How often do you take the time to research your ideal candidates to understand where they’re at in life, what frustrates them about their industry and/or role, and what they most desire from their career?
Unfortunately, due to being time and resources short, the recruiter default is to copy paste an existing job description and its exhaustive list of candidate ‘requirements’ without much thought for what candidates really want right now (and how your workplace is the best option to get it). Sure, you may take an educated guess, but then what?
There’s no What’s REALLY In It For Me.
It’s no longer enough to simply offer,
Work-life balance (with ZERO context of what that realistically looks like)
Flexible working (with ZERO context of your org’s approach, given every organisation offers their own variation of this in a post-COVID world)
Professional development (ZERO context)
Career progression (ZERO context)
etc etc
Candidate motivators have become so nuanced, that it is only by applying context and clearly defining What’s In It For ME? that your offer actually becomes appealing to the people most likely to benefit. Everything else is empty rhetoric.
And the only way to define What’s In It For your candidates, is to, well, talk to them and find out.
3 Ways to research candidate motivators and define WIIFM
The best results will come from verbal interviews, because you can home in on specific language, sentiments and trends. But here’s a blend of each depending on how invested you are and how much time you have available.
1. Survey your unsuccessful candidates and new hires
This can be an automated email or SMS you send out at the end of your recruitment process. While expressing gratitude for their time and interest, you’ll also want to ask questions like,
What made you apply?
What do you need most from an employer/role right now?
What about our offer encouraged you to accept the role?
What are you most looking forward to once you join?
2. Interview your employees (those who are thriving and those who are leaving)
While engagement surveys are an easy way to collect information from current employees, you likely won’t get the most valuable responses possible. People tend to use more everyday language and candidness when speaking one to one, so the data is of higher quality for this purpose (you want to know the words they use, how they frame things and express their sentiment so you can use these words verbatim in your copy!).
Reach out to several values-aligned/thriving employees from different knowledge streams and teams across the business and ask questions around your EVP pillars, as well as things like:
What makes you stay?
What surprised you most about working here?
What is the best thing about working here and why?
What would make you leave?
And of course, exit interviews to find out why people are leaving so you can either improve your offer OR fix your messaging to prevent attracting more wrong fits.
3. Interview your hiring managers
Your hiring managers are golden pots of information. Why?
They can tell you common reasons why people join and leave.
They can tell you common industry perceptions and frustrations (e.g., burned out lawyers or consultants ‘fighting to the death for projects’ or project managers who never get to choose their team).
They can tell you the traits that are conducive to an employee performing really well, AND the traits that generally lead to poor performance, under performance, and disengagement. They can also identify which expectations aren’t being met.
For example, a client noticed a common trend amongst its labourers was that some were joining the organisation under the mistaken belief that the work would be cruisy and monotonous, when in reality the work was varied, challenging, and skill advancing. My client wanted more of the people motivated by the latter, and fewer people looking to do the bare minimum and coast into retirement.
Use key themes to catch job seeker attention
If you’ve done all three, then you will have definitely noticed key themes – that could look like, numerous mentions of the same word or sentiment, dominant candidate motivators AND fears/frustrations they’re looking to avoid, and references to life/career stages as they relate to what that person wants and needs from a role that you provide (e.g., return to work parents needing remote, reduced, or work anytime hours).
Now audit your current messaging.
Are you emphasising the selling points that matter to your candidates?
Use this candidate research to tweak your recruitment content and use their words to apply context to your offer. This can be as simple as, ‘Flexible working hours that fit your lifestyle, so you can be home in time to make school pick up or surf the last break every day.’
Or,
Self-guided professional development each month so you can make career choices that ensure you never feel like you’re stagnating.
When you know what your job seekers are REALLY looking for in a role, you can write compelling recruitment content that aligns with their current emotional and physical needs.
Need a hand refining your sell points so you can connect with your dream-fit candidates?
You can:
Enrol in my Job Ad Generator course to enhance your job ad copywriting skills
Book a coaching call with me to be guided through it
Book a 1:1 copywriting project to turn your EVP into a selling machine