Every brand has a story to tell, whether they’ve been around for one year or 100 years. However, in the world of business, telling our stories and adding personal stories isn’t always perceived as the most appropriate or professional course of action. Some brands prefer to focus on the here and now, using their reputation and facts to help them to stand out to both customers and potential candidates. For established names, sometimes the status and name alone are enough to attract top talent, however startups and scaleups do not have this luxury.
When trying to attract top talent to your scaling tech business, storytelling could be your secret weapon. A scaling company has a great story to tell, from its beginnings as a startup and founder’s motives to its successes that have led to its scaling. Your narrative is what sets your business apart from the competition and could give you an edge over established names in your industry. It can help candidates to form an emotional connection with your employer brand, meaning they could feel more passionate about working for you and gain a proper understanding of your values and mission.
Your brand story tells the world what it means to be a part of your organisation, engaging their audience by showing the emotional and intangible aspects of your company experience. Therefore, using storytelling can help you to recruit and retain top talent. Here are just a few reasons why:
Forming the connection
Telling the story of your brand allows candidates to connect with you on an emotional level and forms a degree of trust, which is hard to build. At the most superficial level, communicating your employer brand narrative allows candidates to learn more about your business from why you started to what your driving factors are. However, by telling these stories creatively, you can connect with them on a much deeper, more emotional level. Using your own emotional connections to inspire the story will help new candidates to relate to your business as they learn more about you, creating that desire to join your business. Take candidates on the journey of your brand so that they can truly understand what you’re like as an employer and can see that a role with your business will have a strong purpose. It also is a great chance to show your businesses personality, which will resonate with similar candidates, which are hopefully attract candidates that align with your company values.
Become more memorable
Did you know that stories are 22 times more memorable than facts? So as great as it is to shout about numbers and data when discussing your scaling business, the best way to get candidates to remember your business and employer brand is to ensure that you’re telling a captivating story. This doesn’t mean lie and exaggerate to make your story more interesting. Just be honest, authentic and tell the story of how your business came to be. Not many of us will remember the exact numbers we’re presented with, and candidates can’t relate to data alone. Stories engage a person’s emotions and change the way our brains work. Our brains process narratives differently, allowing us to absorb the information and overall messages much more easily. When telling a story of why your scaling business is a great place to work and what you’re trying to achieve, your business will become more memorable, more relatable and more real to candidates.
Improve employer brand perceptions
There’s only so much that potential employees can learn from stats and facts. While it’s essential to learn about salary, benefits and retention rates, a lot of aspects of your employer brand can’t be expressed through quick stats.
Through the act of storytelling, you can not only help to communicate your employer brand but can improve your employer brand perceptions. Using storytelling in your recruitment marketing means that even passive candidates can learn about who you are and what you’re trying to achieve; if they can relate, it could put you at the front of their minds when they’re looking for a new job. Being open and honest about your scaling business, where it started and where it’s going will allow you to attract top talent; they’ll not only appreciate the honesty, but the right candidate will be excited and inspired by your story. It’s a sure-fire way to stand out from the crowd and engage an audience of candidates.
Base your story on fact
You can use your existing employees to help to tell your story. Ask recent hires why they chose to work for you; this will allow you to create an accurate picture of your business but will also show you other perspectives. As a scaling business, your initial team may be small and may have the same vision, asking new team members for their opinions will help you to gain an idea of how outsiders perceive your business. Including candidate feedback in your onboarding process will allow you to alter your brand story to reflect your employer brand accurately. The information you tell the world must be authentic as it could have disastrous implications on your employer brand if you’re found out to be lying or exaggerating. Using your real people to help with your narrative is a great way to show authenticity as well as to add more faces to your business, which will help to improve your employer brand.
Use your story as a filter
Some businesses may think that in the current climate when there are hundreds of applications for many jobs due to pass employment, storytelling is less essential. It’s time-consuming to promote your story and employer brand, so why bother when there are many people looking for work right now? Well, we’ll tell you why. In a scaling tech business, you must have the right people around you, people that will help you succeed through their dedication, determination and passion for what you do. Hiring the wrong person at such a crucial stage of business growth could not only lead to higher recruitment costs in the future but could affect the success of scaling your startup.
Instead of a dry, bullet-pointed job advert on mainstream job boards, crafting job descriptions which tell your story and promote your employer brand narrative on social media platforms can help you to appeal to interested candidates. It can almost act as a filter, to deter people who don’t care enough about your mission or disagree with what you’re trying to do. People that are applying for any and every job don’t care enough to read all of this information, and, likely, they won’t tailor their application to show they’re an excellent fit for your business.
Crafting your job descriptions
Job descriptions are one of the most important ways to tell your company story, after all, searching for open jobs is how a lot of candidates will discover your company. Crafting your job descriptions with your company narrative, core values, and employer brand in mind will significantly help potential candidates to understand your company and whether they’ll be a good fit. If you can take candidates on a journey through job descriptions, your business stands a better chance of attracting high quality and passionate candidates with an emotional connection. Your job description can be used to hook candidates, discuss the problem you’re trying to solve, create a picture of what your business is like to work for and demonstrate your personality through language. Think about your emotional connection to the company and use this when crafting a job description.
Talent Works has a long history of helping scaling tech businesses to tell their story and build their employer brand as part of their talent strategy. We believe that creating captivating marketing campaigns and telling your employer brand narrative is a great way for growing businesses to attract and retain top talent as well as stand out in a crowded job market.
If you’d like to learn more about how to communicate your employer brand, get in touch with our experts today to start your conversation. To receive more insights for your scaling business direct to your inbox, sign up to our newsletter The Startup Lowdown via the form on this page.
