Your two most powerful tools for attracting the best-in-class industry candidates are your employer brand and Employee Value Proposition (EVP). If you are not crafting and utilizing these two tools in your recruitment marketing, then you are losing the war for talent.
Let’s take a quick look at what they are and how you can define and shape them so they can be used in attracting and onboarding the very best candidates in your industry.
First let’s look at employer brand. Your employer brand is essentially how you are viewed as an employer. In other words, how your former, current, and future employees perceive your company as a place to work compared to other companies that offer similar products and services. It should define the essence of your company, its uniqueness.
An employer brand will be fluid. It can change based on shifts in culture, management, and changing company goals and directives.
Let’s discuss how you can define or influence your employer brand.
First, we recommend an employer brand audit (which is a service we offer). A good way to start an audit is by administering a questionnaire to your current employees from C-level through middle management and down to your lower level employees. Be aware that assessment of your employer brand can vary significantly from another level of management to the next. The directive of the questionnaire is to assess how your employees view your company as a place to work compared to other places that they have worked.
When we conduct an employer brand audit, we also attempt to interview previous employees, harnessing their experience as well. If we are conducting a search for your company, we also interview potential employees for their views of your company as a place to work. The most effective employer brand audit will sample the complete sphere of past, current, and potential employees. The culmination and mean of this information is considered to be your current employer brand.
After the collection and dissemination of this information, the results should be reviewed by your executive management team and then compared to the current policies and cultural objectives of the company.
The next step should be to set goals and actionable items plans to move your employer brand more toward the direction you’d like it to go. Acquiring a strong employer brand will help you attract and onboard the very best passive candidate even in times of massive talent shortages.
If you picture employer branding as something that describes the general view of your company as a place to work, then think of Employee Value Proposition as both how your employer brand can attract a specific candidate plus any other value-adds of the particular position being considered by that candidate. For example, limited travel may not apply to your employer brand in general but might apply to a particular position. This could be a value-add for a potential candidate who may travel frequently in their current position but would like to travel less often.
A second, similar example can be made with telecommuting. In general the practice of telecommuting may not apply to your overall employer brand but could apply to a specific position.
In summary, not taking advantage of both employer branding and Employee Value Proposition in your recruitment marketing process is like trying to catch a fish with no bait on your hook.
We have a four-step process here at HCRC for attracting and onboarding top industry talent. The first step is helping our clients define their employer brand and their Employee Value Proposition. These are essential to the recruitment marketing process no matter your industry.
I hope you have found this information helpful. Please reach out to us if we can help your company with employer branding, audits, setting goals, and/or identifying your Employee Value Proposition as it may relate to specific positions (in my reading on this subject, I can find no examples where this term EVP is used in the plural. It is assumed that each company has one EVP. So, for instance, if flexibility were part of the EVP, that would account for the opportunity to telecommute, or for some positions involving travel, some not). It is our goal to be the best talent acquisition partner in the heavy civil construction and engineering industry, bringing you exceptional value through recruitment marketing consultation.
Taylor Maurer runs the talent acquisition firm HCRC as senior managing partner. He is a professional heavy civil construction recruiter dedicated to attracting and retaining high quality talent.
