Break down the big barriers

At this point in the journey, our candidates know we exist (yay!). They also have a good sense of what it’s like to work with us. Hopefully, we are sharing compelling videos of our people, telling their stories so that they will hand over a little information to learn more. That’s where nurture comes in.

Nurture has a so much promise when it comes to the continuing education of candidates about our organizations, yet, according to SmashFly research, 5% of the Fortune 500 aren’t sending anything beyond job alerts to people who are opting in for a deeper relationship.

This is the white space in the candidate journey. This is where your competitors are failing their talent. This is where you can impact your req load by nurturing talent with video.

Before we launch into the specifics, it’s important to talk about the concept of nurture.

Nurturing is what happens when someone has opted in to learn more. These candidates have learned enough to want to learn more. Nurturing is about building a deeper relationship with the candidate and connect them to the brand so that when a job that is right for them opens up, they are really excited to apply. Often times, these candidates will be joining your talent network, or talent community, but they may also be people who have started following your careers channel on social media.

These candidates are essentially pipelining themselves for the next great job you may have. They are telling you that they think you’re cute. These candidates are willing to give up a little personal information to get insider information. They may not have seen a job that is a right fit, but what you’ve shared with them so far, they like. They are interested in you. Interested in the stories you’re telling. Emotionally, they expect deeper insights. They want information that is not on the career site, information and connection to employees so that they can get the real story. This doesn’t only have to happen in the CRM. It can happen on social media. You can build relationships with candidates via LinkedIn, Twitter, heck even SnapChat and TikTok. The goal is to convince them to hang with us, keep engaging until we have the right job for them.

In the nurture phase, it’s key to meet those expectation of insider information. In this phase, you can dive deeper into the content you’re producing for awareness and education because this audience is already into you. Some content ideas for the nurture phase:

Employee testimonials

But not your average employee testimonial. This audience wants to know what’s happening inside. So, if you can, encourage your employees to answer questions that are more specific to the lead phase. Get them talking about team meetings at a high level. Have your employees tell stories of what it’s like as an insider. It’s an unmet expectation of the audience and something that can help lower those barriers we talked about in the Education post.

Inside the Culture

In the same vein, when you have employees, hiring managers and leaders talking about the culture, remember that you’ve covered the basics already in awareness and education. This is where you need to get really into the weeds of the culture. While we want you to be specific about the culture in your earlier phase videos, in the nurture phase, you should be taking it down to the sub-culture level and giving candidates a sense of what your Corporate Finance team is like versus your Treasury group.  What are the challenges in the Marketing brand groups for new products versus your established brands?  Do you hire mechanical engineers for QA on the production line as well as product development?  Help them understand where they fit.

Benefits, Learning & Development

Leads who are on the cusp of applying for a job at your organization want to know more. They want to know about benefits, they want to know about learning and development. In these instances, as mentioned above, your employees should be talking about how learning and development works at your company and how it has benefited them. If you have a tuition reimbursement program, have an employee talk about how their new learning has impacted their life and job. If you have unlimited vacation, show your leads stories of people who went amazing places. If you have supported your employees through difficult times, show those stories to your leads to convert them.

What we do that’s different

Lean into your differentiators. Give them a peek inside the organization in its truest form. Do not shy away from the challenges your business faces. These are the stories that will convert people to apply if they align with those stories. If your company is meeting-centric, talk about it. If you are a wildly transparent organization, show them. Take those core values down another level of detail and talk about their meaning and their impact. Get uber specific to allow your leads to screen themselves in or out of your process.

Meeting unmet needs

Leads want more, and these are generally unmet needs. A well-planned video strategy allows you to meet those needs. As people get deeper into the candidate journey, you will find that their needs get more and more specific because they are deciding. Your baseline information needs to continue to become more detailed so that they can make the right choice for themselves. You may have a general culture video on your career site, but that culture video that goes out to a lead via text or email needs to go deeper.

The more specific you get with your content, messaging, calls to action, and distribution will help you convert the talent you need into your organization more quickly. Doing this requires a plan. If you’re ready to make a plan,  download our Video Strategy Framework now. Tomorrow, we’re going to tackle the Apply phase and all the ways you can get candidates to finish an application, as well as what you need to tell them once they’ve clicked “submit”.