19 Reasons Why Values-Based Hiring Should Be Your Next Move

by Marc Eichner

Imagine walking into a workplace filled with employees who genuinely understand and passionately believe in the company's mission, core values, and vision for the future. Picture the positive energy, the high-performance levels, the seamless teamwork, and the dedication to making a difference to customers, colleagues, and the community. Sounds too good to be true? Well, it's entirely possible, and the secret lies in harnessing the power of values-based recruiting.

In this article, we dive into 19 reasons why putting values at the heart of your hiring process will be the game-changer for your copmany. Ready to change the game? Let's get started!

14 Advantages for Companies

More Applicants

Values-based talent marketing evokes positive emotions which means people love to spend time with the content. As a consequence potential job seekers will read them even though they are bombarded with so many other job offers. 

Everyone knows it. 

Marketing that does not evoke emotions is bad marketing. Same goes for talent marketing. And the source for emotion is the communication of values. The result? Conversion rates from job ads via direct messaging LinkedIn funnels increase from the branch standard of 3% to 66%. It sounds crazy, but ⅔ of everyone who has the right skill profile, applies to a values-based talent marketing campaign.

More Ideal Employees

More applicants mean more hiring options. But that’s not all. When you’re communicating employer brand values in the whole recruitment process and actively assess the values-fit. You’re winning top-motivated employees that fit the team’s culture and are ready to create impact. 

Better Team Compositions

Values-based recruiting helps to build better team compositions that push the boundaries of performance. The skill to collaborate is highly related to values. Teams in which values clash spend more time on non-constructive conflicts than those whose values are aligned. 

Reduced Risk of Wrong Recruiting Choices

Hiring the wrong person for the job leads to a financial loss of one year’s salary for the company on average. A thorough values check is essential for decreasing this risk, as it is for the skill assessment. A candidate's attitude, character, work ethic, integrity, dedication, and accountability can be better predicted by understanding their values. 

Save time with less invites to interviews

I know it’s tempting. 

If you don’t have many options you tend to follow up with the few options there are, even if you feel it’s not a match. Thoughts might pop up like “I might regret not letting the candidate advance up on the next interview round, after all I need to generate results”. But we all know the outcome when we are not fully convinced with hiring decisions. It’s going to be a bad hire. 

With values-based recruiting it is easy to decline applications early in the process when your intuition tells you “something's not right”. You have much more talent in the pipe. So why not just take a look at the next one?

Reinforces a Strong Culture

It’s a no brainer. If you hire people who came to your organization because of your values, your organizational culture will grow stronger. This leads to even better results across your whole organization. Here are a few statistics that come with a strong culture:

• 50% lower hiring costs (LinkedIn)
• 55% more ideal hires (SHRM)
• 49% more qualified applicants (SHRM)
• 41% more employee referrals (SHRM)
• #1 factor in employee satisfaction (CultureIQ)
• 4x higher revenue growth (Forbes)
• 12% higher employee productivity (Gallup)

Positive Work Environment

Values-based recruiting looks for values in candidates that are aligned to the positive leadership principles of the company. The result: an elevating atmosphere where people can connect to their creativity, their purpose and to getting things done instead of playing political games. But that’s not all. When people share values they are more likely to bond and build great relationships. An incredible asset for any company.

Better Employee Wellness

When employee’s values are aligned with the organization’s, they are not working against their own internal programs. Which means they consume less energy doing their work and get less stressed. The result: shorter recovery periods, fewer and shorter sick leaves. 

Higher Employee Engagement

People that live and work according to their values are sustainably energised and engaged. They believe that what they are doing has meaning. This leads to taking over more responsibility as well as finding and implementing solutions faster. Work feels much lighter and easier. Amazing, isn’t it!

Less Fluctuation

Over the years the cost of hiring has gone up. Less applicants means more recruiting effort, which means more time investment and higher costs. With values-based hiring, candidates have a much clearer picture of what’s awaiting them at the job. They are less likely to leave the company quickly again. When the company’s and employee’s values are aligned, employees are more satisfied and feel a strong sense of belonging. That means they are more committed and stay longer. 

Sustainable Productivity

If a person neglects her values she looses energy which leads to lower productivity and in the worst case scenario to bad health. If a person lives according to her values she wins energy. She is not only more healthy, she feels happier, more creative, makes better decisions and is more motivated and productive. And all of this for the long-term. 

Peak Performance

Non values-based talent marketing has another huge problem. Companies with standard talent marketing attract more people that do want a pay raise than those that are super motivated to make an impact. The reason? High performers are very selective applicants. 

Strong Employer Brand

Winning mindshare of top-talent as a great employer is the key to lowering hiring costs even further. An employer brand is only as strong as its values are attractive and associated with the brand. Communicating the employer’s values with values-based hiring automatically creates a strong employer brand.

Better Client & Stakeholder Relationships

Because employees feel less stressed and have clear guidelines through the values they can be their true selves and make better decisions. This leads to better service for clients, and better relationships to business partners and other stakeholders. 

5 Advantages for Recruiters

Higher Likelihood of Referrals

When employees are inspired at work they are more likely to talk about their job with friends, colleagues, clients and business partners. Combined with incentive programs this helps to spread the word about job vacancies and elevates the amount of applications even more. 

Less Time For Pre-qualification

In CV’s it’s relatively easy to pre-qualify the candidates’ skill level. For the cultural fit it’s much more difficult. With values-based talent marketing, candidates already get a concrete picture of how it must feel like to work in your organization. That means communicating values actively serves as a passive filter mechanism. People that identify with your company’s values will apply and those who don’t, won’t. So you can focus your time and attention on highly interesting applicants.

Lower Cost of Vacancy

If a job in the middle management remains vacant, it costs the company 1,000 € per day [Adecco, 2022]. In ⅔ of companies the average time-to-hire for leadership positions is longer than 3 months. With values-based hiring you can lower your time-to-hire up to as low as 10 days and thus save more than 80,000 € per vacancy. 

Less Candidates Drop During the Interview Process

It’s a pain when candidates drop during the interview process because they got better offers from someone else or just don’t feel inspired by the job offer after having looked into the details. Values-based recruitment massively reduces the probability that this happens, because it… well… inspires. 

Get Applications From Candidates that are Happy With Their Current Employer

It’s true, with values-based recruiting you can even activate people to change their jobs that are actually happy with their current employer. They say that they were fascinated by what the vacancy has to offer and had to send their CV. So you get access to a much larger talent market.

That’s it. Do you see more advantages? Let us know in the comments.