How can you create a candidate experience that reflects your organization's brand and values?

Creating a candidate experience that aligns with your organization's brand and values requires a strategic and candidate-centered approach. Ensure all communications and job descriptions echo the company’s ethos. Use structured interviews to assess both technical skills and cultural fit, highlighting the organization's values. Respect candidates' time, provide clear timelines and offer constructive feedback promptly. Showcase your commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, as this reflects positively on your brand and appeals to a broader talent pool. Finally, use post-interview surveys to gather feedback and continuously refine the candidate experience, ensuring it consistently embodies your organization's values and brand identity.

Creating a candidate experience that reflects your organization's brand and values is essential for attracting top talent and aligning potential hires with your company culture. Start by clearly defining your organization's brand identity and core values.Maintain a consistent message across all communication channels, from job postings to interview discussions. This includes using the same tone, language, and key messages that reflect your brand and values.Develop a strong employer branding strategy that showcases your company culture, values, and employee stories. Share this information on your careers website, social media, and other recruitment channels.

I think what’s important ti remember is that different type of candidates will care about different things. If I am hiring for Research Engineers, Scientists - they will most likely care less about social side of the company (parties, etc). They will be interested more to know about the type of unique challenges your company is working on. They will want to understand the “company vision”. Therefore, when promoting the EVP, take into consideration, which audience you are targeting. :)

Make sure to revise and update your EVP regularly based on the feedback of your employees. Create an environment where employees feel free to speak up when they feel that these values are not lived up to. It's one thing to have a great EVP, it's another to ensure it becomes part of your company culture.

How you treat a candidate during the recruitment and onboarding process can highlight your company culture, even before they have started in the position. If your values are honesty for instance, be exactly that all the way through the process

Any company brand and values should be communicated consistently across all candidate touchpoints, from your career site and job ads to your social media and email campaigns, to your interviews and onboarding. create a positive and memorable candidate experience, you should personalize your candidate journey based on your candidates' profiles, preferences, and feedback. Feedback is one of the most important aspects of the candidate experience, as it helps your candidates understand their progress, performance, and expectations.

A subset of values are “Operating Norms” which articulate how a team communicates, works synchronously or asynchronously, the technology and vendors in the stack, in-office vs hybrid, engineering philosophy, PTO behavior, structured or unstructured feedback, pay equity and transparency, DEIB reports, etc. These are all operational elements extracted from values statements that define the true employee experience. Candidates are smart. They recognize inconsistencies or generic phrases that sounds like they came from the last retreat. How values are integrated [or neglected] in an organization defines the culture. Giving space for values to evolve, be added, or subtracted with each hire is the mark of a progressive team.

Employee Value Proposition & communicating the brands & values consistently is not restricted only to the TA or HR Teams. All stakeholders involved in the hiring process should be familiarized with the EVP & values of the company. Right from the hiring process where the candidate will check the company website the career page should talk about the culture, values. The job descriptions should be without bias & discrimination & should not restrict applications for a particular culture or gender. The hiring managers & interview panelists should be highlighting the company culture & values. The pre onboarding process can comprise of welcome calls with the leadership teams where they can give more insights about the culture & values.

Onboarding is a team sport - it is not solely HR's responsibility. Every team has different characters so embrace them! These people make your company unique. Get the Line Managers involved and create a buddy system. Treat every hire as a celebration not an admin task. Remember what it feels like to be new. If you're onboarding in person but working with a reduced on-site team confirm who will collect and greet them? Is the person doing the initial induction trained? Don't overload - what really needs to be signed and policies read by the end of week one? Set up point-in-time notifications for completion of all other non-essential documents. Gather feedback from new starters, and use this to continuously improve your onboarding program.

One thing I've found helpful is to be as open and honest as possible about the interview process timeline. Candidates demand a level of transparency and expect to have their time valued and to be treated with respect. A lack of updates can damage that trust, so providing clear and timely feedback is imperative.

No one likes to be left on the hook. We should be providing timely feedback and regularly updates to our candidates to enhance their experience. Even if the update is “there is no update”, that is always better than not speaking to them at all. Believe me, if you’re not speaking to your candidates, I guarantee someone else is…

Onboarding is often overlooked and we could not be more wrong about it. The first stories we tell ourselves and others during those first few weeks stay and as they say, it's easier to build from scratch than fix a broken house. Getting your foundations right covers 2 pillars: ENABLEMENT and INCLUSION! 1. Enablement - the right amount of empowerment thought documentation, tooling and a clear architecture of the job to perform well will dissipate any anxieties and unleash true strengths in talent. 2. Inclusion - "I can be the best, but if don't belong, I won't GIVE my best". That's what most think in that first period. Invest in this moment to help your new hire build valuable relationships and educate teams to create inclusive environments.

Onboarding truly sets the tone for the new hires as they join your team. Here are a few things you can do: 1) Ensure all their technology, equipment, and logins are set for day one. 2) Create a New Hire Orientation that shares company information, demographics, benefits, HR policies, etc. Reviewing your company culture and values is important to align them from day one. 3) Before the start date, create their first week(s) schedule and make sure they are scheduled to meet with stakeholders important for their role. Send to them before the first day. 4) Upon offer acceptance, HR and the entire hiring team send a "welcome email." They will love it!

Thinking about onboarding at the very first touch point can increase pass through rates and offer acceptance. Candidate enablement is the future of talent acquisition.

Doing this well, and consistently, requires a mix of creativity (for the ‘surprise and delight’ elements), investment (it’s not cheap to do it properly) and brilliant execution. To ensure it scales well it’s best to have a menu of options, and allow recruiters the discretion to customize for their candidates. So for some that might be a handwritten note with the welcome gifts delivered to the hotel room, whilst for others it might be custom- product gifted whilst on a campus tour. Back in the day (this wouldn’t fly anymore, not least because no one goes to the office) we used to send flowers or champagne to folks at work in their last week at their old jobs: a) to surprise and delight and b) as a recruiting tool