Employer Brand

2021 – Helping a game development company attract top talent in a highly competitive Ukrainian IT market.

Projects

Context

In 2021, the Ukrainian IT market was highly competitive, with many job opportunities available. Unity and .NET Developers, 2D and 3D Artists, Analysts, and Project Managers were not actively job hunting. Instead, hiring managers were actively hunting for them. In this environment, a game development company (name withheld for confidentiality reasons) struggled to differentiate its employee value proposition and attract top talent beyond offering competitive salaries and snacks.

Process

As part of the [isdgroup] team, specifically its Research and Strategy department Reiseplan, I conducted 25 in-depth interviews with the mentioned specialists who had recently switched jobs and had a profile that the gamedev company hoped to appeal to. The idea was to understand their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations when changing jobs. Following the Mental Model Diagram methodology, I uncovered 5 distinct mindsets that represented these employees’ approaches to accepting or declining job offers. Based on these insights, I identified value propositions that would resonate with these professionals.

Result

Together with the company, we identified the mindsets they wanted to focus on based on their company culture. The in-house team crafted the messaging rooted in the identified value propositions and included them on their website’s careers section and job vacancy descriptions. As a result, they saw a significant increase in qualified applicants and higher job offer acceptance rates.