Let’s discuss two Employee Value Proposition examples used by inspiring companies to attract top talent from the Z- and Y-Generations.
I remember clearly when I had to hire my first team member at iMusician: I put enormous pressure on myself because I was afraid to not make the right decision, and it is indeed a rational fear: according to a study by Leadership IQ, 46% of newly-hired employees will fail within 18 months, while only 19% will achieve unequivocal success. And when you know that even an $8/hour employee can end up costing a company around $3,500 in turnover costs, both direct and indirect, you don’t want to fail that.
When reading a job ad, do you know that candidates spend an average of 49.7 seconds before dismissing a position as a poor fit, and 76.7 seconds with job ads that appeared to match their interests and skills?
Do you wanna have a piece of evidence?
In a similar time period in the same city (London), without a sponsored post, Spotify had 97 applications for a Director of Sales position, compared to 2 applicants for another software company with a similar position!
In consequence, if you want to attract candidates to your company, you have stand out and to be attractive already in your job post!
How can you do that? With your Employee Value Proposition!
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What is an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)?
An EVP is a set of associations and offerings provided by an organization in return for the skills, capabilities, and experiences an employee brings to the organization. To act as a key driver of talent attraction, engagement, and retention, an EVP must be unique, relevant and compelling.
In other words, an EVP explains why someone should work at your company and not at another one.
If you want to be unique, your EVP should include your mission, your values, and attractive assets for the candidates.
In this article, I will first focus on the mission and the values.
Example of Employee Value Proposition: inspiring mission
Your mission is your why, it is what makes your company unique.
Follows Simon Sinek’s advice: always start with why and always describe your mission at the top of your job ad!
Here is the mission of ResearchGate, one of the previous inspiring companies I worked for:
“ResearchGate is here to connect the world of science and to make research open to all”
Their CEO started the company because he believed researchers should not have to pay to access scientific journals. This is a very bold mission, but ResearchGate grew very quickly and managed to attract a very talented team of passionate employees driven by that mission. The platform has now 15 million registered researchers and gathers more than 85% of all scientific papers published every year.
Example of Employee Value Proposition: inspiring values
Values are part of the “how” of your Employee Value Proposition. It is a clever way to end your job ads in order for candidates to understand what your culture looks like.
Here is for example what Spotify mentions in their job ads:
“At Spotify, we are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination. We strongly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and background will lead to a better environment for our employees and a better product for our users and our creators.”
Guess who you attract with such a strong statement?
You attract open-minded people who care about others and who will thrive in a multicultural environment!
Conclusion
Creating and sharing a strong mission and values in your job post plays with the emotions of candidates. Consequently, it helps you attract people who share these values!
Your Employee Value Proposition can therefore act as a filter to attract the right candidates to your company.
Don’t neglect it, it will save you time and money on the recruiting process.
I see so many job posts describing everything the company requires from the candidate but not explaining what the company has to offer in exchange.
Candidates reading that kind of job post usually just swipe to the next post…
so don’t fall into that trap in 2020 and:
- Start your job posts by explaining your mission
- End your job posts by explaining your values (+ your exclusive assets that we will discuss in the following articles).
This is something that is always part of my strategy when I help clients to build their growth team.
Have you been sharing your mission and values in your job posts?
Which other parts of the Employee Value Proposition do you think are crucial to attract the right top talent to your company?
