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You are here: Home / Archives for employment branding

Fall 2017 Speaker Preview: Celebrating Local Company Cultures

November 14, 2017 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Lauryn Sargent

I’m really excited to speak at recruitDC on December 7th where I’ll talk about three different story-based recruitment marketing campaigns for Dell, Sodexo and CVS Health.

Over my thirteen years in the DC talent space, I’ve seen our local employers care more and more about giving positive work experiences to their team… and they have the proof (employee stories) to back it up. In this post I want to celebrate them! Here are two DC companies who use stories to showcase their unique culture.

Visionist is a government contractor in Columbia, Maryland that’s unlike any other. When we interviewed their team, we were struck by how being on “the bench” between projects is actually an opportunity to stretch professionally. And one team member asked to continue the training he started in between projects:

“I was on the bench for about a month before going on program. In that month I was working on R&D projects at Visionist HQ and I really enjoyed it. I was learning every single day and it was amazing. Once I got on program I was working with entirely different technology. I wanted to stay sharp on what I was working on at Visionist HQ as well, so I asked the leadership if I could come back and they said, ‘Absolutely.’ I was really appreciative that I could learn two different things (simultaneously).”

Even though the employees we interviewed couldn’t talk specifics about what the team actually does every day, we were able to get a clear sense of culture because we heard so many stories about what the organization does for their employees. Three themes emerged based on the stories told from people in analyst to executive levels: a sense of purpose in the work they’re doing to defend our nation, a strong culture of innovation, and how they put employees first (even before clients). The first story in this video is a personal story from one of the founders about why Visionist:

Even though they are a small government contractor with a modest budget, Visionist bought targeted Facebook ads and each video was viewed over 5,000 times. Even better: candidates in and outside of the industry told the CEO they only applied because they were looking for a company with a strong culture and felt they found it after watching the videos. One candidate said they never even considered working in government consulting before learning about Visionist.

Frontpoint is a Virginia-based company dedicated to the safety and security of people and their homes.  

When we sat down with the Frontpoint team, one thing was very clear: values from Day 1 still show up in Year 10. One of Frontpoint’s core values is building trust. In this video, Aaron, one of the founders, tells the story of how he treated their very first customer:

Stories Inc has been lucky to not only work with, but learn from, DC-area companies like The Motley Fool, The Menkiti Group and Keller Williams Capital Properties, Visionist, Frontpoint, MBP and New Light Technologies… all companies who care immensely about building strong cultures and have the stories to back it up. And these are just the ones we’ve worked with — not representative of all the great DC area companies providing great growth experiences for their employees. Are you working somewhere you love? Leave your own story in the comments! And I hope to see you in December!

Lauryn Sargent is a cofounder at Stories Incorporated, a recruitment marketing content creation agency based on employee stories. Along with the Stories team, she has collaborated with some of the most people progressive companies in the world to develop powerful and authentic employer branding and recruitment marketing content. She has spoken at NACE, Social Recruiting Strategies, and Employer Branding Strategies conferences, instructing audiences on how to create story-based content to educate and engage potential candidates. 

Prior to starting Stories, she was a talent acquisition manager for a publicly traded company and recruited for Fortune 500 companies as well as growing entrepreneurial environments.

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: culture, employment branding, recruitDC, recruitment marketing

Why recruitDC Matters To Me

May 19, 2017 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Audra Knight

I was rather nervous the first time I attended recruitDC. Now, let me clear here – I knew I was going to learn a lot at RecruitDC in 2016, but what I didn’t expect was the friendships that would come out of attending the conference.

For me, it was great to catch up with some old friends like Katrina Collier, Jo Weech, Kerri Noone and some other great DC people who make our industry and community so special. As for new friends, I ended up at a meal with one of my favorite podcasters, the Mad Scientist of Online Recruiting Chris Russell. Not surprisingly, we’ve kept in touch and I have learned so much about HR Tech from him over the past year. It was also at this event that I first met Chris Kurtz, whom I now consider one of my best friends and someone I am so thankful to have in my life. Derek Zeller taught me that you should always celebrate who you are, and he continues to blow me away with his recruiting knowledge and writing skills, even from the other side of the country in Portland. As a side note, the most surprising aspect of any connection I made while I was there was the valuable parenting advice that I got from Lorne Epstein. I bet he doesn’t even remember but it has really helped me. Hat tip to you, Lorne. 

