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Marketing and HR don’t often go hand-in-hand, but according to this week’s podcast guest, they should. Too often the brand identity a company presents in its marketing efforts differs drastically from what candidates experience during the hiring and recruitment process. This can be massively detrimental to your company’s bottom line. Miira Leinonen of TalentAdore explains why in this podcast episode.
Old-Fashioned Recruiting vs. Personalized Recruiting
Companies are all about the bottom line, right?
What if we told you the way you treat employee candidates can have a huge effect on that bottom line? The reason lies in your recruitment process. Many times, candidates applying to work at your company are also customers or connected to potential customers. In this age of social media, customers (and former customers) are much more likely to discuss their experiences with your brand. If those discussions are negative, you run the risk of harming your brand identity in the long run.
To prevent this from happening, Miira recommends using a personalized recruitment process. Let’s get into how it differs from typical recruiting.
Old-fashioned Recruiting
We’ve all been there. You spend a lot of time and effort crafting your resume and cover letter for the job of your dreams, only to receive silence in return. Or worse — a rejection 1 year AFTER you applied. That’s what happened to Miira when she was younger and applied for a summer job.
The silence is frustrating. The delayed rejection? Even more so.
Miira compares the feeling to pouring your heart out in a love letter and getting nothing but crickets. Simply put, old-fashioned recruiting only involves communicating with the one person who gets the job and leaving the rest of the candidates in the dark.
Personalized Recruiting
In contrast to the current, yet old-fashioned, method of recruiting, Miira recommends communicating with job candidates throughout the hiring process. Let them know as you move each step closer to making your decision.
To help yourself and your candidates even more in the long run, you should send personalized feedback on what the candidates did well and how they can improve their resume or cover letter for future applications.
Although that may sound like a lot of work, it can only help your business, not hurt it. In fact, studies show that when you used personalized communication in your recruiting, more than 70 percent of rejected candidates are likely to recommend your company to their social circles. Compare this to the mere 20 percent recommendation rate of your typical recruitment process. These rejected candidates are also much more likely to apply to your company in the future, once they’ve become more experienced, or convince friends to apply.
That’s word-of-mouth marketing at its finest.
The best part of personalized recruiting?
It can be done in any industry. As long as you’re hiring people or plan to hire people in the future, you can take a personalized, empathy-led approach with your recruitment process.
Advice for Companies
If you’re looking to improve your company brand and bottom-line, take a look at your current hiring practices. A large number of people apply to companies each year, and many, if not most of them, are customers. This is a huge demographic that can make or break your company over time. The more negative experiences people have as candidates, the less likely people will be to purchase from your company or apply for job openings in the future.
If you can change your company mindset and begin treating candidates as individuals rather than ID numbers in a database, you’ll be presented with greater opportunities to present your brand in a positive light.
How to Get Started
Ready to adopt an empathy-led approach with your hiring? Here are the first steps you should take.
- Analyze what candidates actually think of you. This means taking a hard look at your current hiring process to determine what works and where the pain points are. Define the touchpoints you currently have with candidates and figure out where you can improve their experience.
- Unify your branding. In many companies, the HR and Marketing departments are not working together enough. Your brand as an employer and as a corporation should be unified, not separate, to ensure communication between your business and the community.
- Start building your talent community. The hiring process should be active on an ongoing basis, not simply when you need to fill a space in your company. Actively building your talent community and building positive relationships with potential candidates can help you fill roles quickly and easily.
KEY INSIGHTS
- A personalized approach to recruitment is more beneficial for companies and candidates than an old-fashioned approach.
- Maintaining brand reputation will ultimately affect your company’s bottom line.
- Candidates that have a positive recruitment experience are more likely to recommend your company, even if they aren’t hired.
MIIRA’S TAKEAWAYS
- Candidates are often customers. A poor recruitment experience can be enough to turn them off from both applying again in the future and continuing to purchase your products.
- Recruitment should be constant, not just when you want to hire someone.
- Communication is key in all steps of the recruitment process.
MORE FROM MIIRA
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