Employer branding and gamification. Play to pay is not a new concept on the market, but it’s definitely a fresh perspective when it comes to the recruitment industry. Gamification of the entire recruitment process results in better compatibility between talent and your job openings, while helping calibrate expectations and cultural factors.
One of the challenges in employer branding is staying top of mind in your possible candidates’ professional agendas, both when you’re actively recruiting and when you’re not.
In this article, we’re going to go through the main benefits of Shop as an employer branding gamification strategy.
But first, what is a Shop and how does it work?
The Shop is a mechanism that’s part of a larger gamification framework. Candidates have to go through challenges and courses, to earn points and then they can unlock different prizes or freebies that you list as your Shop items.
Through this mechanism, you can motivate candidates through different in-platform gifts and goodies allocated on the basis of different criteria that you set up yourself. Engaging candidates has just become even easier.
By now, you must be asking yourself why you should make this effort in the first place, to which we’ve got the following points:
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Using Human Nature Your Ally – The Power of ‘Free’
We have evolved tremendously since our hunter-gatherer ancestors. The more we create a theatre of mind that guides the world we live in and integrate complex social constructs, the better our brains have learned to adapt to these social mechanisms.
But even now, after all the evolutionary progress, there are psychological triggers that have been so fundamentally embedded into our DNA that it’s difficult borderlining on impossible to ignore core motivators.
One great example is the power of free stuff. It sounds trivial, but research shows that people are more willing to break behavioral patterns and to be more open to demands when something free comes along. There are multiple behavioral theories explaining this, one of my favorites being the Penny Gap, which illustrates that people find the difference between free and 1 penny much larger than the gap between larger amounts, such as $100 and $120.
What this comes to demonstrate is that however wealthy we are and however educated, there are powerful, profoundly humane and innate triggers that we simply can’t override.
This is one of the simplest reasons why you should include this type of psychological motivators in your recruitment strategy, attracting candidates with gifts that they find valuable or worthy of their efforts.
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Offering a Real Stake Other Than the Job Itself
‘Build a connection with your candidates!’ is what everyone’s going to tell you. Since the balance of power between the market and the candidates’ requirements has shifted and people are, more than ever, looking for opportunities that are meaningful for their professional journeys, nurturing a quality relationship from the beginning of the recruitment process is a sign of respect.
On Jobful, we’re not just guiding you through the process of acquiring talent, but also harnessing the power of human focused design for the benefit of candidates. This is why we actively encourage employers to offer meaningful experiences even for the candidates who won’t get the job, or won’t even make it to the interview. Skillsets are so dramatically dynamic these days, that a candidate not fit for a position today might be a valuable asset in the near future.
This is why we believe in creating a journey that supports candidates to upskill and to follow their passions.
Whether it’s a mentoring session, a course that you want open on the market to help sharpen the skills of your talent or just a branded freebie, paying attention to all of your candidates’ needs is a mindful practice that will only improve your employer branding numbers.
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Staying Top of Mind Through Meaningful Experiences
Lastly, candidates don’t have to become your employees to be ambassadors of your brand, they just need a human connection and a powerful experience to help you stay on top of their minds.
In many cases, candidates will just follow your job openings if your culture fits their values. A meaningful experience through which you bring out the curious and competitive side of talent will go a long way in building you a reputation on the market.
And to save the best for last, perhaps one of the most powerful results of having a Shop experience integrated in your recruitment process is that you don’t even have to be actively recruiting to stay top of mind.
It’s no secret that the talent acquisition process has its ups and downs throughout the year. Staying relevant is no easy thing to do in an overcrowded job market, but using year-long techniques gets you closer to your objectives.
If you’re only planning to recruit during the autumn, for instance, you can use the Shop feature to promote courses, workshops and other upskilling materials that will help you qualify your candidates before you even have the job opening. It’s also powerful to be active throughout the entire year because it sends the message that you don’t just care about the people who’ve made it through the recruitment process, but about the entire industry you operate in.
Companies CAN be team players and this is one way to do it.
Curious how you can use the Shop feature for YOUR company? Drop us a line.
