Storytelling is a powerful tool when it comes to attracting job seekers for your open roles. A well-crafted narrative can help candidates make an emotional connection with your company and visualize themselves in the job you want to be filled. Here, we have some effective tips on how to successfully tell your organization’s story and entice candidates to apply for your job posts.
Understand Your Organization
Before you start developing stories for your job posts, make sure you understand the mission, values, and history of your organization. Think about how you want to craft your story and the purpose of the job ad. Knowing these elements will help you align your recruitment advertising efforts and reveal how to clearly position the unique attributes of your organization to job seekers.
Humanize Your Brand
You want your brand to stand out and be discussed in today's fast-paced environment. You’ll want to connect with job seekers by being approachable and relatable. Be consistent and transparent in your story, and don’t abandon any brand promises. You'll also want to speak in a tone that is familiar to your audience but eliminate any corporate jargon from your job ads.
Humanizing your brand helps:
Provide a clear vision that separates you from competitors
Attracts candidates who want to feel connected and inspired to be part of your organization
Source passive candidates who discover you have a good work environment
By humanizing your brand, job seekers will have more insight as to why joining your team would be a rewarding experience. The job ad’s story brings the role to life and gives a reason for candidates to care about your organization – inspiring them to click the submit button and apply for the open role.
Make the Candidate the Hero
Everyone wants to be the hero of a story and creating a good hook in your job ads can show how a candidate can add value to your organization. Your story should explain the overall challenges your organization faces and how the problems can be solved with the help of the right candidate. Challenges can vary but may include, seeking new perspectives, working towards departmental goals to drive innovation and growth, or needing to increase diversity.
Your hook should be catchy and give candidates the reasons they need to share your organization’s mission and help solve any challenges. When you make the candidate the hero, you’re making them feel more connected with the organization and showing them how they can make a positive impact.
Put Culture into Your Ad
Incorporating how your organization makes an impact on the community is a fantastic way to talk about culture and reputation. Community has become more important in recent years and by weaving company culture into your job ads, you can really stand out from the crowd. Especially, when you use employee testimonial videos or quotes.
According, to Glassdoor’s Mission & Culture Survey 2019, 77% of adults across four countries (the United States, UK, France, and Germany) would consider a company’s culture before applying for a job there, and 79% would consider a company’s mission and purpose before applying.
Update Company Web Pages
Make sure to be concise with your messaging across all external job boards and your organization’s career pages. Anywhere that your company hosts or places job ads, your pages should be updated to reflect the story you are telling when recruiting. Also, don’t forget to make sure your job ads are mobile-friendly and appear correctly on phones and tablets.
Easy Apply
Along with the storytelling aspect, you want to make sure there’s a call to action that can be quickly found in your job ad. Create an easy apply button for candidates to upload their resumes. You don’t want to tell an amazing story only to fail at the application process. According to LinkedIn, 60% of hiring professionals say that they regularly lose candidates before they’re able to schedule an interview
Personality Goes a Long Way
Your job descriptions provide the perfect entry point into your brand and culture. By using them as a storytelling tool for attracting job seekers, you’ll be able to show the personality of your organization. They’ll provide insight into your work environment and construct a powerful narrative that highlights the benefits of what makes your open roles the ones your audience should apply for.