Storytelling for Recruiters

The narrative principles of company storytelling

Before you can convince candidates to sign a contract, you’ll need to convince them that the journey your company is embarking on is meaningful, fulfilling and that they’ll be an integral part of it. That will mean something different for every candidate, however there are general principles- and here’s a framework- for doing this effectively.

Resonating with and engaging your target candidate audience is as straightforward (and, arguably as difficult) as telling a compelling story. In this guide, I’ll talk about how you do that. This is not meant as a guide for the entirety of your initial candidate conversation (screening questions, tailoring a role pitch for a specific candidate)- rather, it's an approach to engaging your audience with the story on a company level.

Recruiters are time-poor and sought-after candidates are few and far between. In my experience, this oftentimes means recruiters try to speak to as many candidates as possible (to hedge their 'bets', mitigate drop-out risk) and condense interview time. There’s an opportunity in this dynamic, in that taking the time to out-resonate your hiring competitors through effective storytelling can make the difference to a candidate taking your offer over someone else’s. Over thousands of interviews and pitching hundreds of different employer brands, I’ve witnessed conversation-time-per-candidate act as a hugely accurate indicator of future hiring success. Using that conversation time effectively- through a storytelling framework- improves outcomes even further. For recruiting managers, utilising a uniform framework in your teams also allows you to measure, improve and replicate the conversion rates that result.

The next time you pitch a sourced candidate, try leveraging the familiar storytelling framework known as Freytag’s Pyramid. Following this structure will make it easier for your audience to concentrate on the ideas you present and get the most from your conversations. Their subconscious familiarity with this structure (it’s used across all forms of consumer-centric media) will enable easier connection with the content you cover.

1. Start with a problem or conflict. This should be an exposition, a birds-eye view that paints the picture of the world of incumbent solutions in which your company operates. For a company building financial software for example, this should contextualise how financial software operated before your product- and why it's an untenable situation in terms of the value derived by those who work with it. Here you begin to signal the problems that your team are resolving. This is where you should specifically state the ‘inciting incident’ that led to your founding team building your company. This is where they had enough and decided to build- if you contextualise effectively, your candidate will buy into that inciting incident and understands the opportunity.
2. Explain your progress thus far in real, practical terms. Your team may have been working on this problem for some time now, but it may well be new to your candidate if they don’t currently work in your space. Don’t assume knowledge. Talk about the results from your product so far, customer feedback and appetite; using quotes from real people (investors, customers) makes for greater impact, as well as quantifying nascent results. Even better than talking about your company or product- showing them. This is where you should be starting to validate that the candidate is talking to a ‘capable team’ who have started to make progress towards the problem or conflict through both their approach and style (or culture). A capable team is an attractive signal, but it is important to show through data, not simply tell. IME, a lot of high-performing recruiters creep candidate conversion rates up by moving beyond telling the story of their team and referencing data that validates that story as they run through it.
3. Propose your team’s grand ambition. This is where you start to give hope that a grand vision can be realised rather than just dreamt about. There's a huge opportunity here, and you can leverage ‘we believe’ statements at this point in your narrative. Ideally, you should be able to concisely describe this vision. It’s more engaging to lay out your company’s vision for the future in the simplest possible terms.
4. Now, identify the challenges and barriers to success. Many recruiters shy away from talking about challenges, with the idea that it could scare candidates away. This is short-sighted and a disservice to the intelligence of sought-after candidates. No new role comes without challenges, and hiding away from this is a red flag to a prospect. Create drama and establish ‘need’ by introducing new sources of conflict and explaining barriers to success. Zooming-in from the big picture to a more detailed triage of the new skills or experience that overcome those problems helps candidates understand (1) this is a company that is thinking ahead (good signal) (2) I am a person who can help and derive meaning from delivering these things (also, good signal).
5. Explain early thoughts on how to overcome those barriers. The candidate now becomes your protagonist through understanding why their help is needed. If they feel like they are part of the solution, they will build powerful buy-in to the opportunity. Being too prescriptive with solutions will signal a transactional need, which could deter interest. However, conveying a degree of excitement, openness and healthy debate around the course of action will signal opportunity to the candidate that they will be able to make their mark.
6. Wrap things up with timings, logistics, and next steps. Finally, it’s time for your candidate to take action. Provide transparency on process stages, the value they’ll derive from the process, and likely time commitment to pursue their now-interest in the opportunity.?From here, you can also embark on calibration with a candidate through exchanging screening questions.