Imagine this. Your company is growing. Because of recruitment challenges, you found yourself partnering with an embedded recruitment team. A couple of weeks, and a few thousand pounds later, candidates keep dropping through the recruitment process. And thankfully, you think you’ve managed to recruit the top talent you’re looking for.
Only for the candidates to start dropping out of the process at the final hurdle.
How would you feel? What could have gone wrong?
Yello reports that the top reasons why candidates drop out of a hiring process include confusing job applications, long hiring job processes, poor interview experiences, a lack of candidate communication, and failing to collect candidate feedback.
All these trickles down to the recruitment team representing your brand in the hiring process.
Your Branding And Why It Matters
Let’s go back a bit to the basics.
BRANDING. We generally refer to it as the brand color, font, designs, anything to make your company visually appealing.
YES, but NO.
Branding is way more than what meets the eye. And most of the time, it’s what’s not most often seen that really matters most. It’s the tone of voice, benefits and culture, values, CVP (Candidate Value Proposition), what your team says about you, and most importantly your people.
Branding is not just an image but an experience, a journey.
Why exactly would they want to work with you? How would you like stakeholders to feel when they engage in your business? What would you like for them to experience? How do you want them to view your business as a whole? BRANDING.
Having a strong, prominent, and unique brand will help you attract and retain top-tier talent around the globe. All these impact your brand’s influence and credibility.
It’s A Candidate-Driven Market
LinkedIn reports that 75% of employees research a brand before sending an application. What we have is a competitive market for top talent, this is where your branding makes a difference.
Part of your branding is your CVP (Candidate Value Proposition), basically how you value candidates and what you can offer.
This is why we’ve created the 6F Methodology to really understand and grasp what drives a candidate and even employees to stay happy and motivated at work.
Let’s just say you’re now ready with your brand – in depth branding, competitive CVP, wholesome workplace, positive culture. Awesome.
Now, the adventure begins to recruit and find top talents. With recruitment challenges, you find yourself with an embedded recruitment partner for maybe some or any of these reasons:
- Lacking recruitment capacity in your team
- Having gaps in TA capabilities, functions or geographies
- Behind in your hiring plan
- Entering a new location or setting up a new business area
- Lacking business buy in to TA strategy
- Unable to attract passive talent
The list could go on. Basically, someone goes into your business and takes over all the hiring needs – an embedded recruiter.
It’s critical that your partner embodies your company brand. Let’s look at two sides of the story.
The Not-So-Good Side
An embedded recruiter will represent your brand to the candidates. What happens when they don’t…?
Don’t treat candidates how you would treat them. Because they don’t embody the values that you’ve built within your brand, they don’t treat them the way that you would. How they treat the candidates will give the candidate the impression that this is how you treat the people in your company.
Spray and pray. Ah, the good ol’ enemy of recruitment. This, you should avoid like a plague. Sadly, this is common especially in contingent recruitment. Recruiters send out bulk messages to mass candidates that don’t even have the proper qualifications. Spray as many messages as possible and pray that it works.
This leaves candidates wondering why this message even ended up in their inbox, thinking X company’s strategy of hiring is sending spam messages to whomever it ends up with.
Candidate ghosting. The worst part of job hunting is not the interview or the background check. It’s the waiting. This kind of ties up with the first two. Spam messages end up in multiple inboxes, now you have a pool of responses some qualified and some barely making it. The recruiter then picks out just the best ones and leaves the others hanging disappearing like a bubble. Ghosting at its finest.
Negative candidate experience. All mentioned above trickles down to a bad candidate experience. Remember, because your partner is recruiting for you, they don’t just see the bad experience coming from the recruiter but from your company as well.
Word of mouth. People tell other people. If they’ve had a bad experience engaging with your company, they will tell. As Stephen Covey said, “…just as word-of-mouth advertising is the highest form of advertising.” This type of marketing has been proven to be really affective. And free! It’s up to you to put it in good use.
Now, to the brighter side of this. Yay!
When a Recruiter Embodies Your Brand
First, literally all the opposites of what’s mentioned above! Moreover, when an embedded partner embodies your brand…
Your embedded partner will live and breathe your brand. They will spend just as much time needed to really get a deep understanding and a good grasp of your brand, embodying your values in every step of the process.
The candidates will see and experience what you want them to. A much-needed proper representation of your brand. A great partner cares. They will care about your brand and will do so accordingly to reflect your company’s great image.
They’ll have everyone bought in. Your partner will make sure to spend time (lots of time!) making sure that everybody is bought in and convinced of this decision. This also gives your embedded partner a chance to understand each and everyone’s picture. Everyone on the same page.
Just as much as we want the candidate to be happy, so do we want for the existing team. Everybody is happy.
Continuity. Because your team is bought in and happy, they will more likely be using the same partner’s services for future hiring needs thus creating continuity with the same quality results.
Great candidate experience. A great partner cares about the candidates just as they care about your brand. Your talent partners make sure that the qualified candidate they reach out to will have proper communication.
This means transparency and engagement throughout – from the moment the they send the message to the moment the candidate either accepts or even rejects the offer.
Right hire, first time, every time. A partner that embodies your brand will understand your pain points and know how to address them. We’re not talking about a general solution. We’re talking about a bespoke solution tailored especially where you need it, giving you the right hire, first time, every time.
When the right candidate enters your company, they will stay for all the right reasons (Don’t forget the 6F Methodology! *wink emoji*). You’ll have less of a headache about employee retention.
Long story short, VERY IMPORTANT. An embedded partner who embodies your brand is very important. That’s not an option.
Your brand is a journey. A journey that will narrate your story. Make it the best experience a candidate can have. And remember…
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
If you want to partner up with an embedded team who embodies your brand, reach out to us. Our expert team will be glad to discuss how we can tailor a solution to fit your hiring needs all while truly embodying your brand.
