Understand who you‘re talking to

Bayer offers many different advantages to individuals, depending on who they are, at what stage of career and life they’re in, and where in the world they live. Our Employer Value Proposition (EVP) and employer branding approach gives you the flexibility to tell a relevant and credible story of how our people are shaping what it is to “Be Bayer” – in your own market. 

By doing this, you will be clearer on:

• Which skills and roles to prioritise
• What needs to be done to effectively attract the prioritised talent
• How to allocate their budgets and time to generate more effective campaigns
• Measure your success by creating more targeted KPIs

To help you choose the EVP elements that are most appropriate in your market, ask yourself:

a) What do you need? 

First, identify which skills, tasks, competencies and roles you need.

• We are becoming a more agile organisation, and roles are evolving to address business needs.
• We encourage you to focus less on roles and job descriptions, and more on desired soft skills, describing the tasks that need to be performed and the mindset and behaviours that are required to achieve success.

b) Who would the ideal candidate be? 

Once you have identified people at Bayer that match the requirements, you will be able to create a persona of the ideal candidate by running interviews and focus groups with them.

• Understand their needs, perspectives on “their” Bayer,  preferences (including communication channels) & motivations. 
• Discern which aspects of our EVP resonates most with them. Not only will this help you understand the needs of prospective talent, these insights will also help us engage and retain this critical talent pool.
• Record these results in the form of a persona.

c) Who at Bayer already had these qualities? 

Use data to identify “people like them” who already work at Bayer.

• This data can be captured with the questionnaires that ask individuals at Bayer which tasks they perform in their role and which skills they need to do them (both hard and soft).
• TIP: An ideal person may already be in the forefront of the recruiting managers’ mind. They may be thinking “I wish we had another Annabel/Sulli/Philip”. 

d) What will be your next, most effective step?  

Use these insights to inform your approach on how to authentically target, reach, engage and persuade the talent you are targeting with the story of Bayer that will resonate with them.

• Compare your current approach with the ideal approach the persona describes – to what extent do you need to take action?
• Identify the most appropriate channel to connect with the ideal candidate (E.g. Would they respond better to a LinkedIn campaign, a better job description from recruiters or a completely different approach to reaching them?)