3 Candidate Wishes that Most HR Marketing Teams Miss

3 Candidate wishes that most HR marketing teams miss

Our survey gets over 40,000 candidate responses every year. Sometimes it’s the small things that matter most for them. Still, HR Marketing teams miss them.

So today I would like to present three things that are highly important for candidates, relatively easy to implement and still only offered by few employers.

It’s less than 6 months until the fall, the next recruiting high season. So here are 3 opportunities for you to stand out against your competitors.

1. Workplace insights on the career website

Over the last 6 months, how many times have you talked to your colleagues about going back or not going back to your office?

This topic keeps everyone on their toes these days. The right hybrid of remote and on-location days affects happiness and retention. Get it wrong – people leave.

Now imagine a candidate: how do they know what the workplace in your company looks like and that they will be happy with it? How do you know your hybrid model suits them? And that they won’t leave after 3 months because it doesn’t? Or not even apply in the first place?

The workplace issue is becoming a competitive factor in the talent market.

When candidates visit a career website, information about locations is an important feature for them. But they are asking for more than a list of addresses. They want to see what it’s like on the inside. This is an opportunity for the employer to showcase the workplace (or places) and even specific perks such as a canteen, be it with descriptions, pictures, videos, or virtual tours.

Only one quarter of top employers in the US and Europe give visual impressions of the place of work on their career website. This is an excellent way to start. Boost your attractiveness by showing off a little.

Moreover, only half of the companies in the US and Europe explain the possibilities to work remotely in their organization. Explaining this is another excellent opportunity to attract the right talent and reduce turn-over.

2. The application deadline in the job ad

Most recruiters keep a job open for as long as they need to. This is why most job postings have no application deadline. Now this is a bit of a problem for applicants.

Should I hurry and apply today? Can I take my time and put a bit more effort into it? Or is the application period already closed? Nobody knows. This causes uncertainty which is never good in marketing.

Deadlines are, in fact, important to candidates. Yet only 16 % of top employers in the US and 29 % in Europe have them. Thus, it’s an opportunity to stand out.

But what if recruiters can’t foresee for how long a job will be open? Well, here’s the trick: Communicate exactly that.

As often in HR Marketing, transparency is more important than accuracy. Simply being honest and saying that a job has no deadline, and why, makes a big difference. So, if you can’t put a deadline in each job ad, such an explanation is what we recommend.

3. Event previews on Instagram

Do you want to get candidates excited on Instagram? One way to do so is to announce events ahead of time.

The world has started to unfreeze, candidates are hungry for personal interaction. Use Instagram to promote your upcoming events.

This might not only boost attendance. It is also a welcome change: while candidates rate this kind of information high on their wish list, only one in eight employers in the US and Europe used Instagram for career event promotion in the fall 2020.

Nothing can replace real life, face-to-face encounters. And as always, if it’s good and you do it, talk about it on social media. And no channel is more suitable than Instagram.

Next week

This is the 2nd of 3 articles about what the best HR Marketing teams are working on between now and the fall.

- Last week, we talked about 5 things that the best HR Marketing teams are working on right now: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/5-things-top-hr-marketing-teams-doing-next-potentialpark/

- And finally, next week, we will bring you the story of one of the winners of the Potentialpark ranking and the quick wins they are planning.

Stay tuned!

Julian Ziesing

Potentialpark