Subliminal Sourcing: Courting Candidates Through the Subconscious?

Like many scientific advances, the progression of neuroscience over the latter half of the twentieth century has been both wonderful and slightly disturbing to watch. Wonderful because the discipline has allowed us to more fully understand ourselves and the world we live in — and, hopefully, that will continue; disturbing because neuroscience has revealed some truths that may be difficult to reconcile with our worldviews. Consider, for example, the way our brains’ subconscious functions challenge our notions of free will  and force us to rethink our beliefs.

Neuroscience has demonstrated that the subconscious mind plays an important role in our daily lives, even when we think we’re calling all the shots. Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence, says that “95 percent of all thoughts, emotions, and learning occur before we are ever aware of it.”

Some savvy businesses have incorporated this knowledge into their branding efforts by way of “neuromarketing.” According to Adweek, neuromarketing is a method of marketing that taps into consumers’ subconscious thoughts to trigger positive emotions. For example: curved packaging and logos evoke feelings of softness and comfort.

On the surface, neuromarketing may seem like a ridiculous concept, but the fact is it gets results. Adweek describes how design consultants from Elmwood helped Gressingham Foods amp up their brand with some neuromarketing techniques: “For Gressingham —competing in a supermarket aisle full of rectangular containers—Elmwood rounded not only the package but also the label and logo. The brand’s signature gold was infused with a warm amber. The result: A brand in decline rose 47 percent in sales after the mid-2012 redesign, free of added marketing support.”

It seems that neuromarketing can be a powerful sales and marketing tool. Given that recruiting has a lot in common with sales and marketing, I wonder – could we use neuromarketing principles to recruit talent? Could we create a practice of “neurorecruiting”?

Neuromarketing an Employee Brand

Though a fair bit of sales and marketing go into the recruitment process, we have to recognize that building and selling an employee brand is not quite the same thing as building and selling a product brand. With a product, you have a tangible good on hand. Your goal is to get people to pay for an actual object or service.

With employee brands, you’re marketing something intangible. You’re selling a culture, a community, a small society. You can attach all sorts of meanings to your concrete product by catering to your market’s senses. As Adweek explains, Campbell’s slapped a picture of a hot bowl of soup onto its cans, using visuals to tap into the feelings of consumers. Putting a picture on your employee brand is a little harder – that doesn’t come in a can.

In the way it sells an intangible item, employee branding is a lot like politics. Much like a company courting talent, elected officials have to market their beliefs and values to the public. As it turns out, neuromarketing plays a role in elections, similar to the way it operates in product marketing.

On his website, Dooley wrote a post exploring how campaigning politicians can score points with swing voters – those members of the public who have not quite made up their minds yet – by appealing to their subconscious thoughts and feelings.

“If you are running a national campaign, either for a presidential candidate or a political advocacy group, wouldn’t you spend a little to strap some independent voters into an fMRI scanner and see which of your commercials light up different parts of their brain?” Dooley writes. By figuring out what kinds of commercials provoke positive brain activity – e.g., feelings of reward – politicians can craft their advertisements to evoke the right kinds of emotions and, hopefully, bring voters to their side.

Can we market employee brands in a similar way?

Neurorecruiting?

Neuromarketing can help politicians sway swing voters. Perhaps it can do the same for recruiters in the labor market looking to woo uncertain candidates.

Imagine the “swing candidate”: She has the skills for the job. In fact, she’s perfectly qualified to fill the role. However, she’s not totally on board with the culture. It isn’t that she doesn’t like your organization – she just isn’t sure your company is the perfect fit for her. Do you let this candidate get away, or do you nudge her in your direction by playing to her subconscious?

Perhaps you figure out what sort of messages and images stimulate positive brain activity. Then, you subtly sprinkle these messages and images into your interactions with the candidate. She begins to associate your company with positive feelings – and so, she accepts your job offer.

Or imagine using neuroscience to sway the swing company – the organization that isn’t quite sure that the candidate you’ve brought them is the right person for the job. This candidate is qualified, but the organization is uncertain about their fit. So, you deploy the right sort of cues when talking about your candidate so that the organization starts associating the candidate with positive thoughts and feelings. In no time at all, they’ve decided to go with your guy.

This is a brief sketch of what neurorecruiting could look like because I’m entering some really speculative territory here. But it’s worth thinking about as neuroscience and neuromarketing continue to advance.

Is Neurorecruiting Ethical?

I’ll come out and say it: I don’t know if neurorecruiting is strictly ethical. Then again, I’m also not certain that neuromarketing is totally okay, either. Others share my reservations: consumer group Commercial Alert asked the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to investigate neuromarketing in 2004, suggesting that the practice could be used for dangerous ends, including more effective political propaganda and the encouragement of “degraded values” (a vague term to be sure, but a concern nonetheless); others question whether neuromarketing really works at all. 

But the fact remains: neuromarketing, whatever our misgivings, is entirely legal, and the results it brings are impressive. Even if neuromarketing has critics, plenty of people are buying the products it sells.

So recruiters and talent managers face a couple of knotty questions: would the tactics of neuromarketing work for recruiting? And, if they would, are we justified in using them?

I leave the answers to you.