When engaging with companies for recruitment, I’m asked a lot of interesting questions. Here are the most common:
- What candidates do you have? Are they good?
- How much are our competitors paying for salaries?
- Can you get a strong senior engineer for us?
- Would you give us a discount on fees?
- If our budget is X can we get candidates with Y years’ experience?
These questions are asked by impressive and smart people. But! Not only are these the wrong questions, but asking them prevents companies from reaching their talent goals.
Of course, I can and often do answer these questions. However, the answers never help the company or hiring manager to unlock the secrets to hiring the right talent. So, what are they missing? What should they be asking?
The big missing piece is their Employee Value Proposition (EVP). How is our company and working life seen by the talent market and what can we do to improve it? A good agency recruiter will know a company’s reputation in the market better than anyone.
Employee Value Proposition & What’s At Stake
In today’s intensely competitive talent market, your marketing and branding are super powerful: positively or negatively. Your company’s brand as an employer is there before a recruiter even speaks to a candidate. How you are seen by the talent market influences your hiring chances before you can send an InMail. How you have marketed your company and working culture will decide if candidates come to an interview or pull out.
“A negative (or mediocre) reputation and brand could be turning away the very candidates you hope to hire”
A negative (or mediocre) reputation and brand could be turning away the very candidates you hope to hire. Worse still; you won’t even know. Candidates won’t respond to your TA’s InMails, will refuse to be introduced by agency recruiters, and definitely won’t apply to your jobs posted on your website.
There is a direct financial cost too. The worse your reputation as a potential employer is, the more you need agency recruiters to hunt down and influence candidates to even apply. The harder you are to hire for, the harder agencies will have to work. Therefore, the more they will insist on higher fees as fair compensation for performing a harder task. So much for hoping for discounts.
The Wonders of a Good Employer Reputation
Imagine the opposite. Imagine that your company’s work culture is well branded and your reputation is highly positive. Your employees spread the word that you’re a great place to work. Buzz starts. Reddit and other forums glow with positive reviews. Candidates of a high calibre apply to your company proactively in droves. What will that mean?
- More and better candidates filling your talent pipeline.
- Less need for agency recruiters, so lower recruitment costs.
- Fewer candidates cancelling and withdrawing from your process.
- Higher percentage of offers accepted.
- Candidates happy to join without necessarily demanding more salary.
Pretending that your employer reputation in the market doesn’t matter and trying to fill your talent hole by pointing the finger at your recruiters (internal or agency) is like blaming your photographer for the extra curves. They can only work with what reality gives them.
What To Do About It
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a powerful positive EVP and reputation takes a long time to build too. You should start now, so that you can get the benefits (and avoid the troubles) as soon as possible.
“It starts with honestly canvassing the voice of the talent market.”
I recommend a simple 4-step process, but it starts with honestly canvassing the “voice of the talent market”. You can pay a lot of money to have a research consultancy conduct this for you. Another option is to build a genuine and mutually beneficial relationship with a trustworthy and capable agency recruiter and ask them. That will likely be free and give you a better level of detail and insight than research firms. Ask the right questions to the right people and you will get the right insights.
After canvassing the voice of the market, you can move forward to create a powerful EVP following a clear 4-step process. [Note: whitepaper to come – feel free to reach out for details].
Free Takeaways
To help you begin exploring your journey to a highly impactful EVP, give the following questions a try when meeting agency recruiters:
- What do you (agency recruiter) think about us as a client? What are powerful points to sell, and what are potential obstacles?
- What do [engineers] think about our company as a place to work?
- What are the 3 biggest concerns [engineers] have about working with us?
- What are the 3 biggest points that [engineers] find attractive about us?
- How does our EVP stack up against competitors such as X, Y or Z?
If you are a company in Japan and would like the answers to the above, please reach out for a free consultation and I would be more than happy to help you on your talent journey.
Bon voyage!
