Highlighting company values in candidate marketing is a great strategy, but candidate experience must live up to them.

Employees are changing jobs at a greater clip than ever before. In an effort to stand out in recruiting, it’s smart to lean into your company values when marketing job openings. But if candidate experiences – and subsequent employee experiences – don’t live up to those values, you’ll lose the best candidates and your employer brand will suffer.

Employee experience is the arc of a person’s journey with a company. It starts with candidate experience, and that involves all the communications and interactions that take place between your company and every individual who represents you throughout the process of marketing, interviewing and selection of your new employee.

Like marketing a product, service or destination experience, your job advertisements are the first point of contact with job seekers. The ad sets the tone and the audience’s expectations of what they’ll get if they “buy into” your marketing and you invest in hiring them.

Audiences today are looking for experiences, whether they’re shopping for new shoes, a streaming app or a vacation spot. This is even more true when they’re looking at your candidate marketing. More than any previous generation, today’s Millennial and Gen Z workers are protective of their time, their experiences and their core values. And these things are reflected in which jobs they will consider and which offers they will accept.

Here are three ways to use this new reality to your best advantage in recruiting.

1. Put your company’s culture and values – not just the job description – in front of potential candidates

Feature your culture and values prominently in your job ads and other recruiting efforts. Job seekers aren’t just looking for work, they’re looking for a job they can feel good about, with a company that shares the values they hold dear in life. A job is about more than making money – it’s about their daily life experience: where and how they’ll invest their precious time. They want that time to be invested in working for an employer that resonates with their core values.

Here’s where we often see window dressing in job ads. Make sure your values are real – you want to attract people who will excel in your culture. Once hired, today’s job seekers hold their employers to a higher standard – they expect their candidate experience and employee experience to deliver on what’s stated in the marketing. And when it’s not in alignment, they are more likely to become disgruntled and be vocal about it to fellow employees, managers and on social media.

If your company doesn’t have a set of well-considered values beyond the template on your website, that’s your cue for a new project – one that will pay off in recruiting the kind of talent who will excel in your organization.

If you don’t know how to describe your culture and values in a compelling and realistic way, it may be helpful to partner with a consultant who can remain objective while helping you craft a realistic employment value proposition and employment brand.

2. Make sure your stated culture and values are aligned with reality

Obviously, recruiters can’t be responsible for ensuring that a company lives up to its stated culture, mission and values. But HR and recruiting functions DO play a pivotal role here. Let’s look at how this plays out in other marketing contexts.

Marketers work to garner the customers' interest and build their trust. But when a product or service doesn’t live up to customer expectations, complaints typically work their way up the chain – from bad reviews on social media and customer service calls to the product development team and the product marketing team who then have the responsibility to fix what’s broken.

Likewise, the HR and recruiting teams work to build the candidate’s trust. And, they’re also in the position of providing frontline customer service – getting the most direct information on things like the number of applicants, successful hires, employee retention and exit interviews.

When a company’s culture, mission and values aren’t lining up with the marketing hype, HR and recruiting have the DATA to prove it. That data is power because it translates directly to the company’s bottom line. This should empower HR and recruiting leaders to think strategically about the business value they can bring and speak to higher-level management about the importance of creating a company culture and values that will help recruit and retain the best employees. And don’t be caught off guard if your insights garner approval from management, be ready to act by having a plan to present on how to improve practices.

3. Demonstrate your culture by treating everyone with a personal touch

The employee experience starts with the candidate experience. From the beginning of your interaction with a candidate, your culture and values are represented by how you communicate with them. In this age of AI tools and online recruiting apps, job seekers already feel disconnected from actual people in most hiring processes. The employers, who take the extra step to provide a more personal connection, are already a step ahead of the competition for great candidates.

Treat everyone with a personal touch as you look for potential. This means everyone – even candidates who are not qualified for the position. This may sound like a lot of work, but it actually doesn’t take all that much time, and it will create a far more positive view of your company – both for candidates you hire and for those who might be qualified for something else in the future.

This doesn’t mean a personal phone call to each and every person to tell them they aren’t being considered for the job. But if you see an inkling of potential in a candidate who isn’t quite right for this job, reach out to them via email with a link to other job postings at your company for which they may be a better fit. Or simply let them know that you will keep their resume on hand in case a more fitting position opens up down the line.

And for everyone else, creating a thoughtful, encouraging and positive automated response doesn’t take much time and can make a meaningful difference in how folks perceive you and your employment brand. Additionally, the best hiring managers keep their own private network of future talent they can reference later, so encourage all of your managers to do the same. And when that talent already has a positive view of your company, you’re another step ahead.

If you don’t have the resources to provide that extra level of human touch, this may be an opportunity to reach out to an external resource that can provide you with interim recruiting and HR support. Either way, your efforts to communicate effectively with candidates are efforts that will pay off in the future and set your company apart from the competition.

Author Bio

Brenan German is President at Bright Talent, Inc. Connect Brenan German

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