The ACE research wasn’t supposed to be about diversity: the project was focused on job-search behaviour, and we weren’t expecting that behaviour to vary very much between demographic groups other than age. It didn’t, but diversity popped up in the results in all sorts of unexpected ways. When we asked jobseekers about how they decided where to apply, for example, we ended up figuring out why all the accountants at your company come from Plymouth (or why all the auditors are from Leicester, or why all of the pastry chefs are from Poole...you get the idea.)
Any candidate who searches for a new job online is confronted with a flood of recruitment advertising, ranging from eye-catching banners to plain-text Craigslist classifieds. How do candidates figure out which employers to take seriously? They start with concrete must-haves. After they have looked at location and salary and qualifications and determined which types of roles look like they might fit, candidates still have a huge amount of advertising to sort through. The ACE research showed that the main tool they use to make decisions is name recognition – they look for employers with names or brands they know and respect. If they don’t have any information about an employer, they rely most on personal connections: friends or family who have worked for or with the organisation they are considering.
An individual recruitment advertisement that isn’t part of a larger, coordinated branding effort has a hard time attracting serious applicants who don’t already have a connection to the organisation. If candidates don’t recognise the employer brand on their own, they need reassurance and advice from someone they trust. So they call their friends back in Plymouth, or Leicester, or Poole, and the employer ends up with “clusters” of similar employees, who all look the same, or grew up in the same place, or went to the same university. How many times have you heard someone say something like “Accounting is going to lunch with their mates from uni?” Now you know why.
No employer wants to hire a workforce composed entirely of people from similar backgrounds, but it seems that some may be setting themselves up to do just that when they fail to link their recruitment advertising to a coherent employer brand. If a jobseeker has already been exposed to a clear employer brand, she already knows what the employer stands for and what they look for in an employee. She can get right to thinking about the role, get on to Facebook or Linkedin to connect with people already doing the job, and get motivated to apply.
A well-planned, honest, consistent message about an employer’s identity can go a long way toward getting past the sorting stage and creating a truly diverse workforce. With more consistent communication, you might just end up with a pastry chef who isn’t from Poole.
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