Brand and recruitment

You only get one chance to make a first impression

We know that a strong brand helps to attract great candidates, but what happens next is often overlooked. Yet building brand into your recruitment process has far-reaching benefits.

Firstly, a considered recruitment process helps to set the winning candidate up for long-term success. They hit the ground running, full of enthusiasm. And because they have the tools they need up front, they can get on excelling in their role.

Secondly, like it or not, all candidates are peeking beyond the façade of your brand and talking to others about the ‘reality’ of your business. Make sure what they glimpse leaves them pleasantly surprised and telling everyone how great you are.

The candidate journey

Treat this as you would a customer and consider the whole process from end to end. Put candidates at the heart of the experience as ask yourself “what can we do to make this better for them?” and “how can we use each touchpoint as an opportunity to impart a bit of our brand magic?”. Re-visit your Values and make sure you are actively demonstrating them throughout the whole process.

Crucially, don’t focus only on successful candidates – far more people will end up dropping out than getting the job. Your goal is to make them think “I really, really wish I worked there”.

Bring your Values into interviews

This is an obvious one, but is often ignored. It doesn’t matter if your Values are plastered over every wall, notebook and screensaver in your organisation, if your people aren’t actively demonstrating them every day, then it’s a waste of time.

So train recruiting managers to look out for the behaviours that you need in order to succeed. Of course people need to have the right experience and skills, but they also need to positively contribute to your culture.

If in doubt, my advice is this: you can train people up ang give them new skills, but it’s much harder to change their fundamental behaviours.

Don’t forget onboarding

Finally, make sure that all the hard work continues through into the candidate’s first weeks. This isa crucial time, and where it often falls down. And once seeds of doubt have been sown it’s an uphill battle to win people back around.

Make it easy for busy managers to onboard team members in a consistent way and ensure that creating a positive, welcoming environment for new starters is a priority across the whole organisation.