Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is about more than creating a nice-looking career page with exciting reasons why candidates should join a company. It is also about empowering recruiters to use their corporate brand flexibly for individual candidate situations. This is well known to recruitment processing outsourcing (RPO) companies.

However, an effective EVP can go even further. In a candidate-driven world, where talent shortages are clearly visible for hard-to-fill roles, EVP should also look at future career options and the company’s broader employment offering to maximize an individual’s ability to grow and develop in that organization. Companies don’t hire for life anymore; however, having candidates who stay less than three years because they don’t see clear options ahead and are being enticed away by competitors is disruptive and costly.  

How can this be better managed?

As recruiters get more attuned to the EVP and career development options of candidates, it makes sense that discussions that take place at the beginning of the candidate’s engagement should be maintained and developed during the employment lifecycle.  For example, wouldn’t it be nice if, when a vacancy appears, the hiring manager can see a list of potential employees who are interested in an internal transfer and given the opportunity to pick from this list, before necessarily hiring from outside?  Shouldn’t all companies be doing this more?

It is logical that recruitment and talent acquisition should morph into wider talent management services, and by ongoing engagement with the talent pool, recruiters should be encouraging passive candidates to consider the question “where next for me?” Over the last year, RPO organizations have been recognizing the importance of wider talent strategies to address workforce management and retention issues by building their talent consulting services. For example:

• WilsonHCG, through its acquisition of Sumner Grace in March 2015, added talent strategy and design, HR transformation and workforce planning capability
• Cielo launched a talent consulting organization in November 2014, which includes leadership and talent program design
• Futurestep launched its Futurestep Pathways solution in July 2014, offering organizations a platform to help employees manage their next internal career move, whereby recruiters can contact employees to facilitate transfers
• Alexander Mann Solutions acquired Talent Collective in February 2014, enhancing its consulting capability in talent acquisition.

Another area that can help strengthen the corporate brand is continued engagement with an organization’s retiree population; for example, leveraging their abilities to help coach and develop staff as they navigate their careers. KellyOCG is an example of an RPO provider who offers this service.

And, over the next few years, we can expect ongoing career discussions and ‘check-ins’ with employees to be a growing part of RPO companies’ service offering.

Key to success in getting more out of recruitment services, and going beyond EVP, will be a willingness to invest in this broader approach that allows career planning to become a networked discussion across talent pools and recruiters.