Building an Irresistible EVP? Elevate Your Candidate Experience

Cover Photo by Ian Schneider. Above Photo by Walls.io. Both on Unsplash

Understanding the Importance of an Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

More than half of your current employees are considering their next job opportunity. This just emphasizes that recruiting and talent acquisition isn’t just about filling a job; it's about attracting the right people who don’t just “fit” (for now) but flourish within your culture and want to stick around. Like we shared before, the dating analogy is used a lot because it hits. And the candidates you most want to join you care about things like company values, purpose, and flexibility.

This means you need a strong Employee Value Proposition (EVP). Think of your EVP as your company's promise to employees. It's the special mix of benefits, rewards, experiences, and values you offer in exchange for their contribution, trust, and investment. It's your answer to the big question every job seeker is asking: "Why should I choose you?"

A strong EVP does some remarkable things for your company:

• It brings in candidates who believe in the same things you do.
• It helps set clear expectations, which means people are more likely to stay.
• It makes your company look great as an employer and helps people say not just "yes," but "YES!" to job offers.

We could share recommendations for building the benefits and programs that deliver your EVP. This would include decisions about compensation, benefits, and development programs. Of course, consistency is key in everything. But here's the secret sauce: even the best EVP won't work magic if candidates don't see and believe it during the hiring process. That's where the candidate experience comes in and our focus here.

Why the Candidate Experience?

The candidate experience is how job seekers feel about your company from the moment they first hear about you until they get hired (or even if they don't). Every single interaction counts – the application form, assessments, interviews, emails, everything. It all shapes their idea of your company.

In fact, how you treat candidates during hiring is often seen as a preview of how you'll treat them as employees. Research even shows that 75% of candidates are more likely to say yes to a job offer if they had a good experience.

So, think of your candidate experience as the stage where your remarkable EVP gets to shine. It's not workflow, but a chance to show off your company's heart, values, and how much you care about your people. It's about building a relationship right from the start.

Making your EVP Shine Through the Candidate Experience

How do you make that stage captivate exceptional talent? Here are some key ways to improve the candidate experience and make your EVP loud and clear:

1. Show and tell your values: What should the candidate experience feel like if you were building it from the foundation of your culture and core beliefs?
2. Clear communication: Share early what they can expect for the entire hiring process from start to finish. How long will things take? What are your core expectations that you cannot compromise? It's impossible to have a strong EVP without holding to set standards.
3. Opportunity to perform: Assessments, realistic job previews, and intentionally designed interviews give candidates the chance to share their potential. Through these experiences, they can engage and learn about your EVP and how they can contribute. 
   
   

Using Realistic Job Previews to Build Trust and Transparency

Being transparent helps candidates decide if the job is truly a good fit for them and their values.

Realistic Job Previews (RJPs) are a great tool to achieve this. Don't just talk about the great perks; be honest about what the job is really like. Show candidates the culture, values, and expectations, including the challenges. Being transparent helps candidates decide if the job is truly a good fit for them and their values. This openness builds trust and helps new hires stick around longer, reducing that early turnover.

How RJPs bring your EVP to life:

1. Candidates can really imagine themselves in the role and working within your culture.
2. They see if their preferences and needs match the job demands and what you can deliver.
3. It leads to richer conversations during the talent acquisition process and better decision-making for everyone.
4. It shows your company values honesty and supports future success.

RJPs show your company values honesty and supports future success. By presenting both the perks and the challenges of the job, you help candidates set realistic expectations, which in turn fosters a more committed, engaged, and culture-driven workforce. 

Harnessing the Power of Candidate Feedback

With anything we build, we can't know if we're achieving our intended results without data and feedback.

Candidate surveys are a simple but powerful way to understand what went well and what could be better in your hiring process. How can we know if our employee value proposition is understood and embraced if we don't ask?

A feedback process also highlights opportunities to communicate more clearly, faster, and in ways that resonate with the candidates we're seeking. It communicates to candidates (and new hires!) that your organization values feedback, cares, and is committed to continuous improvement. Insights will reduce hiring time and improve the overall candidate experience.

Regularly gathering and acting on feedback establishes it as a habit and feedback loop. You're demonstrating a commitment to continuous improvement and a positive candidate experience. This reinforces your EVP and enhances your company's reputation as a remarkable place to work.

An Experience Grounded in Trust and Empathy

Keep candidates in the loop with clear and timely communication. This builds trust and helps them know exactly what to expect in the role. Make the application easy. Show you care about them as people, not just applicants. Little things like tailoring automatic communications so their name is used make an impact. 

We also build trust by sharing social proof of who we are and how we live our mission and values. Consider acting on opportunities to:

• Share stories and testimonials from current employees, and also customers, stakeholders, and even the broader community.
• Use your company's brand and look and feel on all hiring materials. Our solutions, for example, can resurface the look and feel of your assessments and other hiring tools to match your brand and colors. The assessment experience and items can also be resurfaced to match your unique operations and deliver job-related scenarios for candidates to share how they would respond.
• Build in scalable and consistent opportunities to talk about how people grow, how you live your values and work towards your mission, and key aspects of the employee experience you know are valued by the candidate.
• Keep showing what makes you unique: your values, purpose, mission, and how you treat each key stakeholder group (not just employees, but other key stakeholders too, like customers and vendors, as it fits with your business and the role).
• Remember, the goal is to build a relationship, not fill a spot. We're hoping this is the start of a beautiful relationship. Setting yourself apart with respect, empathy, and understanding isn't just important for the candidate experience, but leads to an early employee experience that is smoother and happier. Gaining new employees who are full contributors to their teams earlier is yet another key benefit of prioritizing your EVP throughout your candidate experience.

