HOW STORY TELLING METHOD IS HELPING RECRUITERS?

HOW STORY TELLING METHOD IS HELPING RECRUITERS?

Introduction

Recruitments are a very crucial part for a company. Through recruitment drives, you are not only attracting a workforce for your companies but you are also spreading awareness about what your company works on. Among these candidates are your potential leaders who will be leading the company in future. So, this is the reason why this should be done by forming a good and strong recruiting team who can analyze the potentials of the employees. A strong recruitment team should be able to understand their skills and know for which they will be a good candidate.

But recruitment drive is a very difficult task to do. To attract workforce and convincing them to work for you is something that every company is trying to do.

Being the hiring manager, one must have witnessed that simply by posting the jobs in the website is not necessarily enough to attract a huge number of top talents to your organization. Many of the companies often throw the statistics to show the productivity of their companies. But they are not enough to attract top talents. These statistics would not help you attract the number of talents that you want.

So what is the strategy? What are the tools that one should use while recruiting their employees? In this article we are going to see about a very interesting yet simple recruiting tool and that is Storytelling.

Storytelling is a very fascinating concept to humans. Since time immemorial humans have told stories by which they had shared ideas, events and knowledge. People shared their stories out of their experiences or what they had seen themselves. It is quite noticeable that every culture in the world has used stories as a mean to connect, inform and entertain people. Storytelling has the power to entice people and generating interests. One of the most advantageous features that the storytelling method has is the deeper connections it can make with your potential employees as it is truly said by Matthew Luhn (Talent connect keynote speaker) that “In the end people aren’t going to remember what you said, people aren’t going to remember what you did, but they are going to remember how you made them feel”.

Many companies ignore the power of storytelling in the recruiting process. They often undermine this simple tool. A candidate would only choose your company to work for if your company is unique. And this uniqueness is seen through the very first process in your company and that is the recruiting process. Storytelling would set you apart from most of the companies which follow the generic process. Storytelling has the capability to build relations and building relations with the candidates is very much important to attract more and more workforce for our company. This method when done in good way would prove to be very beneficial in attracting talent pool to your companies.

Now the question arises why this method is effective in recruiting top talents? Here are some of the ways storytelling helps in changing your recruiting game:

1. Capturing the attention:

Storytelling has the power to capture the attention of the people. We are naturally attracted to stories and find them quite fascinated.  Even a small story like “the history of our company” or “the mission of our company” has the capability to catch the attention of the potential employees. It is a very important aspect while recruiting to catch the attention of the potential employees. A candidate would only select a company that would be successful in capturing his / her attention. He / she will only select the company which managed to leave an imprint in their minds. This is a very huge advantage for a company that uses this effective tool for recruiting. When done in a good way, this could make your company stand out from the rest of the companies and many candidates would want to work with you.

2. Provoking their thinking process:

By listening to stories many people often connect themselves with the stories thus creating a huge impact in their thinking as it is noticed that a good story has the capability to provoke the thinking process. A good story by the company would make the potential employees think whether they would work for you. These small stories would make them think whether they will be able to fully invest their times and efforts to work for this particular company. these stories make them analyze whether they truly want to work for the cause that your company is working for. And if your story telling is good then you are definitely going to get good and top talents for your company.

3. Creating interests:

By provoking the potential employees’ thinking process, a recruiter is indirectly creating interest. This also generates a sense of care about the things they are hearing or listening to. Therefore story telling method is a very effective way of attracting and hiring top talents when done in a good way.

4. Building trust:

One of the most important things that every company wants to do is to build a trust with the candidates. This would help them in gaining more talents and would in turn increase the productivity of the company. For this to happen companies must try this tor telling method.

So now, we know what a good story telling method can do. We know the advantages and we know how it can help us generate attention in the potential candidates. But we are still stuck in one of the questions. How can we use this tool for our use? What steps should we take in order to make this tool effective for us?

Worry not, because in this article we are also going to see a few steps that a hiring recruiter should take in order to recruit top talents. Listed below are few of the things that you can do while using this recruiting tool.

