Tapping into the power of purpose for recruitment

Understanding purpose

What is purpose? At its heart, it’s simple: it’s your business’s reason for existing, and in a broader way where and how value is created. Purpose is often thought of in connection with strategy and culture, and the three are related but distinct. Strategy is where you decide to play and how you intend to play to win as you work towards your purpose, while culture is about the workplace behaviors adopted along the way—it’s “the way we do things around here.” Strategies come and go, and cultures evolve, but purpose can be consistent for decades.

It’s increasingly common for corporations to declare a purpose, and this has significant implications for how CHROs attract and hire talent. The below three areas stand out.

1. Meet expectations on transparency

First, if a company makes claims about its purpose, prospective candidates want evidence to back it up. Candidates increasingly demand transparency from companies about the authenticity of their purpose and, more broadly, what it’s like to work for a company.

Some firms have found candidates asking to see engagement survey results to check whether existing employees agree that the company’s purpose is real, while some even ask to see feedback or references about the hiring manager to understand what the company would be like to work for. Candidates are increasingly less likely to accept a company’s claims about its purpose and culture at face value.

Progressive companies are getting ahead of this trend by providing relevant information, whether on website recruitment pages or by sending it directly to candidates, even if it has not been requested. That indicates an intention to be transparent, and it should be allied with honesty about where there is work still to be done.

One benefit for companies is that a discussion about purpose can help move the hiring conversation away from just money, as, if the conversation is only about money, companies may not be making good decisions about which candidates align with their purpose and values. Further, purpose-driven companies may be able to compete better on purpose than on cash. A strong social purpose can be a major appeal to candidates, even when a company is struggling financially.

2. Hire for purpose

CHROs need to help their organization learn to hire for purpose—something too many companies fall short on. When people who have a poor fit with the company’s purpose and culture are brought in, it can be hugely damaging.

Some techniques are relatively simple adjustments to standard recruitment practices, but CHROs may need to coach and support hiring managers to prioritize alignment with purpose. For example, guidance on how to talk about purpose in job ads or role descriptions and explore purpose in interviews may be useful. Discussing purpose in interviews sends a powerful signal to candidates about the company’s priorities that may help attract some candidates while filtering out those who may be a poor fit.

But just talking about purpose is not enough—hiring managers must ask questions that yield relevant insights on candidates. In general, interviewers should avoid questions about hypothetical scenarios, as such questions allow candidates to paint themselves in the best possible light based on what they think the interviewer wants to hear. In effect, candidates can “purpose wash” themselves.

Instead, interviewers should ask for real situations where the candidate has put purpose-driven outcomes first, perhaps at the expense of short-term financial returns. It is the classic “STAR” approach: seek detail on the situation, the task at hand, the action taken, and the result. Candidates may resist such questions, saying they have not encountered such a dilemma or that if they have, it was trivial. Interviewers should insist on examples. Give candidates several minutes, if need be, to think of an answer, rather than just moving on to the next question. Even if the situation described is relatively trivial, interviewers can learn much about a candidate’s values from hearing about their reasoning in a specific situation.