It’s not necessarily an expression you hear too often, and you may never have heard of candidate value propositions (CVPs) before.

However, they have to be the way forward in a tough recruitment market like China. How can you differentiate yourself from any other company in China? How else can you get to the root of what makes people choose your company over others?

All of us are fighting the good fight, and victory rises for those companies that can hone their job offers in what appears to be the best offer available in the Chinese market. If the match is done well enough. and honestly, it will fit the aspirations of active and passive candidates in the market and offer the best career progression in your industry.

The end result is obviously not just a series of pretty pictures and ads. It’s a statement or series of statements that tap into the wants and needs of candidates and position your company as the solution.

But, how do you get to produce a candidate value proposition (CVP)?:

get help – The methodology involved in producing a candidate value proposition (CVP) is highly dependent on the skill set of the marketing department. It’s just another way of looking at branding and marketing, but with recruiting in mind as the end goal.

Marketing people have knowledge of the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Promotion, Place) and can help you create a CVP that is effective in the market. The good news is that they’ll need your HR and recruiting knowledge to flesh out the actual details, but to have a successful partnership, you’ll need to start thinking like a marketer. Only a little.

Candidate Research – This is the starting point and possibly the most difficult thing to do. It requires a time commitment and a budget, two things that are in short supply for any human resources staff in China. [http://www.talentinchina.com]. You know the candidates, but you’ll need the help of someone who can really bring people together in some kind of focus group situation. Someone who can decipher the information you know is there, but can’t get to.

Analysis of results – For this problem, I suggest again that you need the help of a company that does competitive intelligence or a market research firm. You need someone with the interpretive finesse to understand what candidates in your industry really want, how they view your company, and how they might be drawn to see it in a better light.

Segmentation – No matter what industry you are in, and no matter what your size, there will need to be some form of segmentation of your hiring market. If you don’t have any idea of ​​segmentation right now, you probably don’t have the depth of analysis and understanding you need to be successful. Not only do you need to segment the market, you also need to decide how to position your own company within that market.

This is where the tough questions arise: Do they offer high wages? Or a balanced life and work scenario? Which one do you feel more comfortable with and which one best suits the market? There are no easy answers here, but your answer will determine how successful you can be. Clearly, there is no perfect positioning, but not all positioning guarantees failure.

Career and Hiring Message – The key to this is to solve the question: Why do people want to work in our company? What do they value the most?

If you look at a company like Microsoft, they can do a CVP that says something like ‘Define breakthrough technologies that will change the world.’ But are not the only ones. Even small businesses or old industries can go the same way.

Take for example something as routine as automotive lighting. You may see it as pieces of clear plastic with a light behind it. But the true interpretation would lead to a CVP that focuses on the fact that anyone in the automotive lighting business is ‘defining the future look of a new generation of cars’. Take a look at the cars on your street and you’ll notice that the lights dominate the look now, so this isn’t a sales rant. It’s the truth, but phrased in a way that makes automotive lighting attractive as a career.

So you’re looking to craft a message that accurately defines the features and benefits of your product, a job, but in a way that maximizes your advantage. The CVP has to be an actual assessment and not a marketing idea of ​​what’s hot and trendy. This might work for mass media soda advertising, but racing is too important to be treated trivially.

Delivery – Now you need to choose where to present your newly created message. The obvious places are recruitment portals and newspapers, but now that you have a method with a fancy new acronym, why not go all out and put it on blogs, YouTube, social media, job fairs, radio, TV? , etc.? The possibilities are endless but, again, each medium may or may not reflect the type of positioning you are looking for.

What are we waiting for here? Developing a candidate value proposition feels more like play than work.

Go have fun and call it your job.