This year I’m returning to recruitDC, and by far, the learning is again a strong pull for me. The event covers everything from sourcing to closing the candidate, which we can always use a refresher on.

In my presentation, I will be sharing why and how personal branding will benefit everyone in recruitment. Candidates are researching us online just as we are researching them, and trust me, the cost of a bad online presence is high. Don’t believe me? Just check out the hashtag #RecruiterFail. I I most certainly appreciate that we are all super busy, so what you’ll see from me is a few easy tips and tricks to put in action in no time.

Beyond the learning, I am really looking forward to another chance to meet new people and make new recruiting friends. Here are my “pro tips” for networking at this event:

  • Arrive early and have breakfast with the other early risers like me.
  • Don’t work during the breaks. You might not get another chance to meet the great people around you.
  • At lunch, sit with people you don’t know. Confort Zones are to be avoided at conferences!
  • Meet all the sponsors. We wouldn’t have this great event without them and you just make have something in common.
  • Listen more than you talk – so important to relationship building at every stage.
  • Most important, stay for the networking party from 4:00 on as that’s where the real friendships happen.

See you next week!

RecruitDC 2016 – One old friend and one new friend

Filed Under: DC Area Conferences, recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: Audra Knight, employment branding, networking, recruitDC

Session Recap – Maren Hogan – Employer Branding for Dirty Jobs

November 28, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

ed. note: Because there was so much information to capture in Maren’s presentation on November 17th, we wanted to make sure that we could provide you with some more details. Enjoy! 

 

So many times, we find ourselves listening to how one giant company with an abundance of ping pong tables and fat jack stock options found itself on the receiving end of tons of lovely Glassdoor reviews and adoring candidates.

I am happy for those companies of course and I won’t lie and say that building a recruitment marketing strategy for them isn’t super fun. I mean, who doesn’t want to work for a company with free dry cleaning and a rock climbing wall?

At the very least, many companies in the service sector are offering things that many companies simply can’t compete with:

  • WFH days or telecommuting
  • Flat hierarchies
  • Or a pleasant work environment

While these are nice to have, there are many places where people have to work to continue to push our economy forward, that are dirty, nasty, and downright boring. You can’t have a ping pong table in a slaughterhouse and you can’t work from home if you’re a forklift driver. You can’t have a flat hierarchy if you work for a government contracting agency that spends ALL its time trying to figure out if you’re a SQL Programmer II or III.

I always tell my employees when they come to work for me that it’s going to be hard. And not a little bit hard like selling jeans, or Oreos or marketing a sports drink, but really freaking hard, like selling a quarter of a million dollar HRIS to every person in the org it touches; from the daily user to the person writing the check. THAT’S hard.

Just like B2B marketing is straight up harder than B2C marketing, recruitment marketing is harder when the sell is harder. How could the sale be hard? Here are some common difficult to market jobs or workplaces:

Unsafe or hazardous working conditions. While we’re no longer living in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, there are still jobs that are inherently dangerous. They may surprise you!

  • Airline Pilots
  • Fishers and Fishing Workers
  • Loggers
  • Roofers
  • Trash Collectors
  • Farmers
  • Structural Iron and Steel Workers
  • Drivers/Truck Drivers
  • Electrical Power Installers
  • Taxi Drivers and Chauffeurs

How about gross jobs or dirty jobs?

Many of those same jobs fall onto this list. Trash collectors, preppers at a nail salon, working the kill floor at a slaughterhouse, working with industrial dyes. You name it!  These are jobs that lack an intrinsic value proposition, or do they? More on that later.

Then there are boring jobs. Data entry, call service centers, and of course, sometimes recruiting for government or cleared jobs fall into this category.

Finally, you have places that are hard to recruit TO:

It boggles the mind that we spend all our time at conferences trying to figure out how to solve the competition issues in Silicon Valley when many of us are recruiting for jobs and locations that look nothing like it. I’m from Omaha, and at the same time as everyone I meet at this conference gives me a blank stare when I tell them that, our city and state currently have an unemployment rate of 3.6%.

Now that we’ve determined what these jobs look like, let’s talk about HOW to build a brand and a marketing strategy to recruit for them. As we’ve already determined, these jobs have to be filled, so let’s fill them!

Find Your Value

Well, it starts with the value proposition. I know I mentioned earlier that these jobs often don’t have an intrinsic or obvious value proposition, but they do have one.

