Tell Candidates What They Really Want to Know
A step-by-step guide to storytelling for recruiting
“You see, it doesn’t matter what you know, what you have, or what you need if you can’t convey it to anyone else.” – James Whittaker
Over the last decade, the concept of an “employer brand” has gone from revolutionary to standard practice for most companies. As the talent market continues to heat up, we are hearing from companies that they need a new tool to help bolster recruiting efforts. We might not be the first ones to identify this tool, but we’d humbly like to suggest a name for it: the employer story.
Too often a candidate’s first point of contact is a job req, and if that brick of text doesn’t strike their fancy, they’ll click away and never return. If they’re interested, they’ll start Googling your company, but they rarely find answers to their most pressing questions: Who would I work with? What do the offices look like? What would I learn? Think of your recruiting efforts like fishing: to reel in candidates, you need different tasty-looking flies — those are your employer stories.
“Throughout this process, we encourage you to think of each candidate as a customer or a user.”
To help you catch the attention of the best candidates, we’ve outlined five steps (below) you can take to develop your employer stories and help turn your organization into a destination for great people. We’ve interviewed candidates from sales, tech, and design; surveyed thought leaders across the recruitment marketing space; called out inspiring examples from leading recruiting organizations; and built exercises that will help you find similar success.
Throughout this process, we encourage you to think of each candidate as a customer or a user. It’s important to understand their experience as they explore new jobs — and to take every opportunity to improve it. If you want to win over candidates who will make the biggest positive impact on your company, start by making the process of getting to know you as enjoyable as possible.
1. Explore Your Employee Value Propositions (story + worksheet)
BTW, Job Portraits uses storytelling to helps high-growth startups scale their teams. If you’d like to hear more, we’d love to talk!
