Recruiting Right: How Corporate Culture Creates Consumers
All great stories start with a purpose. A purpose exploring the reason why such an organisation exists, and more importantly, why is continues to flourish.
Consumers and employees thrive off a company that serves their higher purpose, whether that be an underlying moral or social cause or the inspiration to be the best in one’s industry.
Attracting people to a like-minded ethos that compliments company values enables corporate success. When people of similar professional backgrounds are happier upon establishing a similar goal, the more time and effort they are likely to put into their work. The compounded effect of this ultimately has a bigger impact in the long run. The recruitment industry proves no different, building a marketing-drive corporate culture ultimately requires a story that captures people’s imagination so much so that they want to join the journey.
However, the recipe for detailing a unique narrative that works, alongside marketing it properly, remains the biggest pitfall in corporate recruitment to date. How can such large companies get it so wrong?
Often company ethos gets lost in the folds of their work, with no oversight to acknowledge the relationship between their product and the kind of people this product would attract. Recruitment corporate JCW easily exemplify this issue, while their own ability to recruit graduates from numerical disciplines towards risk and management opportunities in the financial sector is brilliant; their own recruitment process proves rather shabby foremost with the dated design of their website.
Lime green is simply not an option in 2016, and whilst the marketing led recruitment strategy they use is good, it could be improved. The organisation utilise various social media avenues including Facebook and Twitter to exhibit team building and travel opportunities that might entice graduates to come and work for them. (Figure 1)
As we can see, the major problem is that these types of advertising work well when they focus on the brand, the product or the service. However, the focus of (Figure 1) takes the form of a recreational holiday planned for the employees. It doesn’t really show how they work together, the professional environment they work in, the ethos they all collectively adhere to, or successful client interactions. It just shows the perks of the job, and whilst this is great, without showing what the actual job entails, nobody will want to work here.
In the 21st century, the Millennial workforce have a plethora of opportunities available, and as there’s no guaranteed job or even career for life anymore, the way we view companies is often fickle. My generation are particularly focused on gaining useful skills and working in places that give us the opportunity to enhance what we already know, we’re a generation who travel far more than our parents did at our age, so work related vacations are not really relevant to us. We’re focused on the jobs in hand. Vacations? We’ll do that anyway.
A company doing this correctly has got to be Amar Al Marri’s ‘Find Salt’, a mobile fast-food outlet, filling the holes in the dining landscape while constantly reinventing how people experience food reflecting the down-to-earth lifestyles valued by their Salters.
The concept of constant mobility also plays into their narrative; by targeting an eclectic variety of local suburban neighbourhoods and major tourist spots, Salt are able to bridge the cultural gap between Emirati citizens and tourists. Anyone anywhere can unite over food, and Salt attempt to facilitate this unity, inspiring consumers to invest in the brand and potential employees of all backgrounds to get involved.
The Emirati munch mogul’s appear to reverse their storytelling opportunity by targeting potential employees as consumers first. Their storytelling actually begins with the product and works backwards, explaining what the product is, the function it serves and the storyline by which it came about.
Such an explanation typically ends with a reminder of their higher purpose, to serve family food and connect global citizens. The latest cheetos fries exhibits this perfectly (Figure 2).
Like JCW, they have utilised their social media platforms to reach customers, particularly via Instagram, which offers the unique chance to solely share content by video and photographs. Salt have created numerous Instagram videos which romanticise the cheetos fries concept by personifying the ingredients; the animated cheetos appear to argue with the fries over the Labneh pool, undeniably attracting a wide audience to their eatery (Figures 3, 4, 5, 6).
Beyond personification, Salt have built in the theme of nostalgia to their products (Figure 7). By marketing the cheetos fries product as a revival of the “old days”, consumers are invited to re-visit the fonder memories of their childhood and share this bond with other Salters through investing in the product .
Real life testimonies are an alternative channel that utilise the power of storytelling to showcase how a company operates and the kind of people who’d typically be interested in working there. Whether it’s casual street food dining or political risk firms, employee stories can enhance the consumer experience, beyond investment and towards actual involvement. Shoe giant Zappos dominates the game well in this instance, with a page dedicated to their “Focus on Community Connectivity” and subsequent testimonials from happy employees and consumers alike. The way they have built their brand around consumer satisfaction as opposed to glorifying the products themselves is a testament to their loyalty to good service. Their recent move to Las Vegas from San Francisco, and the subsequent tremendous urban planning initiative which aimed to create a new home for Zappos employees, again highlights that this company is worth so much more than merely their products.
Overall, a sound corporate culture, when combined with a kick-ass product and killer storyline will always attract not only the right consumers, but the right employees for the job. By focusing on specifics, what the job entails, including testimonials, and reviving innovative new products by pairing them up with old well known stories, there’s no reason why your brand new recruitment strategy can’t change the game.