The winds of change have again hit our world. Employees and companies alike are bracing for an uncertain future. However, if you are looking for new personnel to help you steer through rough waters, or if you are deciding on new career paths for yourself, AKAlytics offers insights that make the difference, for your business and for yourself.
In many, recent exchanges with HR executives and job seekers, I realized that today’s challenges in the job market may seem daunting, but helpful answers are readily available. Everyone seems to talk about opportunities and challenges. AKAlytics talks solutions.
TOP 5 - CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE 2022: Key insights for leaders and job seekers
1) PROFILING
2) UNIQUENESS
3) SPEED
4) PEOPLE ATTENTION
5) COMMUNITY & CULTURE
Let’s rethink two common perceptions. From the employer viewpoint: “the market does not offer enough, suitable qualified experts”. And from the job seeker's side: “it’s tough to find the right employer”. Although both reflect perspectives from two different sides of the job line, both are closely connected and lead to similar solutions: It’s candidate experience which matters.
1) PROFILING
Successful recruiting starts with clear profiling of the desired experts. If the result of your corporate profiling leads to answers like “the market is empty” – it's time to finetune the POFILING.
AKAlytics understands PROFILING as a top success factor that guides you towards exactly to those experts who are right for your positions. This is not a mathematical or academic exercise which will lead to “one correct answer”. It rather is a process in which your team understands who will be able to grow into the defined job positions. PROFILING needs to consider creative alternatives to the beaten paths of the competition.
AKAlytics set-up and operated “Recruiting Intelligence Units (RIU) which key purpose is to actively identify the best possible candidates in the market. These RIU take deep dives into to understand applicants’ qualifications and their career ambitions. The RIU teams require creativity and conduct a fact-based and competences driven professional puzzle.
Active PROFILING builds bridges to potential candidates with relevant expertise. It is about identifying high potential candidates. The right PROFILING will create access to qualified candidates, who might not have been considered your company before.
If you are a candidate and you are being approached by PROFILERS, it is rather easy to distinguish elite opportunities. Intelligent PROFILING will not rely on random mailings or advertising. The right PROFILING will immediately address specifics of your personal competences. The right PROFILING will tie a direct link between your skills and the coprporate opportunities ahead. If you are just hit by a network contact which offers you “unique perspectives” or similar marketing buzz, you might go ahead and hit the delete bottom.
PROFILING needs to value each single prospect and candidate as the most important opportunity. Make candidates feel that your company is an ideal fit, because your intelligence unit identified specific personal strengths in the candidate. If you do not immediately outline candidate strengths, it will not qualify as effective PROFILING.
2) UNIQUENESS
In yesterday’s recruiting world, all it took was a good company name, a specific recruiting add and a sufficient contract offer to fill your positions. Today’s candidate recruiting market is all about uniqueness.
In the past, established companies experienced no pain to attract new hires. Today, many feel heat and dispair. Any employer seeking great candidates needs to stand out from the mediocre market and from competitors. Being unique as a company is key. Recruiting success in 2022 requires targeted efforts to present a company as “the best place to be”.
UNIQUENESS is no marketing task, but a question of true professional potential. The “hot experts (candidates)” in the market will decide their corporate home according to expertise fit and specifically tailored opportunities, which best suit their aspirations and qualifications. Employers seeking to attract top candidates need to actively display UNIQUENESS. Yesterday it was companies making recruiting decisions, today’s it is candidates who chose and select employers.
UNIQUENESS is about setting future market trends and embracing innovation. UNIQUENESS rolls out a red carpet to new team members.
UNIQUENESS puts new hires into roles and positions which ignite enthusiasm.
UNIQUENESS creates strong professional and personal energy and dedication.
HR teams are met with new challenges. Recruiting success depends on corporate departments and their cutting-edge interaction with candidates. It requires a joint and cross-unit corporate effort to create and live UNIQUENESS.
On the candidate’s side it is evenly important to position your personal UNIQUENESS. Only if candidate and corporate UNIQUENESSES blend well, recruiting can act as the perfect match maker.
3) SPEED
Technology-driven markets are pressured on time and results. Time to contract-signing of new hires is a top success factor. If your company of interest is requiring more time than expected to run you through the recruiting process, it just says that this company is not best-in-class in recruiting. To win the best candidates in the market, recruiting process require speed and excellence.
High speed must never compromise quality. However, without high speed, excellence cannot be reached. Recruiting teams needs to shift into high speed at the very moment that they identify must-win candidates.
Today’s top candidates need to be impressed. HR teams searching for top team members can easily impress by direct decision making and fast forwarded, tailor-made contract offers. All potential job candidates should monitor and judge upon the time it takes a future employer to take you through the complete recruiting process.
