Strong company values not only form an important source of direction for an organisation as a whole, but a well-defined company personality can make an organisation stand apart from its rivals. Stopgap’s success started with a strong and defined mission that has enabled us to grow into an innovative, international, multi-million pound business of which to be proud. Principally, we have two aims: to change the recruitment industry’s reputation for low levels of client and candidate service and to run a company where staff enjoy coming to work.
As well as a clearly defined mission statement, it is imperative for an organisation to successfully develop a strong sense of company personality; an identity and values that represent the essence of your business.
Consider first the attributes for which you would like your company to be respected. Ours are passion, dynamism, honesty, knowledge, enterprise, team-focus, commitment and above all, an enjoyable workplace! These qualities, which underlie our company personality, are relevant to clients, candidates, employers and stakeholders alike, including – most importantly – employees. As the business has grown and employed more people maintaining these values has been key to success.
Marketing happiness
A company that can bring its employees together under one brand umbrella places itself in a very strong position and the marketing team plays a crucial role here, presenting the ‘company face’ to external shareholders.
A marketing team that consists of people sharing the same values will enjoy working together towards shared company goals and their corporate pride will be reflected in all of their communications strategies. Shared contentment at work is arguably the highest achievement for any team, and breeds loyalty and dedication in turn. Teams that share the same values will work together with efficiency and commitment, while contributing to the overall profitability of the organisation.
To ensure a team successfully sustains their values, personality and resulting satisfaction in the workplace, the recruitment process can be reinvented as a more honest and effective tool. Marketing teams on the look-out for new members need to take their own personality and values into account. By being acutely aware of their personality, a more open-minded and strategic process can ensure recruiters find the right people for the business.
Value-driven recruitment
Recent research revealed that CVs tell remarkably little about an individual’s personality. Close analysis of CVs and job advertisements from across the marketing industry show that job applicants are simply parroting back stock phrases to meet the defined criteria by employers within job advertisements.
Marketing recruiters are being deluged by CVs from applicants that rely on established clichés to market themselves, and in the process candidates are not doing themselves any favours, as they repeatedly fail to stand out from the crowd. Advertising spend is not wisely spent by recruiters who simply reel-off a list of skills required for a job – an applicant can quite simply revise their CV to incorporate these skills whether in their position or not. In this way, the marketing team is no closer to recruiting candidates that fit the values and personality of their team.
The application process should be reconsidered to allow recruiters to take a more value-conscious approach to job specs and candidate searches. When describing a job role, recruiters should take the opportunity to place the job in the wider context of the company as a whole.
By incorporating the personality of the company and team into job specs, employers will attract those candidates not only with the correct skills set, but those with the right character and cultural fit for the team and company as a whole.
At Stopgap we encourage applicants not to be scared to get personal and speak out about who they are and what they stand for – candidates should bypass jargon and break away from stock phrases to express their own values to potential employers.
Happy company families
Finally, it is important that team members not only enjoy their working experience, but also would not hesitate to recommend it to others. The power of word-of-mouth as a recruitment tool should not be underestimated. A marketing team that successfully achieves an enviable brand personality can proudly title themselves part of a ‘company family’.
Within a ‘company family’, even when employees leave the roost for new jobs, they have nothing but good things to say about working for their old company and team. Leaving an organisation need not be a betrayal, but an opportunity for networking and ultimately long-term business development.
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