Every January, without fail, we attempt to make a series of promises, or resolutions, to ourselves. Be they about losing weight, easing off alcohol, demonstrating shrewder financial judgement. And it’s round about this time of year – two or so weeks into the longest, coldest, most miserable month – that we, entirely predictably, tend to break those promises. Our resolutions do not appear very resolute.
Keeping promises is hugely important for any organisation – whether such promises have been extended to customer, stakeholder or people audiences. It’s hard to maintain relationships with any of these audiences without the tangible existence of trust.
Your EVP is a promise
An Employee Value Proposition is one of those promises. It serves as an organisation’s commitment to existing workforce and candidate communities alike, around the sort of employee experience they are likely to come across. Clearly it has to be predicated around the genuine employment reality offered by an employer. That proposition or promise is typically landed via a wide variety of employer branding collateral.
But what’s the first test of such a promise? The first occasion when a candidate has the opportunity to gauge the credibility of this promise or proposition?
Are you keeping that promise?
For me, it’s the candidate experience. Applicants have encountered an enticing, persuasive, compelling narrative about what they can look forward to working at a new employer. And the experience they go through as candidates is the first tangible demonstration of the employer promise. To what extent does that proposition hold up? Perhaps the EVP was based around empowerment, freedom, trust, space or investment – is that the impression the candidate experience is providing? Or is this impression more clunky, unintuitive, repetitive and illogical?
When the promise of your employer branding messaging is put to the candidate experience test, what is the outcome? A seamless, co-ordinated delivery of that set of promises? Or not so much?
To paraphrase thought leaders from Prussian Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke the Elder to Mike Tyson, no plan survives first contact with the enemy.
Perhaps it’s a stretch to describe candidate experience as the enemy of employer branding (and perhaps not), but it can often feel as they are utterly unaligned. Constructed and built not by the same department or even the same organisation but by complete strangers. One from Venus, the other from Mars.
(Interestingly, this strengthens the argument for employer branding sitting with TA – the further it evolves away from this area, the greater the scope there is for a growing chasm between messaging promise and experience delivery).
No surprise that both candidates and recruiters have challenges
Such misalignment impacts both candidates and hiring organisations. Let’s look at LinkedIn data from this month. Globally, 66% of recruiters worldwide feel that it has become harder to find qualified talent in the past 12 months. The same piece of research suggests that 65% of candidates feel that finding a job has become more challenging.
The gap between employer branding promise and candidate experience reality only exacerbates the gap between applicant and potential employer.
It’s costing you both candidates and customers
Perhaps worse, the experience that candidates encounter is influencing their perceptions about the organisations and businesses they are applying to. If we look at Survale’s 2025 Business Impact of Candidate Experience, some of the findings are alarming.
For the third consecutive year, Candidate Resentment scores have risen globally – with audiences across EMEA the least happy with the experience they come across. For Survale, Candidate Resentment relates to those candidates who will now not buy from nor do business with the organisations they have applied to, as a result of their candidate experience. The same piece of research suggests that candidate resentment, simply across the financial services market, costs those organisations $386m each year.
According to Career Builder, 60% of candidates quit mid application because of the experience they are presented with. For them, the promise delivered by an organisation’s employer branding messaging simply wasn’t being kept.
As a result, an organisation misses out in two ways. The applicant they have effectively invested marketing spend in has left the process, presumably now with a worse perception of that organisation and their employer brand than they began with. In the more extreme cases, a growing number are now loath to spend money and/or time with that organisation as a consumer.
Analysing the candidate journey
The solution? It’s about understanding the candidate journey from initial awareness and interest, through to application and beyond. It’s about walking in the shoes of candidates. It’s being aware of the messages being delivered to candidates through their journey with an organisation – do they remain consistent and aligned, or does the mood music change abruptly? What messages are those candidates being exposed to and to what extent do they change during the course of that process. If we think of the EVP as a promise, then is the rest of the process delivering on that promise, breaking it or simply ignoring it?
It can feel as if employer branding messaging represents an organisation looking outwards and the candidate experience delivered, the result of an employer looking inwards.
Organisations need to think about what sort of promise they are delivering to people audiences and the extent to which that’s being kept at all stages. Because the cost of not keeping those promises goes much further than hiring challenges, it’s costing your business money, reputation and customers. As well as candidates.
How far does your EVP reach?
It’s about the longevity of your EVP through the process. To what extent does it exist and function beyond your employer branding materials? Does it have genuine reach? The promise you make through your EVP, does it continue to have a presence through the candidate experience?
But it’s hard to answer that without auditing your candidate journey.
Getting to the heart of your employee mindset 