Strategies for Recruiting Values-Aligned Talent
Purpose-driven people want to work in organizations with authentic values, an inclusive culture, and opportunities for meaningful growth. So, how do you attract and retain this talent?
1. Great Leaders Attract Great Talent
People follow leaders who speak from the heart, align their actions with their words, and demonstrate a genuine commitment to the mission. Research shows that employees who trust their leadership are 50% more engaged and 40% less likely to look for another job. Visibility, approachability, and authenticity make all the difference. Small gestures—a personal thank-you, active listening, or sharing the ‘why’ behind decisions—can have an outsized impact.
2. Let Your People Tell Their Stories
Candidates want to feel inspired, and nothing is more compelling than real employee experiences. Instead of polished corporate messaging, encourage team members to share how their work makes a meaningful difference in their own words. This ‘photo voice’ approach—where employees describe their experience in their own terms—creates authenticity and builds trust with potential hires. (See the Sidebar Below: “The Power of Employee Voices”)
3. Showcase Your Brand and Culture
A strong employer brand is one of your most valuable recruitment tools. Nearly 80% of job seekers research company culture before applying. Ensure your website, social media, and job postings reflect your inclusivity, flexibility, and growth opportunities. Use video testimonials, behind-the-scenes content, and real team interactions to bring your culture to life.
4. Meet People Where They Are
The best people for your organization may not be actively job-hunting. Building relationships before you need to hire will ensure a strong talent pipeline. Engage with potential candidates through community events, professional networks, LinkedIn groups, and industry-specific online forums. Consider hosting virtual Q&As or open-house events where prospective employees can experience your organization in action.
5. Build Transparency and Trust
Today’s workforce demands honesty. A study by Glassdoor found that job seekers trust employee reviews 3x more than company descriptions when evaluating an employer. Instead of just promoting success stories, be open about the challenges your organization is working to overcome. Candidates respect organizations that acknowledge areas for growth and demonstrate a commitment to ethical practices, diversity, and continuous improvement.

THE POWER OF EMPLOYEE VOICES
Why ‘photo voice’ storytelling is the key to authentic recruitment
Most employer branding focuses on carefully crafted key messages, but what if you let your employees speak for themselves? A ‘photo voice’ approach in recruitment shifts the narrative from what leadership wants people to hear to what employees actually experience. When employees describe their own work in their own words, it:

• Feels more real and relatable: Potential hires trust real voices more than marketing copy.
• Provides a diversity of perspectives: Each person’s experience is unique, offering a fuller picture of your workplace culture.
• Builds emotional connection: When people hear firsthand how a job impacts someone’s life, it resonates deeply.

This can take many forms:
» Candid social media posts by employees sharing why they love their work
» Video Clips where team members describe their impact in their own words
» Employee-generated content, such as blogs or Instagram takeovers
When potential employees see real people talking about their experiences, they don’t just understand your culture—they feel it.

Unlock the Power of Purpose
The shift toward values-based recruitment isn’t a trend—it’s the new standard. By aligning your hiring strategies with what today’s workforce values most, you can attract passionate, driven talent who are excited to be part of something bigger.

At Taiji Brand Group, we help mission-driven organizations craft recruitment campaigns that resonate with values-driven talent. From authentic storytelling to brand awareness building, we’ll help you attract and retain the right people to strengthen your team and amplify your impact.

Ready to build your dream team? Let’s talk.

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The dramatic disruption caused by COVID-19 calls for an equally dramatic rethink. Guaranteed, the stacks of research that will follow this global event won’t be kind to the leaders who did nothing. Leaders must act. And that includes all of us. Figuring out just how far and how fast to act will be the test of our individual leadership. But, since there is no normal to return to, we should be emboldened to try new approaches. With vision and courage, things could even be better.

Since none of us can afford to stand still, here are some strategic opportunities you can explore with your team:

Seek out markets that are first to recover. Due to their efforts in containing the virus, take a second look at Australia, New Zealand, and yes, even China. Someone on your team should be poring over your customer segments and markets to forecast who will recover first.

Focus on your customers’ essentials. Times of stress induce a back-to-basics response where we focus on securing absolute necessities for the fewest possible dollars. It’s a great time to brainstorm new products and services that meet essential customer needs—the needs we know about and the ones just emerging.

Find competitive advantages in efficiency. Sure, you could simply cut costs by reducing your payroll. But, it’s far more strategic to focus on process efficiencies. This is a great opportunity to engage your people in identifying potential savings as well as new opportunities.

Figure out your next pivot. Yes, we’re all sick of that term. But it doesn’t change the fact that your strengths could apply elsewhere in the market. Try revisiting your core competencies to identify any adjacencies that might now become critical competitive advantages.

Invest in your people. We understand the desire to trim spending during tough times. But, learning and development are the best way to increase the value of your most valuable assets. Plus, access to accredited online training has never been easier or more affordable.

Track the government’s vision for the future. As the health crisis subsides, we’ll see a massive government investment in economic recovery—perhaps the largest since WW2. Time to read between the lines on where the spending will go and be ready for the resulting opportunities.

Take the fight to your competition. As uncertainty and panic distracts, it’s easy to ignore what your competitors are doing. But, it’s often the perfect time to swing big when competitors choose to bunt. Does someone on your team have an eye on the competition?

How about a few considerations for how we work together?

Send fewer back to the office. Quarantine has disproved old fears about working remotely as employees have been accountable and engaged, even amid a global pandemic. Is there a win-win to providing greater flexibility on how and where people work?