1. Do not throw just statistics:

One of the things that companies often do is to throw statistics. People do not usually remember numbers. But they definitely remember a good story. So a recruiter should always try to mix the statistics while sharing a story. In this way the potential candidate can remember the story as well as the statistics.

2. Setting the environment:

A story becomes interesting when it has great content and when it is delivered in a good way. To make the story more interesting, it should be delivered in such a way that it captivates the audience. Simply sharing the story is not enough to make it more impactful. Adding humor side to the story makes it even more captivating and listener would listen to it more eagerly. Setting the environment is also an important aspect while sharing the story. Usage of proper language and characters is also very important while sharing a story because this would help the candidate to relate with it. This in turn would help him think more and more about the prospect of joining the company.

You can also be a little dramatic while sharing the story. This would make you stand out from other companies and would instantly make you popular among other job seekers. According to a survey conducted in 2013, only 42% of employees knew their companies’ motives, goals and cultural values. Share not only the good part of the companies but also the struggling phase of it.

3. Tell stories while interacting:

Like connecting dots, it is very important for a recruiter to share stories whenever possible to share the idea or the goals of their companies. It is very necessary to tell the stories while interacting with the potential employees. Therefore it is advised to share your stories while interacting with them. Of course, it is not possible to share each and every significant thing that has happened in your company but you can share those pieces of stories that had left impacts in the minds of current employees and motivated them to work for the company.

4. Telling stories in a correct way:

Story telling is an art. It is only effective and impactful when told in a good way. For the story to be impactful it is absolutely important to first have a clear structure for the story. Being clear about what you want to convey through the story is very important. Therefore it is advised to first being clear about the message that you want to convey and then forming a clear structure and order in our mind. This will help you in not getting side-tracked from the original story. Getting side-tracked and making the story ambiguous would distract the listener and would not be as much impactful as you wanted. The right story would leave a good imprint on the minds of the candidates thus making him / her to give more thoughts to choosing your company.

5. Make it believable:

To make the storytelling more impactful it is very important to make it believable as well. People do not like to hear stories that are extravagant. They could easily distinguish between what is a believable story and what is not. Making a story believable also creates a connection between the potential employees and the company they are going to work for. People could relate to stories which are believable to them. This is a very beneficial point for the company who use this tool for their hiring process.

6. Sharing the experiences of the current employees

The best way to make storytelling more impactful is by sharing the stories of the current employees. It is even more impactful when they themselves share their experiences. Potential candidates are always eager to know the experiences that other people had in the company before joining it. They are interested in knowing how the current employees dealt with situations that occurred in the company. Sharing stories related to their experiences is a very effective way to generate interests in your companies among the potential candidates.

This could be done in many ways. You can share their stories through a video format and upload it in your social media sites or you can conduct a seminar / webinar session. These types of interactions would make the candidate to think about the company and understand the dynamics of it.

7. Transparency is the key:

Potential employees search for those companies which are transparent with them. According to a research only a few number of employees know about the company and their goals. Being transparent while hiring is a very attractive quality because this builds the trust between you and the potential employees.

While many companies share their achievements very few of them share their struggles. To make your company stand out, share your struggles. There are bound to be differences in the companies since different people have different opinions. So share how you tackled all these hurdles by using this art of storytelling.  Along with these you should also share the goals that you have in your mind for your company. This would not only give them an idea about the dynamics of the company but would also help them understand if they can work in your company.

Conclusion

Storytelling is one of the oldest art forms that we have in this world. It is a valuable form of human expression that can   be used to our recruiting process. Many companies ignore the power of this simple yet effective tool but when understood properly it could change your recruiting game. Candidates want to join such companies that are unique. Storytelling has the power of generating interest among the listeners which could be used for our benefit. Since storytelling is an art it is very important to understand how to use this effectively in order to make it more impactful.

So, these were some of the points about storytelling, one of the effective tools for your recruitment drive that would help you attract more talents to your company. Hope this article helped you. Stay tuned for more such contents.