HR Tech & Hiring: Promoting Culture in Positive Candidate Experiences
Jamie Kenison | 3 min read
To say the world has rapidly changed in the last two years would be an understatement. We have all felt the whiplash of the constant flexing; between a worldwide pandemic, a toilet paper crisis, supply-chain issues absolutely everywhere, a labor shortage due to The Great Resignation, and Betty White’s passing, it’s safe to say that the throttle of uncertainty has shifted our perspectives to be more reflective. With that reflection, companies have shifted many aspects of structure – especially company culture.
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As we navigate the Great Resignation, it has become painstakingly obvious that company culture lays the foundation for team success and employee retention. It’s not enough to just talk about culture once an employee settles in either. The introduction to company culture has to start the moment a candidate presses the shiny submit button on their employment application. Our HR professionals are the backbone of company culture and they lead its promotion from that first moment of interaction with a candidate all the way through their hiring and onboarding.
This month, Wisetail received the opportunity to participate in a virtual Human Resources summit focusing on new trends in HR technology; pioneering workplaces that are happier, more productive, and more people-centric. Our team came together to take a deep dive into our own HR technology usage and how it aids our HR leaders. We recognized that we are most proud of our candidate experience and how our superb process promotes our company culture. We asked ourselves the following questions and heard thoughtful responses from our favorite HR leader, Rachel Guzman.
Does a potential employee’s candidate experience shape company culture?
“Absolutely. That’s our goal. We want everybody to be themselves. I always say: you don’t build a house with a bag of hammers. We are looking for feedback, the good and the bad, and for them to see from the get go what type of care we provide them as an asset. We invest in our team and show that through our candidate experience from the moment we come in contact with them. There’s such an energy to the intention.
A big part of this is hiring the right people at the right time. We focus on fully assessing candidates and what they are looking for. For us, too. We look at core competencies, candidate and company potential, along with how their culture aligns with ours. We focus on hiring a whole person and not just a project manager. We want to hire that entire person.”
Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solutions on Unsplash
Does the candidate experience improve team retention?
“I like to think so. From the time we receive an application and we take them through the formal process, all the way to onboarding, we focus on making people feel important. This is done through communication, being real people, having real expectations, displaying professionalism and a generous amount of warmth without being very corporate. We have a very empathetic recruiter who has established a great candidate experience that isn’t stressful at all. We believe the value we place during the candidate process directly translates to the value our company places on our team.”
Does your recruitment process directly reflect your company’s mission statement and pillars of values?
“We keep with our slogan of turning companies into communities, by aligning our recruitment with our pillars of values of being performance driven, having vision, being purpose lead, creating a global family that values diversity all while creating sustainability in what we do.”