Close the digital skill gap. Self-isolation exposed a digital divide within our culture and our companies. Some worked effectively while others struggled or got left out. In the workplace, we all need to speak the language of Zoom, Slack, Basecamp and whatever else comes along.
We should also pay attention to how your customers and clients are adapting to all of this.

Embrace the humanity. Right now, we’re cool with cats, dogs and kids showing up in the background of our status meetings. It’s made us all feel somehow more connected. But, why should that totally change when we return to business as somewhat usual?

A global pandemic on this scale can change our world in dramatic ways, for better or worse. It already has. And no one knows exactly what is yet to come. The best we can do is lead with agility and conviction, grounded in realistic positivity, so when we can’t control the outcome, we can still control our response to it.

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The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is shaking the foundations of the global economy and causing nearly everyone—owners, managers, staff, and customers—to reassess how business is done. In just a few weeks we’ve seen some markets soar (groceries, food delivery, health, streaming entertainment), while others have been forced to lay off their entire workforces (restaurants, bars, movie theatres, the list goes on). The awkward reality is, the pandemic may be an opportunity for your business; if so, you need to be very careful about how you market your brand during this emergency.

Right now, inboxes are overflowing with heartfelt, personal emails talking about how the CEO for Brand X is responding to the COVID-19 crisis. At this point, no one needs to know about how you’re making the health and safety of customers and employees a priority. That is expected and in many cases mandated by law. Marketing messages that serve only to signal your brand’s virtue without doing anything meaningful for your customer can actually hurt your relationship and your brand. Savvy consumers know when they’re being sold to.

These are tough times for everyone, Taiji included, and they are only going to get tougher in the coming weeks. But we have to be careful about how we try to keep our customers buying. Capitalizing on an opportunity during a critical time can come across as greed or even desperation, which will hurt your brand long after the virus is gone. So here are just a few tips to keep your email blasts in tip top shape and your brand as healthy as possible during the pandemic.

If you don’t have anything nice to say…

People are being urged and even legislated to stay isolated at home, leaving only to access essential services. So if you’re not essential, should you really be encouraging people to come to your place of business? Almost certainly not. Do you have information to communicate to your customers that will help them at this time? If not, have you considered not saying anything at all? If you’re concerned that weighing in during the pandemic could hurt your brand image, you don’t have to send anything out. Instead, devote your time to determining what you’re going to say when all of this is over and you may find that your customers were happy to find you absent from their overfilled inboxes.

If you don’t know, ask

If you feel that you absolutely do need to say something, it never hurts to ask what people need. Ask how your business can provide a product or service that will ease the burden, calm anxieties, and make life easier. Social media is a great place to do this since you’ll likely get feedback right away. You may find out that you have more to offer than you thought. In January, few would have guessed that artisan spirit distillers across the country would have a major part to play in a health crisis, but that was before every store ran out of hand sanitizer.

Once you’ve determined what you can do to help, go ahead and tell people, because now instead of selling, you’re helping.

If you build it, you better deliver

If you’ve figured out that there is demand for your business, you need to take a hard look at how to responsibly deliver your product or service. If it can’t be done, you’re going to have to self-isolate like everyone else because this is the one case where you absolutely do not want your business to go viral.

Perhaps this is the time that you figure out how to physically deliver a product that wasn’t delivered before, without touching your customers or their front doors of course. Maybe now you can see a way to distribute purely online, which will only help you in the future. However you enable your customers to continue to purchase from you, it’s going to be good news for the millions of cabin-feverish ennui sufferers stuck at home. So get out there and spread the word!

As always, your success is our priority and we want to help.  This is uncharted territory for all of us. But, if you need help navigating brand and marketing decisions, we are a phone call away.

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There are plenty of factors that need to be accounted for before spooling up a social media program: number of platforms, target audiences, engagement stats, etc. But no question is more important than What do you have the capacity to do? Because with social media, capacity is king. Do what you can do, not what you should do, and do it well so that it works for your business, your audience, and your staff. That’s the foundation of a successful social media strategy for business.

Do what you can do

So often we meet a business that has one part-time employee managing four or more platforms. The employee is stretched so thin that there isn’t time to generate quality content tailored to each platform and audience, never mind engaging with fans and followers. The result is that the business fails to see an impact from social media efforts, the audience experience ranges from inconsistent to borderline negligent, and the social media manager is stressed, overworked, and snowed under by an avalanche of @ replies.

It may seem like stating the obvious but considering how often it happens, it’s worth saying again: if your employee can only spend ten hours per week on social media, be sure that your social media strategy will only take ten hours to execute. Instead of taking a scattershot approach to every platform out there, focus your efforts on creating memorable, engaging content and posting it in one or two places where your audiences are the most engaged.

Do it well so that it works

Content is king! It’s a common refrain in social media management discussions recently. But the truth is, it’s quality content that’s king. You can’t get away with flooding feeds with mediocrity anymore. Thanks to the algorithms that choose what everyone sees, you’ll lose fans faster than you can make them, if they see your content at all. In order to see results, your content must provide value to users and stand out in the feed.

Great content takes time and money. Large companies like Lululemon have whole departments devoted to social media. They have huge budgets and the ability to pump out great content. How can smaller businesses do the same without breaking the bank?

If you only have a small social media budget, the key is making your investment last. Don’t have enough professional photos, videos, or blog content to post every day? Post every two or three days; there’s no rule that says it has to be every day. Don’t have enough capacity or content to post on five platforms? Select one or two platforms with user bases that make sense for your business and post your highest quality content. Don’t be afraid to adjust your strategy so that what you post is valuable and worth the investment—a strategy that fits the capacity of your team and appeals to your loyal fans.

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