Avoiding disappointments when filling positions.
Everyone wants to put their best foot forward during a job interview. Both employers and candidates show themselves in the best possible light. Employers looking to attract highly qualified talent promote a wonderful working environment, international connections, exciting tasks, and much more. Conversely, applicants emphasize their flexibility, comprehensive expertise, and high willingness to learn.
In everyday work life, this is often followed by a rude awakening: after three years, the employee is still waiting for their first international assignment, which they expected due to the "international connections." The employer understood "flexibility" as the willingness to switch functional areas and cannot understand why the promised flexibility reaches its limits so quickly.
Neither party can be blamed for this; it does not happen intentionally or by calculation. Such misunderstandings are based on assumptions, conclusions, and the subjective interpretation of promises. Many factors that determine a long-term successful hiring process are not even addressed.
Contractual fidelity: The secret of a successful working relationship
An employment relationship is not only a legal relationship, but above all a complex social-psychological one. In technical jargon, the tacit agreement regarding expectations and offers concluded between employer and employee is called the "Psychological Contract."
These mutual expectations take place mainly on an unconscious level, making it not entirely easy to identify them, let alone deal with them in a targeted manner. However, if implicit expectations are disappointed over a longer period of time, this can have serious consequences for the company: willingness to perform, commitment, and engagement drop, leading to the employee detaching from the company up to resignation in their mind.
Radical slogans in recruitment such as "happy staff" or "better future" carry a high risk, as these can hardly be 100% fulfilled. The loftier the promises, the harder the fall, which can then be read about on review platforms like kununu or indeed. This backfires because this is precisely where job seekers look for information, and the statements of current employees carry 1,000 times more weight than anything the employer says themselves. Therefore, careful consideration should be given to what expectations are raised by one's statements and whether they can actually be fulfilled. Breaching the psychological contract is painful for both sides – and expensive.
PERSENTIS proactively counteracts such breaches of the psychological contract by making mutual expectations visible. Based on its target profile, the employer can clearly articulate what is expected beyond professional qualifications and what is particularly important in the respective job. Conversely, applicants learn what to expect and whether this aligns with their own ideas, values, and goals.
There is probably never a guarantee that things will work out in the long run, but with the combination of facts, in-depth information, and a healthy dose of gut feeling, you come very close.
