By Luke Parry, Director - Employer Brand & Tech Consulting
In the talent attraction world, there is still a tendency to think of the employer brand primarily in terms of framework, pillars, messaging and content – and to pay little attention to how that brand interacts with the tech stack through which it is amplified. But it is your tech stack that curate’s content and messaging at every step of the candidate journey, helping move talented individuals from an initial awareness of your employer brand to becoming engaged new starters.
That’s why the integration of your employer brand and your recruitment technology is essential if you’re going to get the right message to the right people at the right time, minimise attrition, maximise engagement and leverage the power of data to continually evolve both your brand and your recruitment processes.
AI and personalisation – taking a leaf from product marketing’s book
Candidates – particularly those from generation Z – increasingly expect their experience of applying for a job to align closely with their online experience as a consumer. This means AI and personalisation is becoming ever more important in enabling employers to deliver content that aligns with their target audiences’ life stage, career level, values and media preferences.
Unsurprisingly, given their ecommerce know-how, retailers are often leading the way in this. A good example is a multinational store that targets female consumers who’ve bought nappies with career advertising containing positive stories about working mothers in their organisation. From being reminded when you’ve got a half-filled application, to serving up other relevant roles to candidates who’ve shown a past interest in your organisation, leveraging the data that’s built up through former interactions is key to an effective recruitment marketing strategy. This personalisation should be reflected not only in the messaging served up through targeted advertising, but also in the way the candidate can navigate your career site, apply for a role, or even be onboarded.
Marketing automation – helping you understand your talent pipeline
Marketing Automation is a new technology that’s gaining increasing traction. Talent acquisition and recruitment marketing teams are becoming progressively more aware that they need to understand which candidates are cold, warm and ‘hire-ready’ in real time. “Marketing Automation is a technology that gives employers the ability to track and score each prospective candidate’s interactions with their recruitment content,” says Scot McRae of Candidate ID (now an iCIMS company). “This enables recruitment marketers to really determine what channels and content are driving the most interest and gives talent sourcers the data they need to determine which people to spend their valuable human time talking to.”
An application process that drives engagement not attrition
A highly successful marketing campaign can begin to haemorrhage candidates if the application process isn’t right. You’ve developed an EVP with strong segmented messaging, created a TikTok video campaign that’s gone viral to spread that messaging, and gained over 100,000 clicks through to your career’s website. Then the candidate comes up against a repetitive, lengthy and cumbersome application process that takes over half an hour. The result? Frustration and a high level of drop off.
Single capture forms that are simple to use and can be completed in under 2 minutes, or quick application processes via LinkedIn can drastically improve the number of candidates that will go from click to completed application. (It’s worth thinking about your own shopping journey here. How many times have you abandoned purchasing an item due to a lengthy process where you have to give your life story, vs. the streamlined “buy now” function on Amazon?) Personalisation is once again key here, matching the candidate to the type of application process that suits them.
Assessments that work for selector and candidate
How do you create a selection process that produces all the information you need to make fair, inclusive, robust decisions, whilst also delivering an experience that will enthuse your candidates and turn them into brand advocates?
“In EMEA, we have seen new best-in-class technology solutions are delivering game-based assessments that do just that,” says Jared Skey of Cognisess. “It results in candidate satisfaction scores of 80%+, rising to 95%+ for generation Z whilst also allowing for rich data collection that can be used in the selection process and beyond.” Information on candidate’s strengths, weaknesses and skill gaps can then be used post-hire in the onboarding process and in your new starter’s ongoing career, to help inform training and development needs.
These assessment systems can seamlessly integrate with your ATS meaning a candidate can go from initial engagement to fully assessed in a matter of minutes. A further advantage of such gamification solutions is that they’re ideally suited for selecting cognitively diverse candidates, as you can intentionally select for a wide variety of viewpoints and approaches.
Enriching onboarding and reducing attrition
For onboarding, a similar lens should be applied. The candidate should be able to receive content that’s relevant to their location, division and job type, and have the chance to engage one to one with their manager, buddy and new starter peers online. All of which can be achieved by using a digital onboarding platform, which makes creating personalised content simple. This will help you to cement the employer brand at every touch point from offer through to the end of the first 90-day period, driving down attrition, reducing the likelihood of successful counter offers and delivering stronger loyalty and engagement.
At Cielo, our employer brand and tech consultancy functions work together, alongside our recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solutions, to make sure that you have an engaging brand that sits on top of tech and processes to deliver the best possible candidate experience. Rather than shoehorning your EVP into your technology architecture, we can help you leverage the power of your tech stack to amplify your employer brand.
