Articulating Your EVP to Specific Talent Personas

Organizational Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the key to attracting potential employees, engaging and retaining talent. If you want to be an employer of choice, you need to catch the eye of your ideal candidates by differentiating the organization from the competition.

Inherent in the EVP is the definition of the candidate persona which represents the ideal candidate you seek to attract. This persona is characterized by the strengths, skills, experience, and values that define your perfect hire and describes the employee who will fit not just the job specification but the overall culture. Personas embody the ideal target candidate, allowing the organization to be strategic in addressing each target in recruiting team members.

Personas, once developed, delineate your target audience, their behaviors, preferences, job search strategies, and demographic profile. Understanding that the target audience ensures that relevant content is targeted to appeal to and engage them. Rebecca Drew, Manager at LinkedIn Talent Solutions told us “no business will have a single type of person they want to attract, which is why segmentation is so important. This process needs to be driven by empirical market research rather than anecdotal assumptions”.

Customized communication

Personas facilitate the design of EVP that resonates with the workforce, offering a roadmap for customized communication to the target audience based on a good understanding of the distinctive needs of individuals. Implicit in this is a requirement to create personas based on research and real-time data, don’t make assumptions, you need to understand what constitutes success for the employees in your organization.

Once the EVP is defined it’s crucial to communicate it in a way that is relevant to the lived experience of employees, otherwise, it will fail to make an impact. Employees must be confident that the EVP is authentic and realistic.

Remember, that a persona is not set in stone, it is important to keep updating the persona framework as you talk to managers, candidates and top performers, making adjustments as you implement each persona. Ensure your persona documents are reviewed regularly and updated as roles and duties change or as the description of the ideal candidate changes.

Employee-centered focus

Be sure to articulate EVP in terms of what is valued by employees, using personal affords a focus on an employee-centered approach. Remember to talk about training and development opportunities and culture-specific elements alongside financial instruments.

A strong employer brand enables prospective applicants to envisage themselves working for the organization; as well as communicating with candidates about products, mission, and values your EVP demonstrates how the organization provides value for them. Measurable impact comes from effective activation of the brand, bringing it to life across the whole recruitment strategy, through employees and recruitment marketing channels, for the whole employment journey.

The precise articulation of a talent persona framework facilitates understanding of the expectations of a diverse and multigenerational workforce, enabling HR to design and enact innovative, employee-centered policies, processes and procedures which afford an environment and workplace culture suited for greater success.

Aim to be an organization that listens to stakeholders in order to understand what allows them to thrive and develop at work as a reflection of shared values in the employer brand and EVP.