Next Level Recruiting: How Innovation Can Drive Today’s Talent Wars

The last decade changed everything. Recruitment, especially in competitive industries like healthcare, technology, and others, is no longer as simple as posting a job description and hoping for great talent to flow in the door. Even traditional recruitment pipelines with relevant universities may no longer be enough. 

Instead, the most successful organizations are taking workforce recruitment to the next level. And in today’s talent wars, only the most bold and innovative players tend to win.

Suddenly, marketing tactics like business virtual tours are no longer reserved for external audiences and end customers, but play a central role in recruitment as well. Join us as we break down today’s recruitment landscape, along with some actionable tips on how to secure the best possible talent to help your organization build a team to succeed long-term.

The Modern Recruitment Landscape, In Numbers

Let’s begin with an overview of the numbers that define today’s talent search in some of the most competitive industries. COVID-19, to start, has accelerated one increasingly concerning trend: according to one study, the average employer hired only 91 workers per 100 job openings this past year.

In other words, even in the midst of a pandemic, employers of all stripes are facing a talent shortage. That shortage is especially pronounced in industries like technology and health care, where employers could lose billions in the next decade simply due to a lack of talent entering their organization.

That general shortage is supplemented by a generation entering the workforce that is unlike any that came before it. Generation Z, with its oldest members now graduating from college, is looking for more than just a steady paycheck. Instead, this generation prioritizes:

• Job security
• A collaborative work environment
• An emphasis on diversity, with 77% of Gen Z members calling it a main decision factor for the final work decision.
• Career growth and development opportunities
• An emphasis on bettering society, such as sustainability and social good priorities. 

As a result, the average spend on talent acquisition is now above $4,500 per hire, and many companies go far beyond that. Such a major investment, of course, requires a high ROI to justify. Enter the concept of employer branding.

Employer Branding as a Core Organizational Priority

You know about a business brand, the identity that drives customers to purchase and stay loyal to certain products. Companies like Apple, Google, and Nike have spent decades perfecting their brand, turning relatively straightforward products into lifestyle experience with some of the most loyal customers in their respective markets.

In recent years, the same concept has expanded to employer branding. This alternative, closely related to the consumer-facing brand, builds on the same basics tenets but focuses on internal audiences. It is, simply put, the process of building an identity that attracts top-level talent and increases retention among current employees.

The pioneer of modern employer branding is undoubtedly Google, which made global headlines in the early 2000s with its casual office culture, expensive break rooms, and slides replacing staircases. But the concept goes far beyond a few select standout companies. In fact, employer branding as a concept can benefit almost every company of every size, in every industry.

Today, 96% of companies believe that employer branding can positively or negatively impact revenues and talent acquisition. Meanwhile, one study found that employee turnover is 28% lower at companies that invest in their employer brand. It’s an increasingly widespread concept, with increasingly clear ROI implications.

In other words, employer branding is becoming a core organizational priority. In competitive industries, where simply offering the most money is far from enough to attract top-end talent amid high expectations and the current talent shortage, building that brand becomes a vital part of attracting, convincing, and retaining top-end talent.

Building Advantages in Competitive Industries

Modern recruiting, though, is about more than just building that reputation through a positive, employee-focused employment culture. The recruitment process increasingly creates similarities with marketing campaigns. And, as is the case with any type of marketing effort, the best employers win the talent wars because they’re different from the other employment opportunities out there.

That truth requires some serious soul-searching. How can you make sure that your technology, biopharma, or premium service company looks like a better opportunity for fulfilling work than your closest competitors? 

It starts with your unique values. As with your marketing brand, your employer brand has to be built in the truth of your company. Your reason for being, your founder’s origin story, your every business practice—everything that outlines and reinforces those core values is worth highlighting.

At the same time, it’s also about the presentation. Employers who are unwilling to go beyond the typical, basic job description will be unlikely to attract top-end talent. Modern recruitment strategies are visual, they’re interactive, and they dynamically showcase your business as not just a desirable, but an unmissable place to work. That’s where business virtual tours enter the equation.

Virtual Tours as Innovative Recruitment Opportunities

We’ve spent plenty of time in this space discussing the marketing benefits of virtual tours. Especially for location-dependent organizations, from colleges and universities to hotels, attractions, and healthcare facilities, they offer a modern way to “visit” the facilities and campus without having to leave your home. As such, they’re ideal centerpieces to immersive digital marketing campaigns designed to get and keep consumer attention.

If modern recruitment is becoming more like marketing, it only stands to reason that the same benefits of virtual tours apply in this process, as well.

As we begin to move past the COVID-19 pandemic and into a world where an increasing percentage of the workforce has received a vaccine, the physical space begins to matter once again. Where your employees will spend their time will play a core role in whether they will feel comfortable applying and accepting your job offer. It’s not a surprise, then, that immersive virtual tours have increasingly become a recruitment tactic of choice for innovative recruiters in competitive industries. 

They use them to showcase their Disneyland-esque campus. Facilities become showcase pieces, complete with break rooms, green space, conference rooms with the latest technology, and more. Showcasing these personalized experience, specifically designed to help applicants understand their would-be surroundings, has begun to drive significant positive results, as well.

That’s not a surprise. In fact, virtual tours can enhance your recruitment strategy in a few core ways:

• Business virtual tours showcase your physical space, allowing you to visually communicate anything from your office structure to conference rooms, break rooms, and the larger campus and environment.
• Business virtual tours help you communicate your company culture, through a showcase of your spaces that specifically represent your values and mission. A company strongly focused on sustainability, for instance, may prefer to show the spaces specifically working towards a more sustainable office environment.
• Business virtual tours can help you place an emphasis on the community beyond your office building(s) and campus. They give prospective employees a better sense of the town, eateries, and neighborhoods they would call their home should they accept a job offer.
• The interactivity of business virtual tours allows you to more directly engage your prospective employees and applicants. You can even make that interactivity part of the hiring process, whether it be through touring the facilities as part of the interview of asking each interviewee to familiarize themselves with specific areas.

Put it all together, and virtual tours—used specifically for recruitment—help you build innovative, immersive, interactive environments that are tailor-made for the modern recruitment environments. Beyond simply communicating the basics, they allow you to showcase your unique employer brand, speaking directly to both changing workforce needs and the competitive environment in which your recruitment efforts operate.

Are You Ready to Win Today’s Talent Wars With Business Virtual Tours?

The war is on, but it’s ready to be won. The best part: it’s not just about who has the most well-known brand name or the biggest budget to put behind their recruitment efforts. Instead, the winners in this ongoing battle for talent will be those using the most innovative ways to attract, convince, and convert their audience to long-term, loyal, productive employees.

Virtual tours are far from the only opportunity to do that. But, done right, they allow you to drive strongly into that direction. A well-built business virtual tour, showcasing both your physical spaces and reinforcing your intangible messaging, can go a long way towards getting attention of top-end talent and leveraging that attention into an accepted job offer.

Of course, you have to find the right tools and platforms to accomplish that. And that’s where we come in. Concept3D specializes in virtual tours, and our system can go far beyond the traditional consumer-based marketing. Instead, it has the flexibility to adjust to a talent audience, giving you the edge you need to succeed in a modern, competitive recruitment environment.

Looking for more information? Contact us today. We’d love to start the conversation about helping you win the talent wars, attracting top-level applicants, and achieving sustainable growth and success as a result.