What’s your recruiting reputation?
10 steps to test the appeal of your company, and convert more job offers into confirmed starters.
When candidates research your company, what will they find? It’s a key question because it could make the difference between good-quality candidates applying for your vacancy or being put off the idea for good.
It’s clearly impossible to control everything that’s said and written about your company. If there’s anything less than complimentary out there about your company and its people – past or present – they will find it.
What you can control is the overall story; the perception of your business and where it’s headed. Here are 10 steps you can take to win over promising candidates and give you an advantage over competitors fishing in the same small talent pool.
1. Keep job adverts up-to-date
For a candidate, there’s nothing worse than reading to the bottom of a job advert, only to find that the closing date was last week. At best, it gives the impression that you’re not on the ball. It’s simple to fix – set a reminder of closing dates and make it someone’s job to take down ads the moment they’ve closed.
2. Search Google!
It’s obvious, but it’s exactly what candidates will do first. Your internal recruitment team needs to check for any contradictory or out-of-date information. You’ll need to update your own website or contact third-party sites to correct any errors.
3. Deal with bad PR
Candidates may find stories or articles that cast your company in a bad light. Unless they’re both untrue and defamatory, you probably won’t be able to get them taken down. Expect to be questioned about them by candidates and have a response ready. You might need to explain what happened and how it was dealt with.
4. Differentiate yourself from competitors
As well as researching your company, candidates may well look at your competitors and ask you about them at interview. If they say: “it looks like X, Y and Z are doing the same thing”, it gives you the chance to articulate your USP. Better still, you can get one step ahead by making sure your online content and marketing material really does differentiate you.
5. Tell your growth story
Diligent candidates won’t just Google your name alone. They’ll type in additional terms like “investment round” or “funding”. What shows up is likely to be straightforwardly factual stories from the financial and business press. But why not write your own growth story, giving the background and future plans as well as the facts and figures.
6. Highlight success stories
Everybody says that people are their company’s most important asset. But most don’t harness this highly effective, and free, asset for recruitment. Get candidates to tell their stories or – better still – record professional-looking videos saying why they applied and what they enjoy most about working for you.
7. Explain board-level changes
Picture a candidate reading the business press or searching the Companies House website. Will they find evidence of comings and goings at board level? If the answer’s yes, the most important thing is to be prepared to be asked about them – and have a succinct answer ready.
8. Appeal to candidate’s motivations
Stats or infographics can help your job adverts stand out by appealing to motivating factors like prestige, job satisfaction and career progression. Add phrases like “95% of our engineers are promoted within six months” or “95% of people we hire stay for at least two years” to augment the factual details.
9. Talk to former employees
There’s no better advocate of your company than a former employee who left on good terms. One way of harnessing this powerful force is to interview them. Publish an article or a video in which they explain why they liked working for you and why they moved on. It gives candidates a positive impression of the way your business works.
10. Be active on social media
The best way of pushing positive messages about your business to the forefront of candidate’s minds is to publish them. Social media is ideal for this, as well as being the place where people spend a great deal of time at work and home. This approach also sows a seed in someone’s mind – even if they don’t apply for another year or two.
This blog is extracted from our ‘Improve Your Process’ Insider’s Guide. For your free copy, get in touch.