For example, a trash collector may seem like a job I would never want to do, but for someone, having their afternoons free, physical activity, the chance to be outdoors and more, are all benefits.

No matter how difficult it is, determine the values your job will potentially give applicants. A blog post by RJ Morris, discusses how he successful did this during his time recruiting for a light industrial firm.

Early in my career, I took a turn doing light industrial contract recruiting. Temp work for lots of warehouse workers, forklift drivers, mechanics, etc. Physically demanding, low wages…these were tough gigs, and recruiting for them was a bear.

Boiler room environment, fast pace, demanding clients, low margins, high tempers.  “Hey, R. J., we need a third shift warehouse tech, three week assignment, starting tonight at 11 pm. Go get em.”

All of the jobs were hard to successfully recruit for, but by far, the worst job we worked on was to place folks at a food color company. The company’s model was to bring temporary employees in before offering them full time roles, and their first job was in the color mixing area. It was appropriately nicknamed the “Blender.”

Imagine fifteen workers, mixing powdered and liquid colors in huge vats with long oar-like paddles, twelve hour shifts at a time. The powdered color floated through the air everywhere. At the end of the shift, the guys (all were guys) had semi-permanent tie dyed tattoos.

These were industrial strength food dyes, used to make the different colors of Skittles, for example. Apparently, when you worked with them for twelve hour days, they also dyed skin.

It took a guy 30 minutes of scrubbing with Lava Soap to get the stains off.

He started with a 55% voluntary attrition rate. How did he turn it around? By asking who was already successful in the position. Morris looked at the numbers and realized that after 3 months, attrition dipped to 12% and then after one year, it was a mere 5%. So he started asking questions:

  • Why would anyone want to work in this job?
  • What’s the benefit to the employee?
  • What types of people will respond to that offering and where can we find them?  

He spent time at the company, interviewing new and tenured employees and found out that if you HAD the chutzpah to stick around, you stuck around for good. Did it make his job easier? No. But the numbers kept getting better. The company had realized their value proposition was to promise a better future, if you could make it today:

Come in, get along, work hard, don’t whine and you’ll get rewarded.  If you complained too much or did not get along with your Blender Buddies, you were out. If you lasted six months, the company offered you a full time role, including benefits and a decent raise.   Most importantly, employees rotated out of the Blender after one year.  No more blue arms and orange ears.  We just found the value proposition.

At Red Branch Media, we did something similar with a survey project with a large pharmaceutical company. While the company was an employer of choice in their HQ city, they wanted to compete for scientists near Harvard and Stanford, meaning the tactics they’d used as “the only game in town” before were going to be less effective. Plus, their pay was going to be less competitive in these areas.

To find out what types of people were successful in the role, we surveyed employees at all levels of the company to determine what made them successful, both inside and outside the company. And, while I am generally not one for anecdotal data, we did dive deep to find out what made them happy. The values rang through loud and clear, from sales people who had never set foot in HQ, to those who were safely ensconced within the building. We used those values and articulated them throughout the recruitment marketing campaigns. For these people, it wasn’t about big money, or even the benefits, it was about making a difference in people’s lives through medication.

Find Your Value

TO DO:

  • Survey Employees
  • Ask Questions
  • Create a Value Prop for THAT Job
  • Make Positives out of Negatives

Get Your Values Straight

I have no control over what people offer by way of compensation, or how they treat employees or contractors once they’re brought on board. However, I do know when a company cannot offer benefits like work from home or a
short commute, or even a safe or pleasant working environment, there are ways to reward them internally. As a recruiting professional, you can make a case for why employers should explore wellness programs, revamp their bonus structure or offer other benefits to workers who can’t have the more traditional stuff.

For example, an owner of a warehouse that packs and ships unconventional and risque items tries to foster a family atmosphere in the office and warehouse and buys his 11 employees lunch on Mondays and Wednesdays. Plus his company offers raises, health insurance and an informal atmosphere where employees can dress as they wish and listen to the radio all day.

Ask yourself, your employer, or your client if there is something you can do to offset some of the negative brand equity of working that gross, ugly or dirty job.

Get Your Values Straight

TO DO:

  • Find Ways to Make It Up To Them
  • Highlight In Postings
  • Be an Advocate
  • Find the ROI

Find Your Audience

Much of this is standard but keep new audiences in mind. The average age of a government employee is 47 years old, but over one-third of the current job market consists of Millennials, and they are expected to make up 46% of the working population by 2020. These statistics are already affecting the pool of cleared candidates, so being prepared to hire and manage a younger workforce is key.

