All the challenges companies face with customers today also play out in recruitment. You need to attract, build consideration, convert, and finally retain. Beyond the crucial question of recruitment, namely how to identify the right candidate, here are the challenges facing employers today:
- How to connect the company and candidates
- How to build an attractive employer brand
- How to get onboarding right
- Ongoing training and information flow
The right answer to each of these questions ensures a flawless candidate journey and strengthens the employer brand. The good news is that events can help address every one of these challenges:
How events connect the company and candidates
As mentioned, a candidate should be seen as having the same expectations of the company as a customer, and the first of these expectations is the need for aligned values. Your goal is therefore to communicate your company's values to your future employees.
The event (whether in-person, virtual, or hybrid, with nuances for each) lets you fully commit to this approach. It represents you, it's your chance to convey your values and company culture to candidates, so that only those who share them want to move forward with you.
An event such as a product launch, a public evening, or a conference will inevitably attract qualified potential candidates who are interested in your topic, and therefore indirectly in your company (the work here is to make sure your company becomes the go-to reference on that topic). Holding one or more team-building events each year, or promoting regular after-work gatherings, can also attract your future talent.
It's up to you to create the exceptional event that will (and this is the whole point) elevate your event to another level: that of an experience.
An experience where every detail is carefully thought through from start to finish will undeniably stick in people's minds as a brand that pays attention to detail, that is professional and caring.
The role of events in building an attractive employer brand
To convince a candidate, every touchpoint now needs to be polished and refined, because the candidate becomes an ambassador.
The balance of power between a company and a candidate is shifting, largely due to changes in the job market. Brands must therefore work even harder to build a strong employer brand and recruit the best talent.
To do this, a brand must continually build its visibility so that candidates come to it naturally.
What better opportunity to do this than creating your own career days (virtual or in-person) to meet your target audience, or why not invite the schools you're targeting to some of your corporate evenings to spark connections?
Whatever option you choose, the event will always boost your brand image and visibility, even when that isn't the primary goal. Some brands have understood this well and use every event opportunity to turn their events into a unique experience that guarantees them visibility and a high share rate on social media. Apple is a good example of this.
Getting onboarding right with digital and events
To meet recent graduates, the tradition is generally to be present at school career fairs, trade shows, and other job fairs.
However, this type of format is now limited (and not just because of Covid), as candidates want to know a company's values as much as their future work environment (the popularity of sites like Glassdoor shows this). These events therefore remain necessary but not sufficient. Listen to your teams' ideas and welcome feedback on your company's onboarding strategy.
This is exactly where digital comes in: it makes it easier to meet candidates by streamlining the application process. Footlocker, for example, simplified its recruitment process as much as possible with a mobile app to improve the candidate experience.
Beyond the reasons already mentioned, this highly digital approach implicitly shows your future hires that you understand the codes of your time, and this is also a differentiating factor
Finally, live or recorded video interviews meet the need for authentic contact (which builds confidence) on both sides: the candidate can picture themselves in the office and on the team they'll be joining, while the employer gets a glimpse of the soft skills (eloquence, presentation, punctuality, etc.) of their future employee.
Events matter for passion-driven industries
In high-pressure sectors, particularly with developers, recruiting is difficult. Relationships between developers and overly pushy HR teams are sometimes tense. These profiles are naturally in high demand, and can receive 10 to 15 contact requests a day.
The candidate experience is improved through an in-person meeting at an event, which helps win candidates over and get past this aversion to HR and aggressive headhunting, creating a healthier climate.
To recruit this type of candidate, it's better to meet them at technical events rather than at traditional finance job fairs, as AXA's Head of Employer Brand explains in an interview.
It can't be said enough: the surge in professional meetups, and more broadly in networking, stems from a much wider social demand. Remember that Meetup predates Facebook by a few years.
Internal events, for training and information
More and more, HR departments are now being supported by "talent managers".
These people are in charge of ongoing training in companies where employees need to have roughly similar skill levels that are always improving.
This is typically found in consulting firms. The internal event is then the ideal way to bring these people together for training sessions and seminars, helping them all progress together and ensuring good consistency among employees.
As for information flow, it is often a priority, even critical, in very large organizations, helping to align vision and communicate well within a company that often has many layers of hierarchy (this typically applies to large public sector bodies or private sector leaders).
This information should be shared at an event attended by all managers, either in person or remotely. These large gatherings are often rare: realigning the group's values or setting a new vision, a change of director and therefore a change in strategic direction, etc.
Either way, the event undoubtedly adds real value in avoiding misunderstandings and information gaps during a company's key moments.
In conclusion
These approaches reflect the paradigm shift in recruitment. Digitalization and the use of unconventional events put the candidate at the center, while still having a brand strong enough to draw in the most suitable profiles. Not everything is upended or needs redoing, but the more processes become digital and complex, the more necessary in-person meetings become.
