Key takeaways:
- Talent Marketing Board Members Francesca McCaffrey at MassMutual, Keri La Ra at U.S. Bank, and Danny Francisco at Bristol Myers Squibb shared insights on gaining feedback for how your company’s EVP is performing.
- It’s essential to understand how marketing messages and content resonate with recruiters and candidates.
- Open communication and conversations with recruitment teams can gauge where you can make adjustments to help your EVP succeed.
A critical step to leverage your company’s employee value proposition (EVP) is gaining feedback from recruitment teams. Your recruiters play an essential role in creating genuine touchpoints with candidates, and understanding how they leverage your EVP can help advance your recruitment marketing efforts.
Collecting intel from recruitment teams and new employees can help you measure which marketing efforts are performing well and where you have opportunities to improve.
We’ll take a look at five tips senior talent leaders at the world’s largest companies shared to gain feedback on your EVP for future success.
1. Have Regular Conversations About Your EVP with Recruitment Teams
The first step is creating open conversations to which marketing materials resonate best to recruiters and candidates.
Talent Marketing Board Member Francesca McCaffrey, Employer Brand Marketing Consultant at MassMutual, shared how regular conversations with recruiters can provide helpful feedback to your efforts during a recent leadership discussion about activating EVPs across your enterprise.
“One thing that I’ve always found helpful is having regular conversations with recruiters,” Francesca said. “Making sure that conversationally, you’re connecting with people often and getting those anecdotes of what pieces of content candidates bring up in interviews, or when they react when a recruiter sends links to certain blog articles or pieces of social reports.”
One thing that I’ve always found helpful is having regular conversations with recruiters.
Francesca McCaffrey, Employer Brand Marketing Consultant at MassMutual
Talent Marketing Board Chair Danny Francisco, Digital Project Manager of Strategic Talent Attraction at Bristol Myers Squibb, discussed how consistent meetings help provide further insight into your EVP messaging.
“It is sometimes those regular wrap-up meetings and the monthly reviews that you really get insights,” Danny said.
It’s the small moments that resonate. There’s different ways to measure and to make sure you are getting that feedback.
Danny Francisco, Digital Project Manager of Strategic Talent Attraction at Bristol Myers Squibb
She shared how during internal company meetings, they get data on how talent acquisition ads performed and which content drove candidates to apply.
“It’s the small moments that resonate,” Danny said. “There’s different ways to measure and to make sure you are getting that feedback.”
2. Track the Performance of Marketing Materials Related to Your EVP
Francesca shared how measuring your marketing materials’ engagement metrics can provide information on how your EVP is performing.
“Internally, there are definitely things you could try, like using tracking links,” Francesca said. “When you share something on Slack or on [Microsoft Teams], see how many people actually click on that link, share it, or read that article, and try to get a sense of what employees are driven to share as well.”
Reviewing the performance of your content on social media channels and which materials candidates engage with the most can also give insight into your EVP messaging.
“Looking at the stats of how your social media is performing and what platforms are doing well can guide you to where you’re finding your candidates and what they’re thinking about that content,” Francesca added.
3. Create Opportunities for Recruiters to Provide Insight
Talent Marketing Board Chair Keri La Ra, Head of Talent Attraction and Experience at U.S. Bank, shared how you can create genuine connections and make sure your recruiters have a voice.
“[Recruiters] are the number one touch point with candidates,” Keri said. “The talking points are absolutely critical. But it’s also how the EVP resonates with them. As part of our rollout, we had them do an exercise on how they would activate everything that would be prepared for them outside the handbooks. For example, how could they infuse the EVP when talking to candidates so there’s still that authentic connection based on their journey within U.S. Bank?”
[Recruiters] are the number one touch point with candidates. The talking points are absolutely critical. But it’s also how the EVP resonates with them.
Keri La Ra, Head of Talent Attraction and Experience at U.S. Bank
Some of the questions Keri asked when making sure sure recruiters at U.S. Bank feel connected to their EVP include:
- Why do you stay here?
- Why do you like working here?
- What’s your experience like working here?
“We’re trying to also empower our recruiters to have that authentic story to share with candidates as well,” Keri added.
4. Understand Your Consumers’ Behavior
Keri explained how understanding consumer trends and behaviors can help gauge how your EVP messaging and marketing efforts are performing.
“There’s consumer behaviors that evolve that absolutely impact how we think about EVPs,” Keri said. “Candidates are consumers. So, it’s also keeping tabs with your consumer marketing teams on how things are evolving there that might be impactful to what you’re doing on the recruiting side of the house.”
One example Keri shared was how the evolution of video marketing forced recruitment marketing efforts to evolve.
“I always laugh to think back to when video was the hottest, latest, and greatest thing — we all needed to do video,” Keri said.
She noted how a report from Verizon Media and Publicis Media — which showed up to 83% of people watch videos without audio — forced recruitment teams to analyze their video marketing efforts.
5. Connect with Peers to Gain Feedback on Your EVP
If you lead employer brand and recruitment marketing at a large organization, you have the opportunity to get best practices and feedback around your EVP from your peers in the Talent Marketing Board.
Francesca, Danny, and Keri shared more insights on gaining leadership support and buy-in for your EVP, measuring the impact of your EVP, and more during a leadership discussion on activating EVPs across your enterprise. They continually discuss best practices and benchmark their talent attraction strategies in our confidential, vendor-free community for senior talent leaders.