Now, how do we get these kids to pass a security clearance? Present it as a challenge.

Millennials are more likely to be drawn to challenges that have tangible results, which includes successfully navigating the vetting process of security clearance. When communicating with younger workers, highlight the specific skills needed to make it through the clearance process, encourage them to rise to the challenge, and remind them that the reward is an in-demand clearance status. Also, giving current college students an opportunity to intern with your company allows you to gauge the skills of individual candidates and can give you confidence that a costly clearance sponsorship will be worth the time and investment.

–Olivia Landau

If you’re not already, seek out passive candidates, competitive candidates and of course, veteran candidates. While these are great networks to tap into for cleared jobs, they can also be useful for jobs that are less than ideal.

When we worked with the world’s largest protein company, we quickly realized that behind the fancy pants name, was a string of slaughterhouses located in some of the most remote and boring locations in the world. Which makes sense, you don’t want a slaughterhouse in your backyard now do you?

Anyway, we realized as we were defining our candidate persona, that many of them had things in common with a military recruit. Here’s that persona:

These are often people who grew up in or near a rural environment, wanted a family and valued a college education. The recruitment marketing strategy encompassed many things but military stood out with good reason, as did restaurant managers. We knew those groups also valued similar things, had some overlap in their backgrounds and also understood living in remote locations or third tier towns (bases).

Find Your Audience

TO DO:

  • Identify Audience
  • Build Personas to Speak To
  • Find Overlap

Get Your Channels Together

Recruiting on cleared and niche boards is absolutely a great idea. But when reaching out to millennials for ODD jobs, consider the source. It’s easy to spend a lot of money for very little return when it comes to recruitment advertising. So when you’ve got your buyer persona complete, think about what that person does. When we recruited for plant supervisors at the aforementioned plant, our initial plan included diversity initiatives on campus and mobile phone advertising for internal candidates to promote from the floor. Guess what?

Diversity was NOT going to happen from a gender perspective and having a phone on the kill floor is a fireable offense. Whoops? So what did we end up with?

  • A robust career fair plan supported by social and resources for career centers
  • Meet and greets and curriculum support for their schools of choice
  • Geo-location around universities that had the degree programs they were most likely to recruit from
  • Spotify advertising on study and country station
  • Bathroom advertising…yep
  • Table Tents
  • Lunch Room Announcements
  • Revamped LinkedIn Careers Page
  • Separate Career Site that focused on location benefits

While some of these might seem shockingly old school, it worked! We got all 55 positions filled in 9 months. So, when you think about marketing, even recruitment marketing, think about where your candidates go (college bars, career centers, the lunchroom) what they need to know (which classes to take, how to achieve security clearance, how to interview, any risks associated with the job) and what they are consuming (on-demand streaming content, flyers, facebook, billboards and heaven help me, Snapchat).

Of course, you can also reverse engineer this information. For the guy trying to get workers for his novelty sex toy business, we can safely avoid, say, Christian radio stations or the Panera Bread where your aunt always goes.

Get Your Channels Together

TO DO:

  • Where are they?
  • What do they do?
  • What are they listening to?
  • What are they reading?
  • How can you solve their problem or meet their need?

Be Honest (and Funny!)

Okay, writing job requirements is one thing…and writing job advertisements is an entirely different thing. I always say it’s the difference between a shoe ad in your favorite magazine and the description on the side of the box. Size 7 WIDE Black Heel. The latter is the requirement, the former is the ad. Let’s talk about transparency in advertising. Transparency means you don’t sell a job that’s not there:

 

“Want to work in a dirty and messy warehouse that is full of weird and embarrassing stuff that people buy online?”

vs

“We need a team player to foster warehouse synergy.”

Building out a job description for a gross, dirty or non-glam position means you have to create a clear picture of what it’s going to actually look like. It may not be fun, it may not even be comfortable but if you sell it as something that it isn’t, people will walk.

Realistic job previews, where you honestly tell people what the job entails, will create a condition where more peopl
e will not take the job, but the ones who do will be much more likely to stick around. You need to find the right person for the right job.

–Industrial psychologist Jeffrey Saltzman

Conversely, the people who apply DO want the job, because you’ve stated the risks or downsides right up front! I use this all the time in my own agency, because while we’re a marketing firm, it’s not glamorous. In fact, most days it’s downright boring.

Be Honest (and Funny!)

