Seven HR

Candidate Expectations

Could the pretty picture you paint actually be losing you talent.. and money?

With Employer Branding increasing in importance and the talent gap widening, more and more companies have focused increasingly on communicating the positives and benefits of joining a company such as theirs to win candidates from competitors. But has this focus meant that facts are being exaggerated, and when the candidates actually start their dream role – are they increasingly finding that they’ve being sold short?

Employer Branding; yes, every leading recruiter or HR Director has spoken about it over the last year or so, and yes, we all know it’s essential to getting the candidate you want. But here’s the problem; a great employer brand can snag an amazing candidate but employer branding is also about what keeps them, and if the legend doesn’t live up to reality it can have serious effects on retention, turnover and inevitably, profit.

Concrete benefits such as salary, bonus, pension etc are easy to solve – candidates have a contract and will receive them by law. But intangible ‘hooks’ like company culture, the structure of the role, the support you get from members of your and other teams or the fact that there’s meant to be excellent internal communications and a really flexible attitude to processes are easy to sell-in or talk up and not that easy to deliver on. This is where the problems lie.

As part of every placement we make we monitor the candidate’s satisfaction once they’ve started their role. We have had 1 or 2 comments more recently such as “the company sold a role which is far from the truth” and inevitably this is followed by “I’d be open to opportunities…”, meaning, if the right role came along they’d jump ship. Obviously we acted to rectify this and our client has taken various positive steps to successfully improve the situation. But the circumstances should never have happened at all.

The solution is straightforward to implement.

At interview stage, instead of YOU selling your company, use other people’s words to do it for you.
Get them to meet members of their team for a real chat, get someone from a different department to explain how their roles interact, show them the systems, show them the office. This way, you’ll get top marks for openness and it’ll give them the responsibility to ask the right questions and discover the reality. That way they’ll know what to expect from day 1 and when we ask them for feedback they’ll be saying “the role is everything I thought it would be” and you’ll have their talent for years rather than months.