Over the past several months we’ve spoken with a number of potential clients about challenges facing their talent and recruitment strategy and have found there’s a common thread that points to the core problem. While these companies vary in team size, revenue and culture, they’re all experiencing challenges in finding and on-boarding the right people for their organization.
What they have in common is a strong commitment to their consumers – a dedication to providing the best customer experience and quality of products to their end users. But unfortunately that commitment to their brand does not seem to extend internally. What they all failed to realize is that their own team members and potential future employees are also consumers of their brand. And they treat those internal customers very differently than their external customers.
Take the case of a recent client who engaged us to find a top level marketing talent for their organization. The role was a newly created position that blended several disciplines that ordinarily would be split into separate roles. We provided them with a number of highly qualified, passive talents to consider. But the interview team failed to understand that when engaging a highly qualified passive talent for a position, that talent is interviewing the team as much as the team is interviewing the talent. The best executive level interviews are conversations about what constitutes success for the organization and the potential team member. Utilizing outdated questions and poor interview techniques, they left the talent with the impression that the client did not have a clear understanding of the role they were sourcing for or what constituted an ideal match. Their cumbersome interview process based almost entirely on client convenience (with little respect for the talent’s time and efforts) they effectively alienated people who may have been valued team members.
If a company understands its external brand proposition but people walk away from the interactions with that company feeling underwhelmed or undervalued, the brand proposition is not being felt by the internal stakeholders to the business. You can’t simply post your brand propositions on a wall and think you’re done. You have to make the brand truly relevant to every single person in the company and it has to be reflected in everything they do.
Companies place a great deal of value in their consumers and will go to great lengths to attract and retain them. But when it comes to their employees or future employees, they sometimes treat the relationships differently. The talent within an organization and the talent outside an organization (potential future talent) should be treated as well as you would treat a consumer/customer, the person that purchases your products or service.
Your brand touch points across all departments should have the same message. The consistency of message across all departments brings authenticity to the brand. The end result will not only be happy / raving customers but also happy employees and potential employees who will guide your company to greater success.