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How to market your (often forgotten) EVPs when recruiting

Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is crucial to your recruitment marketing process. In fact, it’s more important than anything else when it comes to talent attraction and engagement! Here’s how to market your EVPs. 

Do you know how to build and promote your EVPs when recruiting? Here are some tips to keep in mind.

What are the benefits you’d like to promote? Start by articulating all your standard benefits, such as competitive remuneration (base, or retainer, commissions, bonuses, on-target earnings), leave, flexibility, work-life integration, and your organisational culture.

Don’t forget about your “sometimes forgotten” benefits, such as:

  • learning and higher education opportunities
  • opportunities for career progression
  • work-related social events
  • complimentary coffee and food
  • proactive leadership and mentoring
  • autonomy and trust
  • democratic decision making
  • clear organisational goals and purpose
  • feedback opportunities for progress and improvement
  • reward and recognition
  • modern technology and good resourcing
  • clear communication
  • health and wellness initiatives

…the list goes on.

If you’re still wondering how to market your EVPs, use these benefits as a foundation, market the heck out of your beautiful, unique organisation! What achievements or awards has your organisation recently received? We all know storytelling is king – so use storytelling as a marketing strategy.

Do you participate in organisational philanthropy? Do you run social activities? Publish stories about these as well to connect with potential candidates.

Human interest stories work best of all, so unashamedly market your heroes. Sell them like they’re on Tinder! (No need to tell them you’re doing this, but then again… maybe they can re-purpose their profile?)You have heroes at every level in your organisation and your talent pool will want to work with them. What stories about your people are dying to be told? Publish stories about interesting and successful people who are currently in the roles you need to fill. Have they won awards or achieved anything that they are proud of?

Think about your executives, founders and directors. Everyone has a story to share, so find story angles that resonate with your talent pool and will make them want to work with you. These stories are, essentially, your value propositions.

Publish feature stories about people in your organisation who have progressed their careers, including where they started, what areas of the business they have experienced, and how they achieved promotions and risen through the ranks.

Build a catalogue of “people stories” and “organisational stories” that you can mix and match with different positions you need to fill.

Check out these EVP taglines from some of the World’s Most Attractive Employers (WMAEs) about how to market EVPs.

In building your EVPs, don’t sit at your desk racking your brain – chat with your colleagues. Ask them for ideas and what benefits they enjoy as part of their role (including the less obvious ones). Request good news stories to understand who might be a hero that candidates would love to learn more about.

Ideally, engage an Employer Branding Specialist to identify what your EVPs truly are. The beauty of external specialists is that they can be objective, and your people might be more willing to be open and honest with them. The best employer branding specialists will undertake a significant discovery exercise where they engage with people in different areas of your organisation across a range of roles, tenure and levels of seniority.

When it comes to marketing your EVPs to potential candidates, ruthless authenticity is worth its weight in gold. In the sales and marketing process of recruitment, the last thing you can afford is buyer’s remorse from candidates whose experience doesn’t match their expectations.