DOs:

Be honest. If the work is hard, say so. Our work is. It’s nothing like Mad Men. We spend a lot of time typing away at keyboards with our headphones on. I won’t tolerate loads of chit-chat, or sitting on one’s laurels. In fact, one section of our interview process is titled: This is the part where I scare you.

Point out the positives. When I tell people that we’re in a quiet work environment and everything we do is posted on the company intranet, it can scare them. So at the same time, I also focus on how the office is always empty by 5 pm or how we have a company wide eating meeting on Friday. Other plusses people rarely think of? The ability to use your phone on the job, lack of oversight, casual work environment and the chance to create your own schedule.

Create an awesome headline. You don’t have to lie to create a great headline.

“This Sales Job in Dallas is Shagadelic” worked to attract 50 awesome JC students for an entry-sales job for the Yellow Pages when the first Austin Powers movie came out. @LouAdler

Use their motivation as a sales tool. Motivations can be as simple as wanting to be outdoors or as complex as doing one’s patriotic duty. Whatever it is, make sure you use it to weed out undesirables AND pull in those who have a keen sense of what motivates them.

Learn, Do, Become. In RJ’s example in the dyeing factory, one key motivator was the stability and benefits a person would receive if they “ran the gauntlet”. In the case of an RBM medical client, we use things like referrals and leaderboards to encourage people to take new assignments and build their skill base. This has the added bonus of adding performance expectations and goals right in the job ad.

Tell a story. This can be about big goals, overcoming an obstacle or about the prospect’s future path. Whatever it is, it negates the need to discuss the need for a master’s degree or proficiency in thus and such. If you can tell a compelling story about the position or the company, it makes you job recruiting someone there (even if it’s gross or in BFE) that much easier.

Add a step. This may go against everything you’ve ever known to be true. But adding a step can take out the undesirables and loop in those who deserve your first consideration. Start with a quick email and then follow up with a call. While the person may still be in your ATS, at least you know their level of interest if they’ve taken the time to do the extra step (whether it’s email or whatever).

Don’t:

  • Add a laundry list of skills.
  • Use adjectives that can apply to literally anyone. Self starter comes to mind.
  • Add in your generic boilerplate (if you must, at least do so at the bottom)
  • Avoid the obvious with stupid titles
  • Forget to say what makes this job special

When important jobs are advertised cafeteria-style like this, with the garnish being the only differentiator, even the semi-desperate make the decision to apply based on location, job title and the company’s brand name. When they accept these jobs the size of the compensation package then becomes the prime negotiating factor. This is always the case with commodity products in a buyer’s market.

–Lou Adler

A Clear and Present Stranger

Knowing where to advertise is great. Knowing how to advertise is great. Understanding your value prop is also great. But none of these things alone are going to bring people to your door eager to working your terrible, difficult job. So, here are some other things guaranteed to help boost your business.

Career Fairs. It’s not just BEING at career fairs, it’s doing them right. It vexes me when people pay for a booth at a fair and then just make the marketing budget whatever it took Joe from campus recruiting to get there AKA his Hertz budget and a lunch at Applebee’s. For our meatpacking client, we totally rebranded their swag (so it was stuff students would actually keep) and built out a booth that was as informative and approachable as possible. We also use social media, email and referrals to get people to the booth. Once there, we made sure our career site was mobile ready so we could guide them through the process without unnecessary awkwardness.

Poaching. One organization developed 15-second low budget but intriguing commercials to air at a local movie theater near their headquarters.The same organization created a mobile hiring center with a cheap RV to drive to targeted competitors during the lunch hour. You can set a Yelp review to go to your careers page or test the mood at the local watering hole. But poaching in this sense, is legal.

Create puzzles. Creative challenges or contests can help you uncover top talent. But don’t just create a puzzle, put it out there! Think websites, wraps on company cars or billboards. Challenges can include hackathons, photo contests or even trivia. Dyson recently released a challenge hidden inside a recruitment video on its website.

Be Smart. Look you’re recruiting for clearance, high level jobs, and I’m recruiting for loggers, industrial warehouse workers and people who shoot cows in the head. Maybe the Valley can afford to blow off contractors if they mess up, but we’re dealing with a different deck, so make it easy on your prospects.

