How Storytelling Drives Recruitment More Effective and Innovative

According to an article in the Harvard Business Review, stories actually change our brain chemistry, making us more likely to be empathic and cooperative. Company uses story to evoke emotion and incite action in everyone. The power of storytelling doesn't only work for advertising or marketing product, it also works when it comes to recruitment.

Paul Zak, neuroscientist and founder of Immersion Neuroscience, spoke about how affective storytelling can affect brain chemicals and drive people to take action. He gave examples of how advertisers use neuroscience to create stories, and said recruitment platforms can be similarly innovative.

"Storytelling is a way to get people to care about something and provoke authentic emotion. We have an opportunity to transport people into another world, and when we do that we can build tension. In our daily lives we avoid it but in storytelling it keeps us interested," Zak said.

"We can break the tension by giving the audience something to do – 'apply to this job', 'donate to this charity', 'buy from this brand', so when we're storytelling we lead people up to this cliff and before they jump off you give them something to resolve the story."

PathMotion and Immersion Neuroscience released data before the event showing that employee stories are 20% more immersive than recruiting through career sites alone.

To understand immersion levels the study examined participants' physiological data – such as heart rate and oxytocin levels – using neurosensors and software. Real-time engagement with prospective employees was found to be the most immersive approach, with 95% of participants saying the content was highly relevant or relevant.

In recruiting, what candidates respond to is your employment story – the narrative that tells them what life would be like as your employee. Your employment story can be a powerful recruiting tool, but only if it's properly developed and communicated.

A poractival approach to storytelling in recruitment

When you consider storytelling for recruitment, remember, don't think it as spinning a long tale, think it short, and authentic. Here are the questions that candidates mostly would like to know:

What kind of organization is this?

What's it like to work here?

Where is this company going in the future?

Will I be happy working here?

You want stories that can answer these questions and provide the information the candidate needs to decide if you are a good fit as an employer.

Places you can narrate the story

In order to attract more top talents and create greater impact, you can narrate your employment on website and social media.

Your employment story is rooted in your organizational culture, culture is the first item highlighted on the website, and they devote significant website real estate to both their statement of culture and a mosaic of employee images and quotes that support the idea of the company's culture.

Employment storytelling doesn't end with its website. An arguably more powerful option for telling its employment story is through social media, where brands like Google, Tom's, and even Land Rover have engineered phenomenally successful storytelling campaigns.

Vaynerchuck, an entrepreneur, author, and social media rock star, who "produces an enormous amount of content through every social channel you can think of." He uses his YouTube channel to display the potential candidates to get a look inside of his company and working environment.

Having a spokesperson and using media, whether social or not, to spread your story are effective tactics to get your story in front of the people you want to hear it most.

Keep in mind the end goal of why you develop employment stories to your future employee. Once you are successfully attracting people to apply for the job, you can enter to the next step of recruiting. If you need any help or advice for recruitment in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and other APAC area, you can reach Talent Spot or our LinkedIn page for more information consulting services.