How do we all see 2023 unfolding from a talent acquisition perspective? Are we feeling optimistic or does recent news such as Amazon shedding around 18,000 jobs fill us full of dread and foreboding? It appears there are any number of imponderables. Inflation could have peaked and could be on its way down. However, all we need is for the Ukraine conflict to grow even messier or for China to flex its muscles in Taiwan’s direction, and oil and gas prices are likely to shoot back up. Are more organisations going to see the recession we are undoubtedly already in as a means of creating greater return-to-the-office leverage? How are organisations balancing 1.1m UK vacancies with inflationary debt and pay increase expectations?
Lots of coulds and maybes and a whole absence of clarity.
Which is rather similar to candidate perceptions of the labour market. Whereas much of 2022 was viewed as an opportunity to move employer, with little prospect of redundancy and gain a hefty salary increase, there’s much more nuance and doubt around right now.
What is less in evidence today is candidate confidence.
If candidates, or potential candidates, look at the labour market and come to the conclusion that they are better off staying where they are, particularly in view of financial redundancy implications, should we overly surprised?
Every career move carries with it risks, as well as opportunities. It would be entirely logical for candidates to be focusing on the former rather than the latter right now.
If hiring organisations are, therefore, to communicate a sense of confidence to external talent audiences, how do they do this with credibility and honesty?
Employers need to demonstrate openness and realism about the current market and how they are working to address it. Simply ignoring what is happening and pretending all is well, is unlikely to inspire either confidence or trust in potential hires.
If an organisation recognises the challenges it (and the rest of the market and the economy) faces and maps out a pathway and a strategy to address such challenges, as well as making it clear that new hires will play a key role in such a strategy, then this speaks to honesty, empowerment and, again, confidence.
If their EVP is aligned to such a strategy, then ever better. Playing an active role in addressing a challenging market and being part of a recovery play should appeal to candidates who relish accountability, possibility and enablement. Business as usual in the current market feels both passive and doomed to failure.
Ageing, backwards-looking EVPs also hint at a lack of investment in both existing people and potential joiners.
“This really resonates. I am delighted to say that at NG, we spent much of 2022 reviewing and refreshing our EVP. With this and also with the work we are doing on our workforce planning – now looking at least 5 years ahead, we are indeed being future focused and using our employer brand to attract candidates with the skills and interest to help us achieve our net zero goals, as well as representing the communities we serve. It does take a different approach and in some ways being more daring than we have been before. Another key piece of work for us is around the re-skilling of the current workforce so that no-one is left behind” Catherine Schlieben, Group Head of Performance and Development and CPO for National Grid Ventures
An organisation’s current employer brand is also a lightning rod of confidence. There will be candidates looking at, for example, some tech players genuinely wondering whether what looked like an attractive move six months ago, still feels like such a sure bet. That’s why employer branding messaging is crucial to instil confidence in both internal and external people audiences.
What else might inspire candidate confidence? Training, development, coaching and career pathways. One entirely predictable victim of cost cutting tends to be an investment in people. But employees want to grow, want to take on new responsibilities, want to achieve potential. If a new prospective employer offers neither training nor the time to take advantage of such training, this does not speak to confidence in the employee base.
“As we leave behind 2022 and what could be best described as a turbulent twelve months, we now enter another year facing uncertainty. What’s immediately clear is that despite the recent news of job shedding, the challenge to engage with the right talent remains within a talent-scarce market.
The last twelve months presented talent the opportunity to secure new employment, for significant increases in salary and hence there’s been a great deal of movement within the market. However, if we continue to face into more challenges in the labour market, it’s undoubtedly going to impact candidate confidence.
At DLG, we’ve spent the large part of 2022 deep in research, insight, and validation of our EVP. Our ultimate ambition was to define and develop an authentic, future-focused, and aspirational EVP/Employer Brand, which is both distinctive and credible in the market externally, but also one which lives and breathes throughout the employee experience internally.
Moving forward, when it comes to candidate confidence, we need to provide a very transparent lens into our organisation and what being part of DLG can offer potential talent”, Craig Morgans, Acquisition COE Leader at Direct Line Group.
Organisations can portray confidence or an absence of it, too, simply in the way they recruit. If an employer provides a candidate hoops a plenty to jump through, multiple interviews, duplication of information provision, long periods of silence, then are we truly surprised when such a candidate either quits this process or simply takes the offer of a more nimble organisation? An organisation which has managed to convey confidence in their business, in their decision-making processes, their culture and in the candidate themselves?
Such an agile, candidate-aware process is also likely to see new joiners enter the organisation brimming with confidence and possibility, rather than wondering if they have made the right decision and what they might have let themselves in for.
If a candidate is looking for a reason to join a new organisation – or, indeed, a reason not to join – then the candidate experience they come across and the culture it conveys can be the source of candidate confidence or the death of it.
The percentage of premature departures is another indication of whether an organisation successfully conveys confidence to its people. Do line managers realise the responsibility they have in instilling confidence in new joiners that they have made the right decision. Or do such line managers have the impression that recent hires should feel lucky simply to have a job given the recent prevalence of redundancies?
How present does an organisation feel? Is it, and its people, suddenly absent from industry events? Is it participating in conferences and awards evenings or does it give the impression of having withdrawn? Given the current climate, people, and by definition, potential hires, will be very aware of such absences and draw their own conclusions as to how confident they feel about an organisation and its prospects.
Finally, there is little substitute for hearing and seeing just how confident employees are about an organisation. Via interviews and careers site videos, are people speaking with credibility and balance about the next six months? Are they acknowledging challenges but, at the same time, relishing those same challenges, keen to address them? If candidates feel the answer is yes, then their own confidence in a potential new employer and the move itself can only benefit.
The profile of five figure redundancy numbers, at the likes of Amazon, will have caught everyone’s eye, particularly those with a mind to change employers. They will consider their own two-year plus service and the relative protection it affords. Ask yourself, whether your messaging, your processes and your people are conveying confidence to such candidates, or just the opposite.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 