Make it easy for a candidate to apply, and give them a second shot if they botch an initial contact. I’ve spoken with many recruiters who say they give candidate one chance – if that individual blows off a phone screening or fails to submit the appropriate paperwork, they’re done. That strategy may work in less in-demand industries but if you’re vying for competitive talent you’re going to have to give a little wiggle room. Keep in mind that a passive candidate has anothe
r full time job. If they get pulled into a meeting and miss a phone screening, see that as a sign of their commitment to their work – a skill they will bring to the table with your company.

 

 

Maren Hogan is a seasoned marketer and community builder in the HR and Recruiting industry. She leads Red Branch Media, a consultancy offering marketing strategy and content development. A consistent advocate of next generation marketing techniques, Hogan has built several successful online communities, deployed brand strategies in both the B2B and B2C sectors, and been a prolific contributor of thought leadership in the recruitment and talent space.

Maren’s websites include www.redbranchmedia.com and www.marenated.com

 

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: employment branding, Maren Hogan, recruitDC event

Speaker Preview: Chris Kurtz – Employee Generated Content – HR's Swiss Army Knife

May 25, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

A friend recently phoned to tell me about his latest financial woes, a burned out motor on the car that his daughter had taken away to college.  

Like many parents before them, they carefully scoured the classifieds looking for a car that was both a reliable and economical solution for transportation for their soon-to-be BYU-Idaho freshman.  Their daughter was delighted and named her first car “Gertrude”.  They covered all the basics, slow down in snow, don’t lend it out to friends, no texting and driving, no double-buckling etc. Yes, my friend had covered all the basics.  Except one…Warning lights and maintenance

When the “check oil” light came on, she was startled at first.  She knew that something should be done but figured it could wait.  Early on, the light was an annoyance but before long she hardly noticed it at all.  That was, until the evening that her trusty Gertrude failed her and she was left calling for assistance on the side of the road.    

What began as a simple warning and could have been avoided for a mere $39.95 with a manufacture’s rebate, would now cost thousands of dollars. 

Sound familiar?

When Mark Zuckerberg and his friends created Facebook in their college dorm, they provided more than the power to connect. They unleashed an entirely new genie from the bottle, a microphone for everyone to the world.  Friends, family, and employees alike could now take to the internet to share their experiences and express their opinions.  This has given rise to sites like Yelp, Glassdoor, Comparably, RatemyJob, RateMyBoss, RateMyProfesssor, RateMyFillintheblank.  

The reviews have also become a double-edged sword, striking fear into the hearts of some while creating a sense of urgency, transparency and community for others.  Whatever your approach, the genie is here to stay with the rising workforce even being dubbed, “The Glassdoor Generation.” (source: socialtalent.co)

Because of its anonymity and relevance in the job search process, employees and candidates to date have left over 11 million company, interview or salary reviews on Glassdoor.com (source: Glassdoor) and hundreds of millions more across sites similar to it. Put another way, in the time that you read this post, an additional 20 – 30 pieces of content will land on Glassdoor.

For recruiters, Human Resources, and Executives, that content can be a virtual Swiss Army Knife.  Just as the gauges on the dash of a car provide a report on the vehicle’s performance, employee generated content (EGC) offers valuable insight into engagement, candidate experience, workforce diversity and opportunities for people development.  On the flip side, when left unchecked, it can also lead to costly disaster. 

What do I recommend?

At a minimum, managers and recruiters should be listening to and watching the reviews that employees with genuine intent take the time to leave.  Deciding to respond is the choice of the organization and should coincide with your culture. 

When tempted to overlook what may seem to be an innocuous review, remember the roughly 30 million unique visitors to Glassdoor each month, (source: Quantcast) and the words from William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, “I’ll speak with a monstrous voice.” 

I often field calls from clients or friends who simply want advice on how to make a review go away.  I share with them the 1% rule and encourage them to take a further look.  Some have discovered entire teams on the verge of resignation or recruiting practices that are terrible at best. 

In other words, they too ignored the light that may have saved them thousands, even millions of dollars and precious employee goodwill.   

Thank you for reading.

In a future post, I’ll talk about the 1% rule and share some tips on engaging with EGC.

If you’re feeling social, you can also connect and join the conversation here, or simply come by and say “hello”.

Do Good, Be Great,

Chris

 

Chris Kurtz is the Founder and Principal of PeerThru. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter

 

Filed Under: DC Area Conferences, recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: Chris Kurtz, employment branding

HR Tech Fest Coming to DC!

