Hiring? Your Brand is Your Friend

You’ve written a great job description. You’ve been transparent about compensation. You’ve got your hiring panel assembled. You’re ready to go!

Not so fast. Have you thought about your organization’s brand? 

When you intentionally infuse your hiring process with your organization’s brand, you not only attract candidates excited about your culture, you’re well on your way to successfully onboarding them. An authentic hiring experience that aligns with who you say you are helps potential employees understand your organization better, so they can be effective ambassadors from day one.

From the first time they read your job posting to the day they arrive, the ideal employee should “feel” the brand long before they begin to collect a paycheck.

Our growth at Mission Minded over the past 18 months means we have added many wonderful new colleagues to our mix. It also means we’ve needed to be razor sharp in communicating our brand throughout the process. It takes forethought and discipline. But when your brand strategy is clear, it becomes easy to align your hiring practices with it.

Here are four ways to ensure your hiring is on-brand and puts forth the best of your organization:

1. Check your job posting. Does the language reflect your brand personality? Do you give clues to your culture? A brand personality of “smart, organized, thoughtful” might have a very different job posting than one that is “compassionate, authentic and warm.” You can telegraph the kind of organization you are from the very first word.

2. Talk about your organization’s values throughout the hiring process. This is a great way for a candidate to really know you. Share the work you do and the practices you employ through the lens of your organizational values to help candidates connect the dots between this role and your culture. Beyond simply sharing our values on our careers page, we explain the why of our culture by explicitly linking to our values. So we say things like, “Because one of our values is to Champion Each Other, we provide everyone on the team their own Champion; someone whose specific role is to be there for you and help you be successful.” Whether it’s sourcing the right professional development option, or supporting them as they navigate a tricky challenge in their job, candidates begin to see a living example of what we mean by this value.

3. Make sure candidates experience your brand. Your brand strategy should be explicit about how you want audiences to feel when they engage with you. How can you help candidates experience that? The Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver wants their partners (including future employees) to feel “excited, because together we connect to Denver in a bigger way.” Bringing that energy into the hiring process, as well as showing candidates what that means in their job, is a great way to help candidates understand your brand in action.

4. Be nice! Our brand proclaims that we Amplify the Good. If we were an organization that ghosted candidates or wasted their time that wouldn’t be amplifying the good for them or for us. Simply put, it would be off brand. Think about what your brand stands for and use that to determine every aspect of the candidate experience.

One of our newest employees shared that he already felt a part of Mission Minded by the time he joined us. Using your brand as a guide, you can be confident that a candidate understands the spirit of the organization they are joining and allows them to immediately begin to contribute to the success of your organization’s mission.