idealpeople blog

Let me introduce you to Candidate 2.0.

Let’s call her Bridget.

Why she deserves the title of Candidate 2.0 is because she personifies the outlook and demands of the future jobseeker audience - that’ll be the people you will need to hire over the next 5 years. Probably. Maybe just try to hire, or expect to hire. Perhaps fail to hire?

- Bridget ‘grew up’ with Job Boards, and has had very mixed user experiences with them.
- Bridget knows her ‘Personal Brand’ and how it has ‘Grown Up’ online.
- Bridget has spent hundreds of hours looking online for job opportunities.
- Bridget is a lapsed MySpace user, has joined Linkedin but doesn’t really use it, and uses Facebook every day.
- The only appealing job advert she found was one from Google.
- Bridget puts the strength of the employer brand and essence of the potential employer before salary.
- Bridget hasn’t been impressed by the lack of response from direct applications she made to employers. She expects a personalised response. An automated one, or no response at all won’t do anything great for her perception of them in the future as a brand, not just as once a prospective place to work.
- Bridget would much rather be approached by her next employer rather than go through an application “process”. After all, Bridget has gone to great lengths to market her own personal brand on-line.
- Bridget is a very capable researcher. Bridget didn’t want to work for you.

Why not?
“Nothing you sold me stood out, or sparkled in any special sort of way”
Who did you choose over us?
“I chose an organization that sold itself to me with its heart, enthusiasm, flexibility, commitment to its staff and community and very little pay, over you.”
How did you hear about the job?
“So I took a job that came directly out of my network with an organization that I wanted to integrate more fully into my circle”
What is the main question Candidate 2.0 will their next employer?
“Is your corporate brand worthy of becoming an integral part of my personal brand?”

HR and Recruiting Professionals will have to ask themselves some pretty testing and searching questions about how they can reach out to people like Candidate 2.0 in a meaningful and long-term way - to secure their commitments to driving forward their ‘host’ businesses.

If you don’t ask yourself tough questions about how your own Employer Branding is ‘future proofed’ from a competitive perspective in terms of ensuring you hire A-player talent, you might as well not have one.

Take a second to consider how you can differentiate your employer brand further - to an audience of many Candidate 2.0s expecting a new layer of personalisation.