How to conduct a hiring competitor scan and stand out from the crowd
Have you ever dissected how your hiring competitors are positioning themselves to attract talent?
If not, you’re putting yourself at a hiring disadvantage. You can fix this by conducting a hiring competitor scan.
First off, what is a hiring competitor scan?
A hiring competitor scan is an exercise that involves tracking how other companies are communicating their employee value proposition (EVP) - both through text and visuals - across their key digital touchpoints, including their career sites, social media profiles, job sites, and job descriptions.
And why are they a valuable tool to use?
Because too many companies today position themselves exactly the same way in front of candidates. And when everyone’s saying the same thing and sharing similar visuals, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd and persuade candidates that you’re the right company to apply to (or accept an offer with).
Hiring competitor scans can provide the information you need to position your opportunities in a unique way from an EVP standpoint. Beyond that, they can also help you to come up with a recruitment marketing plan for getting your messaging out to candidates using channel or content types that are different from what’s already being done.
So, if you’re now convinced a hiring competitor scan needs to be on your to-do list, you can follow this 5-step process to get the insights you’re looking for:
5 steps to help you conduct a hiring competitor scan
Step 1 - Come up with a list of top hiring competitors
The first step is fairly straightforward: identify your hiring competitors.
You might already have a good idea of who your competitors are in your local market. However, if you work for a bigger company with multiple office locations, you can use data from LinkedIn to find this out. If you have a paid partnership with the platform, simply ask your account manager for a hiring competitor report.
If you don’t have a paid partnership with LinkedIn, you can check in with colleagues in recruiting and HR in other cities to get feedback into some of the key players who often steal candidates away. Many declining candidates and exiting employees will share which organization their headed to during the course of an exit interview or decline call.
Step 2 - Assess their EVP positioning
Now it’s time to take your list of competitors and assess why you could be losing employees and candidates to them.
Try to answer the following questions:
What factors are they putting front and center in their primary messaging?
How are they communicating the “what’s in it for me” to candidates?
What exact wording are they using to communicate the value of working for their organization?
To gather this information, you can go through the major touchpoints in their candidate journey and document the results using a preferred software tool; Microsoft Word/Google Docs or PowerPoint/Google Slides are all good options and keep things simple.
Step 3 - Look to see how they portray themselves visually
It’s also worth looking at what colours and other visual brand elements competitors are using to tell their story.
For example, do the majority of competitors use simple cartoon visuals, stock photography, or real employees to bring their key selling points to life? If they’re using video content, are the videos professionally produced or shot selfie-style by employees? How are they using colours or iconography to emphasize key points?
If all of your hiring competitors in a local market are talking about their perks using iconography, you may want to find a different way to showcase what sets you apart. When candidates visit your career site, they’ll be more encouraged to engage with the content because it won’t look like everything else they’ve come across during their job hunt.
Step 4 - Research what channels and media forms they use to broadcast their message
It can be helpful to also research where your competitors are most active online and how they’re communicating in those areas. This can provide ideas for what to do (and what not to do!) in order to get in front of candidates with your own messaging.
Start by analyzing your competitors activities in commonly used recruitment marketing channels like:
Employer review and job sites, like Glassdoor and Indeed
Social media profiles, like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube.
Take a look at the type of content and messages that they’re sharing across each spot. If you’re also active in those places, can you think of different approaches to uniquely get your message across? Otherwise, you’re likely to just contribute to the noise, rather than standing out on an employee’s feed.
And, of course, if you’re not active on a particular channel yet, perhaps your hiring competitor’s participation on a given platform can help to inform a new recruitment marketing strategy for you to leverage moving forward (just make sure your approach is differentiated on the platform, as much as possible).
Step 5 - Pull together key patterns
With all of your competitor information now together, you can begin to identify any key patterns in how your competitors present themselves. Through this process, you’ll have a better idea of how to position yourself to stand out from the status quo.
Again, it’s important to keep in mind that this doesn’t just mean applying what your competitors are doing to your own employer branding. The aim here should be to use the findings to differentiate.
Even if you do offer all the same great things your top competitors offer, you need to find a different way of actually communicating the “what’s in it for me.” Plus the exact combination of what you offer all together as a total package is likely to be a little different. Figure out what pairing of key factors you can emphasize, and choose words that make you stand out from the way your hiring competitors are presenting those factors.
If you’re still struggling, here are a few other tips and resources to help strengthen your employer branding:
Avoid overused terms or recruiting buzzwords (like “open culture”) and instead break down what you mean more specifically when describing the employee experience.
Be creative in the approach you take to communicating the value of working for you. If you need help defining your value in the first place, check out this blog post on how to uncover your organization's employee value proposition (EVP) in 7 steps.
Use stories and content series that are different from what everyone else is doing. Stay tuned for an upcoming blog next week that will share some inspiration here with 20 unique ways to get in front of candidates in 2020.
For more help defining your messaging or conducting a hiring competitor scan, reach out to our team at The Employer Brand Shop! We’re always happy to help.
About The Employer Brand Shop
The Employer Brand Shop is a boutique recruitment marketing and employer brand agency located in Kitchener, Canada. Our team helps organizations around the world attract and engage talent using creative marketing strategies.