Using Retention Strategies in your Recruitment Marketing Content
This post originally appeared on SRSC’s blog.
A few years ago I read 90% of employees make their decision to stay long-term at a company within the first six months. This really stuck with me. As a (former) talent acquisition manager, our team considered tenure/turnover an important metric. As a (current) recruitment marketer, producing content that gets the right people to apply and the wrong people to click elsewhere and refer is a major goal.
Here are some tips for your retention strategies on how to use stories to get candidates thinking long term from the get-go:
Purpose
There are many reasons to use purpose in your recruitment marketing. Retention is an important one. Someone who is pursuing their life’s work and realizing their reason for being, isn’t going to leave for a shiny new thing. Your organization needs to communicate what you stand for to inspire candidates.
Using Retention Strategies in your Recruitment Marketing Content
And it helps if you’re a company that improves our national security or a non-profit that works to end homelessness. But, purpose shows up everywhere, in most organizations. Get the stories and share them, like this:
Cultural Values
Paired with purpose, story content about your values gets candidates to the core of your culture faster. So, when done right, this content improves the chances that the right people are opting in after they see it. Right culture fits from the start, and has a better chance of retention.
For example, Dell created their content about their open door policy for interns. One intern was so excited about this value that he planned to meet with over 100 senior people… in one summer! He’s not going to stick around at a company that doesn’t support that tenacity and desire to learn.
Setting Career Expectations
It’s all about setting the expectations for candidates about what they will experience once they’re onboard, and when thinking about tenure you should look at that experience a few years in for the average employee.
Showing a candidate the interesting careers at your organization is part of great retention strategies to get them picturing themselves doing the same (i.e building a long career with you!). However, knowing what good retention looks like for your organization and showing the real story is key.
For example, some companies think five years is good tenure. Other companies hire for life. Others realize personal and professional circumstances can pull people away from companies, and welcome them back.
Get employees thinking about a long-term career with you from the start. First, inspire and align them with your purpose and values, using stories from employees who are living it. Then, get real about what great tenure means to your organization and find real employees to share their experience. Setting the expectation at the very beginning can save you disappointed and quitting employees later.