MANAGING THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE

This ‘on-brand’ experiential design should start early in the recruitment funnel. Assuming an applicant has already established a certain number of employer brand expectations through exposure to your recruitment advertising and content marketing, these same brand attributes should be consciously wired into the application and screening process. As discussed in Chapter 18, the first step in reinforcing a positive impression of your brand is to ensure you're consistently excellent in delivering on the basics. This should start with a commitment to treat every applicant with respect. Set clear expectations. Acknowledge applications promptly and with gratitude. Let people know where they are in the process. Explain why you may not be able to meet people face to face for screening. However tough the screening process may be, ensure that applicants pass though the challenge with their dignity intact. Communicate decisions promptly and clearly. These are basic acts of decency that will reflect well on the brand. If people are selected for interviews it will leave them feeling they have made the right choice to pursue the opportunity. If people fail to make the grade (very often the majority) they will feel they have been dealt with professionally, and even though they may feel negative about the result, they are more likely to remain positive about your organization. A negative candidate experience is likely to be widely shared. Career Builder's research suggests that the majority of people who've had a bad experience during the application and selection process will tell at least three of their friends, and a significant number will tell considerably more.³

This same level of professionalism should also apply to the interview process. Make sure candidates know what to expect. This doesn't mean spoon feeding people with advance notice of the questions they will be asked, but it should provide a clear indication of the kind of questions they may have to respond to. McKinsey provides an excellent example of this kind of selection process pre-briefing:

‘For those of you feeling anxious about interviews with McKinsey, relax. Our interviewers aren't there to grill you, or laser in on your weaknesses, or destabilize you with trick questions. In fact, they're smart and caring people who are eager to find your strengths, especially in unexpected places.’⁴

McKinsey goes on to explain that there are two types of interviews involved in the selection process, the experience interview and the case interview. The first of these is designed to explore people's strengths and accomplishments. The second is designed to test people's problem solving abilities. McKinsey provide a number of practice tests and coaching tips to help people perform at their best, but advise people not to over-prepare:

‘Familiarizing yourself with the content and structure of the interviews – and broadly framing the areas you want to cover based on the attributes we've described above – is enough. We are not looking for “the most prepped.”’

Allianz similarly provides an infographic guide to the key steps in its recruitment process. Figure 19.1 provides the first section of this infographic.

Once these basic professional standards are in place, the next step is to tailor your application, screening and selection processes to reinforce the key pillars of your EVP. You're assessing a potential new employee, and they're also assessing you. These are important ‘moments of truth’ for your employer brand promises. If your proposition promises flexibility, then you need to make sure you build flexibility into your process design. If you've claimed to be a progressive and innovative employer, then you should find a way of demonstrating this commitment through the innovative approach you take to interviewing and selection. Google were famed for asking left-field questions to determine candidates' ability to think on their feet, but it was also part of the brand positioning process. They're renowned for innovation, so you'd probably be disappointed (though may be also somewhat relieved) if they didn't ask you how you'd escape from a blender if you'd been shrunk to the height of a nickel, or asked to explain how a database works in no more than three sentences to your eight-year old nephew.⁵

Table 19.1 provides an illustration from a leading global company who ensured every manager involved in conducting interviews undertook a day's training to fully understand not only the professional standards required, but also the importance of reinforcing the company's EVP through the way they conducted each interview.

MANAGING THE ON-BOARDING EXPERIENCE

Once you've made an offer and it's been accepted, you may think that you can take your foot off the employer brand marketing pedal. Nothing could be further from the truth. On-boarding talent in the right way is just as important as recruiting the right talent. If you succeed, high expectations will fast forward into high engagement and high performance. Get it wrong and disappointment will lead to disengagement and early attrition. In Aberdeen Group's recent research among nearly 200 organizations, they discovered that those with the most advanced on-boarding practices retained 86% of their employees over the first 12 months compared with 56% among the ‘laggards’. These leading orientation methods also helped to ensure that 77% of newly hired employees met first year performance expectations, compared with only 49% among those less advanced in their orientation practices.⁶ Despite this proven performance impact, over a third of organizations were found to have no formal on-boarding processes.

Five key on-boarding practices have been identified as essential to effective employer brand engagement and identification as well as hastening people's ‘time to performance’.

1. Global standards, local tailoring

   The leading organizations set up a consistent global on-boarding process to ensure close alignment with the EVP, effective application of technology and consistent feedback and metrics. As with other employer brand management processes, there is also a carefully considered localization of practices to meet the needs and preferences of regional cultures, local business units and specific talent segments.

