Your EVP can’t be spin—it has to be distinctive, targeted, and real.

Employer branding, Recruitment Marketing, Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and how it helps attract the one and maybe repel many. 

Well, it all starts with the War for Talent! The term “war for talent” was coined by McKinsey’s Steven Hankin in 1997 and popularized by the book of that name in 2001.

“Failure to attract and retain top talent” was the number-one issue in the Conference Board’s 2016 survey of global CEOs. 

Next, the 2017 article by two McKinsey consultants: Attracting and retaining the right talent

asks some very simple yet very powerful questions to the leadership! 

Here is the question.:

The best workers do the best and the most work. But many companies do an awful job of finding and keeping them!

Why? (...I added this why!) 👈

Having said that, what does McKinsey prescribe? 

Why is talent important? 

Superior talent is up to eight times more productive! 

The late Steve Jobs of Apple summed up talent’s 

importance with this advice: “Go after the cream 

of the cream. A small team of A+ players can run 

circles around a giant team of B and C players.”

 

Management guru Jim Collins concurred: “… the 

single biggest constraint on the success of my 

organization is the ability to get and to hang on to 

enough of the right people.” 

Leaders know the term “employee value proposition,” or EVP: what employees get for what they give. “Gives” come in many flavors—time, effort, experience, ideas. “Gets” include tangible rewards, the experience of working in a company, the way its leadership helps employees, and the substance of the work.

If your EVP is truly stronger than the competition’s, you will attract and retain the best talent. But for three reasons, few companies have EVPs that meaningfully help them win this war

1. NOT DISTINCTIVE: Work for Google if you want to face complex challenges, for Virgin if Richard Branson’s leadership stirs you, or for Amgen if you aspire to “defeat death.”

2. NOT TARGETED'. What kind of skills and roles are you hiring as key talent. Your EVP shall target them as inspiring and meaningful proposition. Not what sells. 

3. NOT REAL: An attractive EVP cooked up by HR and pushed through PR used to help secure the best talent. In the long term, however, this was always a losing proposition, since great people would quickly become disillusioned if the reality didn’t measure up.

Sites such as Glassdoor or Job Advisor offer peer ratings and reviews of what it’s really like to work for a company. Your EVP can’t be spin—it has to be distinctive, targeted, and real.