Continuing our series of Best Practices to help you recruit the best and brightest into your organization, the IFMA Education Foundation, through the PEOPLE FUTURE 2025 initiative found that students, like many of us, focus on companies they know “companies who have a great story”. Many companies overlook the importance of sharing their story, their uniqueness, the reason someone would want to work with them.
So, Tell Your Story!
While students care about the history of a company, what they really want to know is who you are today, and, what does the future look like.
You must go beyond the basics:
- Ask yourself -
- What makes you stand out?
- Where have students experienced your product?
- How is it impacting their world?
- Recent innovation: Connect to a specific student audience -
- Talk with IT, what advancements or new technology are you implementing?
- Talk to a food science major or someone interested in sales.
- What are recent success stories in product development?
- Where might they have seen a recent innovation in the marketplace?
- How do you develop your talent? Use stats when possible.
- Share any unique elements to your compensation package.
- Have planned investments to address future needs.
Today’s generation wants to know they can make a difference and for the companies they work for have a favorable impact in their communities and on them.
- Share how your organization impacts students’ lives
- Use stories of individual employees career paths to illustrate the potential
- Focus on what’s important to students - use terminology students will relate to
- Go beyond the work - talk about the favorable impact your company has on local communities
Spend the time now to refine how you recruit. Then put it into a narrative to tell your story and be the most attractive to the talent you desire. At IFMA, we have the tools and easy to use templates to help “Tell Your Story”. Click here to watch our video and learn more.
In our next best practice we will dive deeper into thoughts on how to best create “Earlier Exposure”. To get students seeking you out as an employer of choice, where your selling is already done, where you get to choose “the best and the brightest”.
If your company is interested in joining the People Future 2025 initiative or to learn more, please contact us at IFMA@IFMAworld.com.