SPEED must be executed along the end-to-end recruiting process. If your application sits unanswered, the future employer just communicates that you are not considered top priority. If you wait too many days on replies for your questions, it's the same dull case.
If you might have conducted great interviews, but seemingly wait for weeks on a contract offer, those corporate processes just miss-out on the competition who delivers results faster. As a company who tries to win great talent, you should put a suitable contract on the table before the competition does the same. SPEED wins. Recruiting SPEED is the differentiator in the market.
A company which positions itself as unique and future oriented, needs to realize SPEED in recruiting. High speed rightly reflects your corporate ambition to beat the competition every day.
Today’s top experts in the market should judge their potential new employers on their capability to swiftly seize opportunities and show fast-paced hiring excellence.
Keep in mind that top performers will test their market value through multiple applications. The best candidates will compare contract offers and hiring perspectives. A swift and quick hiring process will put convincing arguments on the table.
AKAlytics recommends to impress your desired talent through SPEED in hiring.
4) PEOPLE ATTENTION
Hiring is a people business. HR studies reveal that people, team or supervisor issues are prominent reasons why employees consider a change of company. If the personal relations in a work environment do not work for you, other factors will not be able to create work place happiness. Same holds true for hiring. The people factor will drive the decision for or against future employers.
Successful recruiting teams put great effort into matching potential candidates with the best suitable interview partners. Select people from your organization which are able to motivate and serve as positive role models. Must-win candidates should be put in contact with representatives from senior leadership who can professionally connect with the applicants.
Hiring teams need to match candidate expertise and with interview partner competences. Interviewers better ignite joint enthusiasm for future career paths.
As a highly qualified applicant it would be AKAlytics expectation to meet or at least speak to future team members and the future boss before I making decisions. Hiring interviews are best conducted by team members who show great people skills and are talented communicators. Each interview is not any more a test, but a match making session and a career potential session.
Recruiting is the an opportunity – for employers and job seekers alike – to ignite positive and convincing impressions. The power in recruiting has shifted towards the applicants. Arrogant interviewers or rude persons who expect the applicant to adhere to corporate rules will just loose in the market. People matter.
5) COMMUNITY & CULTURE
Even if recruiting teams fulfill the above Top 4 on candidate experience, there is no guarantee for hiring success. Eventually COMMUNITY & CULTURE will decide if you win or loose top applicants.
COMMUNITY & CULTURE is displayed by the professional units which search for new hires. The internal set-up, operating model and corporate/unit style should show a great appeal to desired new hires. AKAlytics identified cultural mismatches between potential candidates and corporate teams as a leading factor for hiring failures.
Highly specialized experts often develop their skills in unique environments. If you desire to integrate specialists into a company, you need to create a fruitful and pleasant work environment which caters to the specialist’s expectations.
Creative people require social environments which allow them to grow their talents. Data scientists, e.g. with a PhD in theoretical physics might prefer a more fact-driven environment. Cyber-security experts might even desire a protected-entry area where they work in a high-tech, closed-off environment at seemingly odd hours (e.g. night shifts).
Professionals who hold highly specialized skill-sets might require extra-ordinary work communities. If it is about innovation and new corporate directions, it might be necessary to first produce a new work environment which will offer a suitable cultural community. COMMUNITY & CULTURE need to match the specific expectations of the desired team members.
New hires show more job dedication, if their COMMUNITY requirements are being fulfilled. This does imply that their new employer offers interaction with relevant topical gurus and culturally, fitting colleagues. Any successful hiring effort needs to foster not just one corporate culture, but nurture as many professional communities and cultures as required by its new team members.
In the past employers expected new team members to amalgamate with corporate culture. Today, corporations need to establish fitting COMMUNITIES & CULTURE to accommodate the required experts and candidates.
AKAlytics has witnessed COMMUNITY & CULTURE as key factors which decides on signing a contract offer. Further more COMMUNITY & CULTURE arce major factors which decide on the carreer path of high-potentials. Retention of key personnel means closely depends on COMMUNITY & CULTURE within organizations. Top employees stay with employers that fulfill their requirements and ambitions.
2022 hiring is a market driven by candidates. Top applicants call the shots. It is a hiring transformation which puts high pressure on recruiting teams. The AKAlytics TOP 5 on candidate experience offer insights-driven guidance. Put candidate experience first.
As a candidate, test your future employer on the TOP 5 on candidate experience. Corporations who attract the best talent in the market, are masters of candidate experience. Get ready for your new future – with AKAlytics.