The system behind the talent decision

Most people experience recruitment as a job advert, an application or a careers site. Unless they work in the industry or have become hiring managers, they rarely see the architecture behind it.

They don’t see the teams, technology, processes, data, or organisational decisions behind the experience. They tend to experience an organisation through the interactions available to them at that point in time.

The design of a careers site, the tone of voice used on social content, the accessibility of an application process, the quality of communication and the interaction of the recruiter or hiring team all contribute to an individual’s perception of an organisation.

More often, organisations measure these interactions in isolation.

Talent acquisition teams may focus on applications, conversion, time-to-hire and recruitment outcomes, while marketing teams focus on reach, engagement and impressions. Employer brand may focus on awareness and perception, while hiring teams focus on vacancy outcomes.

While each provides valuable data, the question should perhaps become less about what happened at each individual stage and more about what the audience experienced across the journey and how those experiences influenced decisions.

The objective should not be to attract more people; it should be to design a system that helps the right people to discover, understand and make informed decisions.

Discovery becomes perception

Once an individual becomes curious about an organisation, they begin to interpret what they find. The careers site may provide one perspective, whereas an employee or an employee story may provide another. Social media content, online reviews, conversations with friends or increasingly AI-mediated research may provide others. None of these exists in isolation.

Aaker (2014) suggests an organisation’s brand personality is a crucial dimension of brand equity; just like a human’s personality, it needs to be differentiating. Cronofy (2024) indicates that candidates’ attention spans have reduced to 8.25 seconds, 4.25 seconds less than in 2020. Millennials are said to navigate between three screens, while Gen Z are said to juggle five screens at a time. Furthermore, Talent actively share experiences through these channels and through their professional networks and online communities, and those experiences can reinforce an organisation’s message; challenge it or introduce an entirely different perspective.

For example, in 2018, the BBC reported that Amazon scrapped a “sexist AI” tool; “By 2015, it was clear that the system was not rating candidates in a gender-neutral way because it was built on data accumulated from CVs submitted to the firm mostly from males, Reuters claimed.” The full article can be found here. While technology and impressions have moved on since 2018, Amazon, among other organisations, can find itself in the spotlight of news articles or online forums, and perception of an organisation can change the trajectory of its hiring strategy and growth.

So the question for organisations isn’t just what we are saying about ourselves. It is what someone is likely to read and discover when they start looking,

The problem with measuring the journey in isolation

Talent acquisition teams can access comprehensive data analytics, providing the ability to thoroughly monitor the candidate journey, from initial engagement on search engines through to their final destination in the selection process (IBM, 2023). Leutner et al. (2022) claimed the average person produces 146,880 megabytes of data each day, further suggesting this number increases as we integrate technology into our lives daily. So, while organisations have access to more recruitment data than ever before. And while applications, conversion rates, source of hire, cost per hire and time to hire matter. It is only one part of the story.

A collection of metrics does not necessarily provide an understanding of the experience. For example, a careers site may generate high levels of traffic but have a high bounce rate or poor application conversion. A campaign may generate significant reach but have little engagement. A recruitment process may achieve a successful hire while creating a poor candidate experience.

Viewed independently, they may tell us one part of the story, togeher they help organisations make data-led decisions.

This is where talent attraction and employer brand professionals have an opportunity to move beyond measuring individual stages and begin considering the system that connects them.

Designing for informed decisions

The talent attraction system does not end when someone applies, accepts an offer or joins an organisation. The expectations created through discovery and the recruitment process continue through the pre-boarding and onboarding stages. The employer brand promise begins to meet the employee experience.

Someone may have been attracted by the organisation’s values, the employee stories and organisational reputation, but belonging develops through experience.

Contributing to my MSc dissertation research, one survey participant stated:

“The crux of what candidates mostly would want is what you can offer them, how they can develop and how they can afford what they want to do”.

Another indicated that candidate behaviour is:

“now more in line with consumer behaviour, everything is on their devices and they expect information to come to them.”

Perhaps this is where and why the language of talent attraction needs to evolve. People will continue to interpret organisations through their own experiences, identities, and social networks, and while organisations can influence some of the messaging, they shouldn’t try to control every signal. The responsibility is to create enough clarity and authenticity in their message so that people can make informed decisions.

The question becomes:

How do we design an experience that helps people discover, understand and make informed decisions about us?