I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
Coming up on September 25th I’ll be speaking at the Iowa State SHRM Conference. We’re doing a 3 hour workshop on employer branding for talent attraction and retention. I’m so excited! One of the conference committee members asked me on a planning call if I was going to be talking about assessing your competitors when it comes to talent attraction and retention. I paused to think for a second and then responded with no, I don’t have that planned as part of this session.
I thought about it more after the call took place. Sure, looking at your competitors from an awareness standpoint is helpful. You may gain some perspective or seeing what they’re doing (on social media for example) for talent attraction and retention may help you generate some ideas of your own. I don’t talk much about this during my workshops, because I’ve learned from talking to business owners and HR departments of one that we aren’t looking inward enough! When we want to do something new/better/different at work, we seem to immediately look at what other people are doing. Which again, CAN be helpful.
Especially when it comes to talent attraction and retention, as an organization you need to be authentic to you. Candidates, customers, vendors, etc can sniff through the BS if you copy a competitors social media post, or if a recruiting strategy feels out of value alignment. Trust me as a candidate, I can tell! During my workshop at Iowa State SHRM we are going to first start with the basics: company mission, vision, values, purpose, value proposition. I find sometimes it’s been years since HR and their leadership teams sat down to discuss all of these items and why they are what they are. It’s important to talk about these on an ongoing basis what the values look like in action and what behavior exemplifies those values. You should be attracting and retaining talent according to your mission, vision and values.
Think about your top performers who also exhibit the company values.
- What are they doing?
- How are they doing it?
- What do people like about working with them?
- What feedback are they receiving from their peers, manager and customers?
We want to retain them and attract more people like them! Looking inward and knowing what makes your organization unique to the core and then putting a plan together (which we will also talk about during the workshop!) on how to attract and retain talent based on that will give you much better results than first looking at what competitors are doing. If you do it this way, you’ll actually notice competitors, or people who see you as competition will start doing the things that you are. That’s when you really know you’re doing it right (: And the LinkedIn community can see and knows whose content is really authentic to them. Trust me, the universe knows your intentions and you will not get the results you’re looking for if you’re doing something from a place of inauthenticity or posting something because you think you should/saw a competitor doing it.
I notice the same with my career coaching clients. When struggling with their job search, one of the first questions they ask me is: “How do I beat the ATS? That must be an issue I’m having.” The ATS is the applicant tracking system – the site you upload your resume to / apply through. I’ve been a recruiter for 10+ years, as well as applied for and accepted jobs, and focusing on “beating” something has never been a good use of time.
First, let’s look at your materials. (resume, LinkedIn profile, etc) and make sure they reflect your:
- Unique value
- Skills
- Experience
- Strengths
- Personal brand
Then let’s focus on how to confidently talk about yourself. Do you know how to do that? Do you know how to build relationships and network? When starting a job search, we always start with getting our materials dialed in, and after that we move on to more value added activities. Those include inward reflection, identifying your skills/strengths/personal brand, a plan to showcase that, and then how to relationship build and network. Especially now, the job market is fierce and competitive. Apply online, yes, but then knowing someone at the company directly, or having a mutual connection with the hiring manager or a referral, or having some another connection point (even if it’s just starting conversation – same alma mater, etc) ALWAYS improves your odds in moving ahead in the consideration process. I’ve lived this over and over personally and so have my career coaching clients. Being helpful, positive and optimistic will serve you well if you are looking to attract bigger and better. (More on this in a future blog post!)
Doing this hard work of looking inward is a skill that will benefit you long term in your personal life and career, well after this current moment when you need to improve your employer brand to attract and retain talent or advance your career or look for a new job. It feels much better to spend time working on and improving yourself and what you can control, than looking at what others are doing.
Next time you’re at a place in life when you want to get ahead, look inward and start there. Let me know what you think! See you again here on the blog soon.
Claire is Coaching 