Validated Hiring Assessments: A Powerful Tool for Your EVP and the Candidate Experience

Now, let's talk about a tool that can really help you do all this: validated hiring assessments. You might have heard different things about them. Some people worry they might seem "icky" or make a bad first impression. But when used the right way, modern assessment tools are awesome.

Think about it: resumes and applications only tell you so much. It's hard to get a real sense of a person's potential, values, or how they'll fit in just from that. Assessments change this.

Validated hiring assessments are designed based on scientific principles to measure the skills, traits, and behaviors that matter for success in a specific job and your company culture. While the sources don't specifically use the field of Industrial and Organizational Psychology or "I-O psychology science," the practices set forth by the discipline – linking assessments to job performance, evaluating fairness, identifying key competencies – are foundational elements of this scientific field focused on human behavior in the workplace. When assessments are validated, it means there's scientific proof that they actually predict job performance.

Here's how validated hiring assessments help build your EVP through the candidate experience:

1. They Show Fairness and Consistency: Instead of relying only on resumes (which can be reviewed differently by different people) or subjective opinions, assessments provide an objective way to evaluate candidates based on job-related criteria. This makes the process fairer for everyone. Good assessments are even checked to make sure they don't unfairly disadvantage any group of people based on things like age, race, or gender. This focus on fairness reflects positively on your company's values.
   • Source says: Corvirtus assessments are validated to predict performance and checked to ensure no negative impact on protected groups, which is important for legal reasons. They are also designed with accessibility in mind, like not being timed, to provide equal opportunity and reduce candidate stress.
2. They Give Candidates a Chance to Shine: Resumes are limited. Assessments allow candidates to show who they are and their potential beyond just their work history. Job-related assessments engage the candidate and more accurately assess performance. This shows candidates you care about their full potential, not just what's on paper. Contrary a too frequently heard opinion, assessments, when intentionally implemented, do not hurt the candidate experience.
3. They Provide Valuable Insights (for both sides!):
   • For the Company: Assessments help you quickly spot candidates who are likely a good match for the role and your culture. They provide data that removes guesswork and helps you make smarter hiring decisions. Assessment results can even give you tailored questions to ask in interviews, making those conversations more meaningful and efficient. This speeds up hiring time.
   • For the Candidate: Assessments (especially if combined with realistic job previews) give candidates a better idea of the job demands and culture, helping them see if it's a fit for them. This transparency helps candidates feel seen and understood.
4. They Reinforce Your Culture and Values: When assessments are built to measure qualities needed to thrive in your specific culture, they become a way to communicate what your company is all about. For example, if Continuous Improvement is a core value, the assessment might measure traits like conscientiousness or critical thinking, and the results can be discussed in terms of potential in that area. This shows candidates that your values are real and important.
5. They Predict Success: This is key. Validated assessments don't just give you interesting information; they can predict how well someone will do in the job. Here are a few common categories of validated assessment tests and how they predict performance and key results. 
   
   
   • • Situational Judgment Tests: These put candidates in realistic job situations and ask how they would handle them. We have tests that place candidates in critical leadership, customer service, and production scenarios. Research across the industry links SJTs to key outcomes like safety, productivity, and sales. When well-designed,  they deliver equal opportunity across candidates because they are measuring precisely how we perform in a situation relevant to the position.
     • Personality and Values Tests: These look at traits like being detail-oriented, open to new ideas, positive, and good with people. Being detail-oriented ("conscientiousness") is a very strong predictor of job performance. Other traits help with teamwork, customer service, and being adaptable. Sources show links to fitting in with the culture and being a good team player.
     • Cognitive Ability Tests: These measure things like how quickly someone learns, solves problems, and thinks critically. Sources link these to things like greater innovation and better time management. The best ones use job-like scenarios, not just abstract questions. When designed appropriately, these tests aren't measuring academic learning, but how candidates understand and process information and react to new challenges.

Using these types of validated assessments helps you hire people who are more likely to succeed and fit in. This leads to great business results like lower employee turnover, faster hiring, and even better performance and service. Corvirtus, by connecting assessments to an intentionally built hiring process,  contributed to as much as a 58% decrease in turnover and a 50% decrease in time-to-hire. Our case studies share how we delivered this by elevating the candidate experience with assessments and solutions focused on job requirements, your EVP, and your culture.

Making Hiring Assessment Tools Work

Assessments aren't magic on their own. For them to truly help your EVP and candidate experience, everyone involved needs to understand why and how they are being used. This includes candidates, recruiters, hiring managers, and leaders. Good communication is essential. Tell candidates why the assessment matters and how it helps them understand if the job is a good fit. Make sure your hiring team knows how to use the assessment results to have better conversations.

The Big Picture: Bringing Your Employee Value Proposition to Life Through Your Candidate Experience 

Your Employee Value Proposition is what makes your company special, and the candidate experience is how you show that to the world. Every step of the hiring journey is a chance to build a relationship and prove that your company is a great place to work.

Investing in a great candidate experience is smart business. It helps you attract candidates who truly connect with your company, sets them up for success, and helps them feel good about their decision to join you.

Validated hiring assessments are a key tool in this process. They help you hire fairly and accurately, provide valuable insights, and give candidates a modern, engaging way to show their potential. They also offer a unique opportunity to communicate your culture and values from the very beginning.

By making your EVP and candidate experience work together, you're not just filling jobs; you're building a strong team of people who are excited to be part of your company's journey.

So, take a look at your hiring process. How can you make it a better reflection of your unique EVP? How can you use tools like validated hiring assessments and realistic job previews to show candidates exactly what you stand for? The effort you put in now will pay off big time in the talent you attract and keep.

See a sample assessment + receive resources to elevate your candidate experience!