Begin by taking a comprehensive look at your recruitment marketing strategies, employer brand perception, and the overall candidate experience during the past year. This exercise will help you identify the areas where you excelled and those that require improvement. Remember, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure,” as Peter Drucker wisely noted.

Assess how well your employer brand resonated with candidates and whether it aligns with your organizational values and culture. Consider utilizing focus groups and employee surveys to gain a deeper understanding of how your brand is evolving and being perceived both internally and externally.

Harness the feedback received from candidates throughout the year to enhance your recruitment processes. Identify common pain points or areas where candidates felt disconnected, and proactively address these concerns to enhance the candidate experience and positively impact your employer brand.

Crafting a compelling EVP is essential for attracting top talent, but it requires a commitment to continuous improvement. Just as your business needs continuously evolve, so do your candidates’ preferences. To ensure your EVP aligns with changing aspirations and preferences, leverage insights from research on candidate preferences, such as Universum’s data. Chances are, Universum has already connected with your candidates and gathered their opinions, making this an inexpensive way to monitor the gaps between what you offer, what candidates want, and how they perceive you in comparison to your recruiting competitors. In 2024, make a plan to be more candidate-centric, highlighting your organization’s unique strengths while differentiating yourself from the competition.

Stay updated on the latest recruitment technology trends and tools that can streamline your processes, enhance candidate engagement, and improve efficiency. Embrace digital platforms, AI-powered solutions, and data analytics to gain a competitive edge. Technology can help you reach and engage with candidates more effectively, especially in a remote work environment. We will all be incorporating AI into our workflow in 2024 and those that get their heads around the best way to do that first will have a competitive advantage. Incorporating lessons learned from the customer experience into the candidate experience and the use of generative AI in creating customized candidate experiences will accelerate talent acquisition strategies in 2024.

Over 90% of the “World’s Most Attractive Employers” leveraged their employer brand to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in 2023*. Hopefully, you already have strategies in place to foster a diverse and inclusive workplace culture and well-articulated KPIs to measure your progress. As the year concludes, it’s a good time to assess your achievements in this area and evaluate your recruitment practices to ensure they prioritize equal opportunities and eliminate bias. Effectively communicating your commitment to DE&I through your employer brand messaging is mission-critical. The attributes of a career that are most compelling to diverse candidates often differ from those compelling non-diverse candidates to apply. Your candidate application drivers can be as diverse as your candidates. Leading your diversity recruitment marketing with messages that demonstrate your support for diversity has become generic and increasingly tokenistic. Long-form content and authenticity can be your allies here.

Collaboration with hiring managers is vital for both successful EVP operationalization and talent acquisition. Establish strong relationships with hiring managers, understand their talent needs, and involve them in the recruitment process. By aligning your efforts with their objectives, you can ensure a more efficient and effective hiring process.

This year, *88% of the World’s Most Attractive Employers frequently used data in their employer brand and recruitment marketing decisions. Establishing benchmarks focused on your brand awareness, candidate reach, conversion rates, time-to-fill, quality of hire, candidate satisfaction, employee retention, cost per hire, DEI, offer acceptance, and more are all critical performance indicators that will help you measure and manage your employer brand’s effectiveness. A well-defined dashboard can help you demonstrate the value of your work and the impact of your efforts. As we come to the end of the year, showcasing your understanding of these critical performance indicators can help secure your job from potential cutbacks while fostering a culture of continuous improvement, learning, and development within your organization. Knowing your numbers can also contribute to a business case for investing in training and upskilling programs for both employees and hiring managers. This not only enhances your employer brand but also ensures you have a skilled workforce that can adapt to evolving business needs.

By diligently addressing these questions and carefully considering each of the eight recommendations, talent acquisition and employer brand leaders can effectively evaluate their achievements and identify areas for improvement in their strategies. A robust evaluation process empowers employer brand and talent acquisition leaders to make informed, data-driven decisions and sets the stage for a strong year-end performance. By embracing these strategies and maintaining a constant commitment to improvement while ensuring alignment between the talent strategy and the business strategy, your organization will be optimally positioned to attract top-tier talent and develop an employer brand that can adapt to the rapidly changing and evolving talent market in the year ahead.