2. Start early, continue late

   Most leading employers now recognize that it takes a great deal more to on-board new employees successfully than a day-long induction class. It has become increasingly common to start some form of ‘pre-boarding’ process as soon as an offer of employment has been accepted, and to extend the period considered as ‘orientation’ up to 3 to 12 months from joining. The on-boarding framework divides into five phases.

3. Clear ownership, seamless teamwork

   While on-boarding is generally owned by the HR function, it is very definitely a team sport. The reason a formalized process is required is because effective on-boarding requires the close coordination of many different functions within the business, including:

   1. The recruitment team – providing the necessary hand-over.
   2. HR management – guiding the overall delivery of on-boarding, providing support to hiring managers and updating the process to meet the changing needs of the business.
   3. IT/Facilities – ensuring new employees are appropriately equipped and enabled from day 1.
   4. Learning and development team – addressing the learning needs of new joiners including the provision of e-learning support through induction and orientation.
   5. Line management – taking the leading role in welcoming new employees and orienting them to their new role and colleagues and performance objectives.
4. Leverage technology

   Technology can play a highly effective role in guiding both new joiners and hiring managers through the on-boarding process as well as providing a more consistent on-brand experience. This can include everything from task flow management (prompting and tracking the checklist of information and tasks required throughout the process) to socialization (building your network) and cultural orientation (through videos, learning modules and games).

   A number of these services can be built onto existing HRMS or ATS solutions, but the best in breed – according to benchmarking research conducted by the Aberdeen Group – are custom built portals that are fully integrated into the wider talent management system.

5. Data integration and performance linkage

   On-boarding provides an important link between the data collected during the hiring process and subsequent performance management and development processes. Linking these three datasets enables organizations to better understand the kind of interventions required during on-boarding to ensure people feel fully engaged and accelerate to full performance in the shortest possible time.

In addition to designing these best practice features into the on-boarding process, your organization should also think through how it can best communicate the distinctive culture and brand identity of the organization. In her Harvard Business Review article ‘What it means to work here’, Linda Graton described three orientation processes designed to provide a clear understanding of the distinctive organizational culture that candidates were joining.⁶ The first company, Whole Foods Market, treats each department in its stores as highly empowered, entrepreneurial teams whose members have complete control over who joins the group. In this organization, the on-boarding process involves a four-week trial period, during which team members vote on whether a new hire stays or goes; the trainee needs two-thirds of the team's support to join as a permanent member of staff. At the software services provider, Trilogy Software, new recruits undertake an intense three-month on-boarding process, which provides a compelling and immediate illustration of the way the company operates. In the first month, new recruits participate in creative projects teams of around 20 people, overseen by more senior and experienced mentors. In the second month, the project teams are reconfigured into smaller ‘breakthrough teams’ charged with the fast-track development of new product or service ideas, business models, prototypes and marketing plans. In the third month, some recruits continue working in their breakthrough teams; others find alternative sponsors elsewhere in the company. Upon completion candidates undergo rigorous evaluation before being redeployed to different parts of the organization. At the storage solution retailer, The Container Store, the on-boarding process is heavily weighted towards product knowledge. This starts with ‘Foundation Week’, five full days of intensive briefing on the company's values, processes and products, and continues throughout the first year with an average 235 hours of formal training (more than 20 times greater than the retail industry average).

All three organizations take a consistent and professional approach to the on-boarding of new employees, but the processes they have adopted vary significantly, depending on the culture and required way of working prevalent in each company. The LEGO Group purposefully designed its on-boarding process around its EVP pillars, dividing the process into four key dimensions, each aligning in some way with its People Promise (Table 19.3).

SUMMARY AND KEY CONCLUSIONS

1. Following the employer brand expectations established through exposure to your recruitment advertising and content marketing, these same brand attributes should be consciously wired into the application, selection and orientation process.
2. A negative candidate experience will be widely shared. Research suggests that the majority of people who've had a bad experience during the application and selection process will tell at least three of their friends, and a significant number will tell considerably more.
3. On-boarding talent in the right way is just as important as recruiting the right talent. If you get it right, high expectations will fast forward into high engagement and high performance.
4. Most leading employers now recognize that it takes a great deal more to on-board new employees successfully than a day-long induction class.
5. While on-boarding is generally owned by the HR function, it is very definitely a team sport. The reason a formalized process is required is because effective on-boarding requires the close coordination of many different functions within the business.
6. On-boarding provides an important link between the data collected during the hiring process and subsequent performance management and development processes.