Skip to main content

What does the talent market have to do with selling ice cream?

Sometimes your ice cream van sells very few horns. Why? First you need to figure out who eats ice cream most often (have you ever met my children?), And also what ice cream they like. It is necessary to deliver this ice cream to the right place and time, and all this at an affordable price.

In addition, you need to attract attention (for example, a three-meter plastic horn and a catchy melody). It is important to make sure that your ice cream is not only beautiful, but also delicious, otherwise you will find that people have begun to look for a replacement for your vanilla cone with chocolate chips. Finally, the main thing is to understand the macro factors that influence the supply and demand in the market. Certain place and time of sale may be more successful than others. In the case of ice cream, everything is relatively simple: the best time is a warm sunny day.

HR marketing has a lot to do with selling ice cream. To create and implement a successful strategy, you need to understand the key factors affecting the market and act accordingly.

Step 1. Who to look for to increase efficiency?
The answer to this question consists of two parts: you need to pay attention to:

technical competencies of employees in key positions (engineers, relationship managers, and so on);
on their relevance to corporate culture.
Many organizations have begun to take a more scientific approach to search and HR planning. This allows us to reinforce the general idea of ​​the necessary candidates with specific figures.

When it comes to the overall employer brand strategy, it is important to understand that some groups of potential employees will be more important than others in terms of brand positioning and promotion.

Many people buy ice cream, but if you do not win the love of children, a difficult summer awaits you. From the point of view of the employer's brand, the same applies to engineers or salespeople.

Step 2. What does your target group want?
The answer to this question requires a two-pronged approach: both the general preferences of the target group and its particular features are important. For example, if you are mainly focused on attracting students, you can find out their general preferences for hiring and use this information to create a common EVP. Then, at the level of individual departments of the company, you can specify the EVP for each target group in order to debug local communication and interaction.

The fact that owners of ice cream vans generally position themselves as ice cream sellers does not prevent the most enterprising of them from selling burgers to dads at the same time when they come to local football matches.

Step 3. Where is the best place to look for your target group?
Everything is divided into geography and communication. Try to figure out where the specialists you are interested in are located. If you look at the big picture, we will see that there are more qualified scientists in Asia than in Western Europe, and this may affect the point of application of your HR efforts (as well as, possibly, where you will place your company).

At a more local level, geography can mean choosing the right cities to find young professionals and finding the right schools and universities to find promising students. To build communication, you also need certain data. What is the fastest way to reach the target audience? What sites do they visit? What social networks do they use? At what point in the personnel market will the greatest number of the right people be? And at what point will they be most susceptible to your proposal?

The ice cream makers choose the right places and the right time for crowds of people to queue for their wagon. The same goes for potential employees.

Step 4. How do you rate yourself against competitors?
After you figure out what your target audience wants and where it is easiest to find, it is important to understand who your main competitors are, what they offer, what their message is and, if possible, how well known and respected they are.

Detuning from competitors is extremely important to attract people's attention, to explain to them why you should give preference to your brand among others.

In the case of the employer's brand, as well as with ice cream, avoid the simplest and most banal decisions: vanilla ice cream quickly becomes boring.

Very few companies use such information in its entirety, but the further it becomes, the clearer it becomes that the search for reliable information and the formation of adequate representations of the market significantly help in developing the right strategy.

Richard Mosley wrote this article in 2016. Since then, the understanding and practice of HR branding in the West has advanced far. Come to the HR Digital Summit on September 30 to hear from the author of this article about the latest trends.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is the "flyer" so terrible as he is painted?

It seems that everyone understands that the important thing is not the number of jobs a candidate has and the duration of work in one place, but the reasons for the transitions. You can figure out the reasons only by talking to the person in person. And all the same, analyzing job vacancies or looking for the ideal candidate in the best resume database, many recruiters reach out to immediately reject those who often changed jobs. We tell why this is wrong. Those who change jobs too often are called “flyers” by recruiters and try to avoid them. It is believed that inviting them to work is risky - they are either non-caring and conflicting, or unreliable and bad workers. It is clear, after all - good employees change jobs infrequently. Moreover, there is no consensus on the normal, “correct” duration of work in one place. Someone thinks that it’s two or three years, someone - that it’s three to five years. Although far from any position it is so important that a person remains in th

Route built: 5 steps to a new profession

Here are a few recommendations for those who dream of a career change. 1) Understand the reason. Ask yourself a question: are you tired of this profession as a whole or just work in a particular company? If the matter is in your current place, it is worth exploring the job opportunities. Perhaps you will feel happier if new tasks are wider than the current functionality or, conversely, you will have the opportunity to concentrate on your favorite subject area without spraying on related tasks. Maybe you do not have enough business trips or, conversely, you want a more measured schedule. Or maybe you need to think about changing the business role or type of career in the current profession. Finally, it often happens that behind the desire to change a profession is an attempt to escape from a psychological crisis. 2) Analyze the current work. Pay attention to tasks that give you energy, inspire, and what, on the contrary, causes a feeling of powerlessness or irritation. These are cl

How to prepare for an interview by phone or skype

Useful Tips: Preparing for a Scheduled Interview If you have agreed on the time of the call, you have the opportunity to prepare. 1. Choose and prepare a place for your communication Ask the interviewer in advance how much time you will need. If you call from home, warn the family that at a certain time interval you can not be disturbed and you need silence (household background sounds are very distracting and spoil the impression). If you have young children, it’s ideal to make a call at the time of their walk. When phoning from home is not an option, usually the first idea is to talk from a cafe. But this idea is far from the best. Firstly, a cafe where music would not be included, you still need to try to find. Secondly, take into account the time of the call: if it coincides with a business lunch, then as a sound background you will receive a buzz of voices and conversations at neighboring tables. At the same time, given the confidential nature of the conversation, you will