. Do a brand audit. This is an analytical strategy that studies the aspects that make up a brand. These include;

• The target market and the ideal clientele
• The overall strategy and goals
• Innovation in the products and services the brand provides
• Visual messaging and storytelling through marketing efforts
• Advertising strategies linked to marketing goals
• Customer experience and success, including user experience of websites and apps
• Brand awareness and positioning in the marketplace

60% of the general public will choose a place to work based on their beliefs and values-Source: Edelman Trust 2022

As you can see, this is the most critical part of your hiring strategy because by being clear about your what, why, who & where, your hiring team becomes more effective and reduces time, effort & cost. This also ensures you become clear on what your Unique Selling Proposition is. As I mentioned here, I can’t tell how many times I’ve been in an interview and asked Why should I work here? only to be met by blank faces and multiple uhs. Your branding strategy also ensures consistency across all communication channels. We can't expect candidates to communicate clearly if we don’t do the same.

2. Assess your organization's culture HONESTLY. Look at previous company data that can shed more light on how best to describe you. This includes external marketing data and internal data eg employee engagement tools, performance evaluation reports, recruiting funnel data, website tools eg candidate surveys, and social media data.

3. Involve multiple stakeholders. Recruiters now have become part-time data analysts, storytellers, and relationship builders. One of the top mistakes we highlighted in ads is also incongruence with regard to the job description and requirements. Most new joiners who quit early often cite a mismatch between what was in the ad versus what they actually do on the job. This can be avoided if hiring managers and recruiters work together with other people e.g. the previous job holder, team, top leadership, and supervisors to describe honestly what the role entails in content & context.

Different methods you can use;

For you to provide a better picture of the job, team, and company, you will have to go beyond the job advertisement. Marketing works by leveraging multiple sources of information otherwise you’ll end up having a bloated long ad as we showed in Part 1. It’s also ineffective trying to communicate ALL your information in the same format. It becomes monotonous to the candidate and lacks creativity. So here are some tips;

• Create compelling, complete & accurate Recruiting Marketing materials e.g. videos, photos, text, employee testimonials, brochures, presentations, audio, infographics, reports, flyers, blogs, etc. There are truly endless ways you can relay information to users across multiple channels. I know of an international NGO that has great reviews on Google Maps! Tie this together in a neat content calendar and you have an annual recruiting marketing planner. Multiple content options can be employee testimonials, career highlights, new team announcements, leadership changes, and new jobs. You should also share your hiring processes and what candidates can expect. Half of your content should be unstructured, fun, and employee-led eg day in the life, AMAs, holiday posts, inspirational quotes, giveaways, behind-the-scenes, industry updates, or fun facts. For more on emotional branding, read our latest article here.
• Realistic Job Previews- RJPs are used to give a candidate manageable expectations about what the job entails. This can be done through Fellowships, Job rotations & internships. These are essential in not only providing strong candidate pipelines but also giving future candidates some real work experience. You can also meet with co-workers who have done the work and observe or shadow them.
• Job Tests- Work simulation exercises, role plays, case studies, job shadowing- The candidate gets to understand how exactly their work would be and sets the expectation clear about performance deliverables and duties.
• Community- Meeting peers can help in addressing job-specific questions. Networking provides a more natural way for interested candidates to meet your employees, assess team fit and company culture, and ask clarifying questions. You can also build your online & offline communities of interested talent or organize events or meetups and this makes it easier to source for open jobs. This is a strategy big tech companies have used for decades to meet hiring goals eg diversity groups at Facebook. I’ve shared more on this here. Email marketing also remains untapped by recruiters to share jobs and content easily to a limited few. By engaging your current employees in your efforts to bring in new employees, you’re guaranteed a higher success rate of employee advocacy. Read more on this here. Community also includes engaging your alumni actively to enhance your brand perception.

Candidates trust employees 3x more than the employer to provide information on working at the company.

Photo by Antenna on Unsplash

The top three channels for improving employer brand according to Linkedin are:

Company website (69%)

Online professional networks (61%)

Social media (47%).

• Career Website- Most companies I’ve seen have career pages that are bland, common, and uninspiring. Since this is the first piece of marketing most candidates will access, be sure to invest heavily in a good web design & user experience. Work with a UX researcher together with the information from your brand audit to design an effective careers page. Maximize the most out of your space by linking all your different pieces of marketing so people can always access more relevant & updated information about your company page. Also have a good mix of text, graphics and video to keep the user engaged mentally. Make as much career information publicly available as possible especially since most companies don’t provide candidates with a channel for asking questions. Tie all this to your data analytics tool to capture key marketing metrics and insights eg the content most engaged, the location, and the age of users. Data tells a story. Read our follow-up article on how to revamp your careers page.
• Informational Interviews- Starting from a high level give the candidate a snapshot of the company, values, mission, products, etc before diving into the role itself setting a clear standard for what’s important and the context that their role will take place in. A good interview also dedicates a minimum of 5 minutes introducing the company, team, and job in that order. This also helps the candidate become more at ease and not feel like a one-sided show. Talk about your own personal experiences, invite the team to participate in the interviews, set up a team video to send to candidates beforehand, and invite questions during the session.
• Social Media- Any recruiting strategy that lacks a clear social media action plan in this day and age is doomed to fail. For more on this, check out this earlier piece on the future of professional networking and social media.
• Visualization tools- How can you engage users visually in a way text can’t? Facility/Office tours, Site visits, Networking happy hours, VR, and Gamification. They let the candidate imagine seeing themselves in the role, where they’ll sit, who are their coworkers etc. It allows them to observe the work environment and the interactions among employees. For multinationals or offices with several locations, technology can come in handy to onboard a new person to your company. Visualization is a powerful way to create emotional bonds between you & your candidates.
• Virtual storytelling?-After COVID-19, many teams globally switched to virtual recruiting. With an increase in remote teams as well, here are a couple of ways companies are innovating around virtual candidate experience eg by providing virtual office tours.
• Employer review sites- 84% of job seekers use company reputation to inform job applications according to Glassdoor. I’ve met so many recruiters in interviewers who weren’t aware of their online reviews. Many are quick to dismiss any concerns you may raise as “not all employees leave on good terms.” The reality is that candidates research on review sites just like customers read product reviews. They’re also taking note of how you respond to the negative reviews on these sites.

All in all, the key to employer branding is transparency and connection. Choose to open up your company to prospecting candidates during & off hiring. Got any more ideas about how you can communicate and evaluate company culture fit? Please share them below in the comments.

Still looking for more? Check out our follow-up article 5c9f3f6cef4bhttps://medium.com/jobonics/is-your-job-ad-the-weakest-link-in-your-hiring-process-part-3-cffd57aca588 Applying key advertising principles to job advertising.