You might think you’re offering the best to future employees, but how good is your employee value proposition (EVP)? You’re competing for talent long before somebody replies to a job ad, and your EVP is talking the loudest about you – about what you offer, what you value, and why the best people should want to work with you.
What are you doing to attract the best people to your team and organisation?
I was speaking recently at a leadership forum about the future of work, for leaders across many industries and sectors. At the networking drinks after my keynote presentation, one attendee asked me some AI software he had seen recently.
He said one of their challenges is candidates using AI in the recruitment process. And he wasn’t talking about them using ChatGPT to reply to job advertisements (“That’s so 2024!”). This is more sophisticated: AI software that candidates are using in online interviews to coach them during the interview itself.
But that wasn’t the AI software he was referring to. He was talking about a new AI tool to help employers fight back against these employees “cheating”. This AI silently joins the Zoom or Teams meeting, and uses the candidate’s language, eye movements, and tone of voice to determine whether they are being coached by AI in the background!
He asked me for my opinion about using this “AI cheating detection” software.
What do YOU think about using this in your recruitment process?
Is this a problem for you?
And are you using software like this to combat this problem?
I said to him, “Frankly, I reckon the the best way for you to get a competitive advantage from that software is send it anonymously to all your competitors, and hope that they’re dumb enough to use it to employ only people who aren’t using AI – and perhaps even don’t know how to use AI. That will cull the talent pool, so you get to choose from the best!”
We had a bit of a laugh about that, but it highlights a serious point.
Some employers are looking at AI use by candidates as a negative, but that’s not smart. After all, why wouldn’t you want to hire people who are already using AI to solve real problems in their life?
This is not even about AI.
This isn’t just a rant against anti-AI employers. I’m talking more broadly about your employer brand – and your employee value proposition (EVP).
Just as your Customer Value Proposition (CVP) describes why people should choose to buy from you, your EVP describes why people should choose to work with you.
The best people can choose where they work, they have their own criteria for what they want, and they will narrow their choices well before you advertise.
Just like the rest of your brand, some of your EVP is created and some of it is earned. You can carefully construct and curate it through channels you control – such as your website, LinkedIn page, job advertisements on SEEK, and media appearances. Those things still matter, but they are not enough.
Today, potential employees want authenticity. They trust what they hear from insiders more than your slick website or beautiful office. They look at online reviews, forums, social media, and online influencers.
So, what’s in your EVP?
Are you offering something the best people want? More importantly, can potential employees SEE that you’re offering these things – before they even apply?
The future of work has four elements, and this is one of them: The “Attract” element.
I’m running a free public online presentation soon about exactly this – how to attract the best people with your EVP. Register here, and invite others in your network as well.
