​It’s a candidate’s market like we’ve never seen before. ‘Living with covid’ really has shaken up the way we work...

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Needless to say, the role of employer branding is more prevalent than ever in attracting and keeping great talent. 

​External drivers are forcing change in the talent industry. It’s causing employers to look deep within their companies to find ways to better represent themselves to employees as a viable option and in effect attract new people. Below I ponder over some of the outputs of employers who are ‘looking within’ to reimagine the way they live with covid. 

Rise in employee ‘influencer culture’

Influencers have redefined partnership and engagement in new ways. Influencer culture has seen celebrities become more accessible and the term endorsement become redefined. I think this is the year that we will see employee advocacy programs step up to create more moments that matter and build connections in new ways. Advocacy programs already exist but the evolution is something to ponder. 

To that end, leaders have an integral role to play to round out the success of such initiatives. In the last 2 years, organisations have been scrutinised based on their leadership and response to covid. Remote working has poked holes in the way we work leaving 2 types of leaders – leaders who are adapting and rising to the challenges and leaders that shouldn’t be leaders in our current evolved world of work. The leadership team are no longer seen as people on the top floor in the corner office and this will be more openly celebrated and communicated to allow them to become more influential to the masses. 

Channelling Gen Z

While millennials (such as myself) grew up learning to code by updating their MySpace theme and have evolved from sharing every waking thought with 700 Facebook friends to monetizing social media, Gen Z have yet again taken this a step further. This generation are the true entrepreneurial multi-taskers that know the tech and know their own boundaries. 

This is the perfect talent equation for disruptive companies and companies prone to change. Thanks to Covid, all companies now fit this criteria. Attracting Gen Z talent is important but retaining them will be hard work and talent branding will play a role to help these opportunities look attractive. Internal mobility will be a trend to watch particularly among this generation, where their skills and traits can be used across various projects in a company. Across key role types we are already seeing these traits be mimicked, developers have become early adopters to the ways of Gen Z – will there be others? 

Best practice measurement celebrates quality over speed 

Speed of hire is already becoming a lacklustre metric across the entire recruitment process. Instead, there will be a willingness to engage potential candidates much earlier in their decision-making process and bring them along for the journey – making speed only an appropriate measure in key moments of the journey. 

​Too many companies push TA/recruiting teams to fill roles as quickly as possible without enough alignment upfront on what they are looking for. This makes the process inefficient from the beginning and discerning candidates feel that pinch. It also creates inequitable experiences which is a whole other point to raise. (DEI isn’t emerging, it’s essential.)

​Purpose over profit

​​Corporate Rebels put it best so I will leave you with this parting thought: 

“Profit for a company is like oxygen for a human: necessary to stay alive but not the reason for living” .