The last two years have brought into sharp relief how increasingly difficult it’s become for companies to attract, recruit, and retain good talent (many now settling for good enough), especially since a global pandemic brought with it a constricting labor market, and “The Great Resignation” of 2021 that saw millions of people leave the workforce. HR Brew published an article earlier this year that interviewed several hiring experts to get a sense of how 2022 would trend. Spoiler: It’s more of the same, we’re just happier now! But still, the disruption seen throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in both recruitment and retention will continue its steady march through another year at least.
But the thing about difficulty is that it can create an opportunity and a desire for innovation. At Vetty, we believe many of the hurdles that often frustrate the hiring process can be embraced as opportunities to remind applicants what they can expect as a member of your team. Right now, HR departments across the country are implementing ID Verification and workflow acceleration strategies with Vetty as a way to connect brand and hiring speed. So what does activation have to do with recruitment and retention? Let’s look at what we mean when we say “Activate your brand.”
Accelerate Hiring by Activating Your Brand Experience
How Vetty helps tie your company’s brand and reputation to its approach to onboarding can be seen two different ways. Of course there’s the visible branding, which puts your logo front and center at every touchpoint including the ongoing communication Vetty engages with your prospect or new hire.
What’s just as important is the relative ease of the onboarding experience and how that’s indicative of what your company values. With Vetty, your new hire is going to have a more seamless experience with onboarding logistics that tend to so frequently become a bureaucratic drag in other companies.
You Invested Heavily In Branding, Use It Early And Often
Let’s look at a few examples of how to reflect your brand’s values in the earliest details of an onboarding process. Rather than sending out templated, dull, and boring emails, send invites that get your new hires excited about joining the team. Give your applicant a polished and smooth onboarding experience through administrative hurdles in a way that leaves them excited, not frustrated.
Once you add your logo to Vetty, it will be included in all the messaging updates to the applicant we send out, from texts to emails, automatic reminders and customized outreach. We’ll also customize your “Get Started” email to showcase your mission and brand values, establishing the look and feel of a brand-connected onboarding experience right from the get go.
Applicant Engagement As Interpersonal Branding
There’s a reason that so much of “branding” talk revolves around things like “Voice” and “Tone” or “Style” in writing. One company might want to be intentionally snarky on social media, another might want to convey confident expertise in website copy. That interpersonal style that engages various targeted audiences is also branding, and can be just as recognizable as a logo.
For Vetty, and consequently our clients, because of our frequent communication with applicants and new hires, we find it best to strike a conversational tone. We provide ease of communication (no constant log-in hurdles, portal, or anything like that, just simple texting from the phone) and the sense of leading them in a really painless way through those first barriers of onboarding like the identity check, and background analysis.That means ensuring that your hard-won new hire makes it from application to interview to job offer to first day while minimizing as many inconvenient, administrative pain points along the way.
It’s All About That Employee Experience
To be sure, the identity verification and background check are critical steps for HR departments to ensure they have the candidate they think they hired, but through that process, it’s a great opportunity to introduce your candidate to the way the company approaches work right from the get go.
Tie your reputation and your values to the first touch points every new hire has with your brand. Make that an intentional extension of your approach to doing business the way you do in every other aspect of your company. It’s one of the easiest ways to make a big difference for a new hire who may have a few other irons in the fire before too much time is invested.
When looking at the high cost of losing a new hire before their first day, the opportunity to connect them to what attracted them to apply in the first place is an easy way to start things off on the right foot. Applicants who recognize and align to your brand and mission are generally stronger employees, so creating an onboarding experience that connects your brand identity can be the very thing that sets the right tone from the beginning. In a climate of competitive recruitment, a better onboarding experience could be the linchpin to lasting retention.
