Staffing is crucial to any professional service firm’s success, but beyond hard skills, it’s vital to ensure the people you hire align with your core values and vision and that your onboarding process reinforces those values.

We recently held a Q&A webinar with digital marketing firm Level Agency, where they discussed not only how they market their business to attract the right talent, but also how they reinforce their vision to them in the onboarding process. 

Read on to learn all about how they position their brand to find the best fits for open roles — especially in today’s large hiring pool. You can also watch the full webinar below for even more perspective. 

A new hiring landscape 

Hiring looks different today than it has in the past. The large switch to remote work after the pandemic allows companies to break out of their regions and find talent from across the country, and with the “Great Resignation” coming to an end, it’s not surprising that Level receives an average of around 240 applicants for each job posting.  

Which means that finding applicants isn’t the challenge — it’s finding the right applicants. Level is now able to be a little pickier due to the heavy influx of responses. And since they’re able to focus on finding the best fit, their priorities have changed. It’s now less about who has the most experience, and more about who’s the most aligned with the company values. 

Articulating your brand ethos

Level spent a lot of time solidifying who they are as an organization and uses five core values: 

  • Partnership
  • Radical Candor
  • Ownership
  • Urgency
  • Design Thinking

With that vision in mind, they dedicated a lot of energy into determining what types of people would be most successful within the organization — and what types would not. 

Once they were able to understand who they’re looking for, they needed to understand what those candidates were looking for when applying for jobs. 

“I think that’s what gets lost in the hiring process,” Level CEO Patrick Patterson said. “Today, money is maybe third on the list of what people care about when they’re making decisions on where they want to work. They want to know they’re going to work around smart people. They want to know that they’re going to be promoted if they do good work. They want to have a great boss and a good environment.” 

Crafting your message and defining your audience

Level says marketing to potential clients is pretty similar to marketing your job description: You have to think about the person you want to attract — not only in terms of skill set, but also in terms of attitude, culture, and mindset. You have to “speak their language.” 

Hence, it’s important to align your employer branding with your values and a clear message of what’s in it for them. Which is why Level focuses on infusing the right language or job posting style that they’ve determined will truly market to the people they’re looking for. 

Some of the key questions Level asks themselves when developing their employer branding are similar to the questions they consider when marketing to new potential clients:

  • How can we build trust? 
  • How do we get candidates excited?
  • How do we drive action? 

Putting it into action 

To put the above strategy into perspective, Level provided the example of a graphic designer job post. With their core value of “Design Thinking” in mind, they know the right person for the job appreciates good content and a team that prioritizes ads that “stop the scroll.” 

So to attract a graphic designer that shares that value, they’ll include words like “thumb-stopping” or “bizarre.” While these words wouldn’t necessarily mean much to the average person, the right graphic designer will know that the word “bizarre’ is eye-catching due to the uncommon use of the letter “z,” and “thumb-stopping” is an out-of-the-box phrase — recognizing and respecting the tactic. 

Attracting talent beyond the job post 

Level says it’s critical to utilize the many touchpoints available where you can build trust with the right applicants. 

From Google and Glassdoor reviews, to social media accounts, to their “About Us” page, Level ensures each touchpoint a potential candidate might encounter delivers a consistent, clear message of who they are. 

For example, Level’s “About Us” page truly reflects all five of their values listed earlier. It’s sleek, bold, and offers up a level of transparency about their mission and strategies that articulates exactly who they are, who they want to work with, and why someone should want to work with them. 

This ensures they’re not only attracting the right talent, but also helping others determine for themselves if the company is a right fit. 

Optimizing the application process

The first tactic Level uses to sift through the candidates is to include three to five filtering questions during the application process. They say the trick here is to put some focused thought into what the questions are — you need to ensure they’re relevant enough to the role and company culture in order to truly matter. 

Taking it a step further, Level sometimes even requires a video submission along with the application in an effort to get a sense of who the individual is and narrow down the list of candidates they want to interview. 

Maintaining the momentum in the interview process

Once they’ve attracted and filtered out the right talent with their values in mind, the culture communication continues on throughout the interview process. Level embodies its culture by continuing to weave their values into every interview. They recognize that candidates are feeling them out as well, so they always make sure to be structured, on time, and organized. 

And since the entire Level team shares those values, they stand out throughout the process, leading to candidates experiencing the values in real time, and understanding exactly what to expect should they take the job. 

Expressing your values throughout the onboarding process

Communicating your values to new team members doesn’t stop once they’re hired — it’s important to continue conveying that message once they’re in the door. 

Level prides itself on their well-defined 30-day onboarding process and has seen great success and feedback from new employees. Their proven tactics that help communicate their values  include: 

  • An initial welcome box before the new hire starts (Level says not to be scared of investing a little money in these to make them nice!) 
  • Assigning a “buddy” from outside their team to help them learn the ropes of the company culture
  • A “mission training” session conducted by Patrick that underscores the key behaviors that drive their values
  • 30- or 60-day check-ins with Patrick, where he asks, “Were what you were told and what you got the same thing?” 

Ultimately, there’s no “one size fits all” strategy to finding the right talent for your company. But for Level, the best strategy is just to be genuine and authentic: 

“If you're filtering the right way, you're honest about who you are, and then you show up that way afterwards, that’s the virtuous cycle that keeps new employees engaged and everyone happy” says Patrick.