February 29, 2016 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

Conferences are flocking to DC, it seems! We’ve got a special offer for our recruitDC community, courtesy of The Eventful Group. HR Tech Fest is coming to DC April 20 through the 22nd. As a member of the recruitDC community, they are offering a Buy One Get One ticket price with an additional $100 off the registration for our community. 

For Tickets: Visit the HR Tech Fest Registration Page, and enter code RecruitDC to claim the discount. 

They have a stellar lineup with Talent Acquisition leaders from all over the country, including:

Ambrosia Vertesi – VP, Talent, Hootsuite

William Tincup – Principal Analyst, KeyInterval Research

Bill Boorman – Managing Director Innovation & Technology, RecruitingDaily & #tru

 

Event and Ticket Information:

Technology continues to disrupt the way HR functions. No longer the cost center or the poor cousin; new disruptive technology, easy to adopt in bite size and cloud based chunks, has thrust HR into a leadership role demanding it to be a strategic partner within the organization. So the emphasis for HR to enhance performance, cut costs and find value adding tools has never been greater.

Enter HR Tech Fest. This global conference is expanding into North America this spring at The Renaissance Washington, D.C. Downtown Hotel, April 20-22. Join the best and brightest in HR and technology to discuss this exciting convergence of people, process and tech.

An event built by HR professionals and presented by that same community of practitioners, HR Tech Fest features presentations from leading companies including Twitter, Google, Hulu, Amazon, GoDaddy and more. Learn best practices on how they successfully moved HR into a strategic role and proven cost benefits to their C-level.

Get a sneak peek into the conference content by attending this complimentary webinar with renowned HR Tech guru and conference speaker, William Tincup. Learn some of the most critical trends in HR technology today, and hear how to better position yourself to make technology purchases, optimize your own technology and impact your business.

Register for HR Tech Fest by March 18 with promo code RecruitDC and save $100 off your BOGO.   

With HR Tech Fest in April and the recruitDC Conference in May, you’re spring learning is set to hyperdrive!

Filed Under: Blog, DC Area Conferences Tagged With: Conference, employment branding, HR Tech Fest, HRTech, recruiting

Fall 2015 Speaker Preview: Celinda Appleby

October 26, 2015 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Celinda Appleby

The question I have been getting a TON lately is:  “How to do you come up with campaign/content ideas?”

The short answer, is they come to me at the weirdest times, so I keep lots of notes on my Iphone. I also read  WAY too much and follow news outlets/trends that inspire me. News and Pop Culture seem to bring the most inspiration when I am planning my employer branding/recruitment marketing campaigns.

I know my answer stinks! So I thought I would break this down for you.

Let’s start with the hardest part in campaign creation – Content curation!

If you are just starting out or maybe lacking content at your fingertips, this can be the most challenging portion.  Being new to Oracle, I found content identification to be my Achilles heel very early on. I am of the mindset of using people to tell your story.  I believe that in recruiting, as a job seeker you want to identify with the people behind the brand or even behind the product/service. When I started this employer brand journey, our content was very stagnant. We were using a lot of stock photography and wordy posts using infographics to sell a job or an event. I found us to be broadcasting all the time and not adding value to the community we had cultivated over the years. For example, I couldn’t find any posts that shared employee stories. Or what I could expect when I started working for them. I quickly started making friends and pitching my vision to anyone that would listen, but lucky for you there are many other ways to curate content.

Relationships Matter:

My personal favorite and naturally super easy for me is personal outreach. I get crazy ideas and more often than I like, we don’t have the content just laying around. Thankfully, I have made some great friends here that totally appease my requests. (HUGE thanks to all my “guinea pigs – you mean the world to me!) Usually my idea comes through via email, with very garbled writing and lots of demands followed with emojis. Having made these relationships, my “models” are willing to cut me slack on the request and trust that their best interest is at heart.  That is invaluable and something that I recommend everyone doing. Nothing stings more than hearing, no I am not participating in your crazy idea. 

Company Hashtags:

A lot of our content is employee generated; depending on the visual we will either retweet them or ask them if we can use the picture on our channels. Sometimes we get so excited, we do both. 

 

One of the easiest ways to find this content, if they are not tagging you on the post is to research hashtags. Being a Sourcer, by trade, I love hunting content down. It keeps my brain active, but it can be time consuming to peruse all the channels one by one. I LOVE Tagboard! This site allows you to curate content across multiple media channels researching one hashtag.  You can also use your social media scheduling tool (like Oracle Social, Hootsuite or TweetDeck) to create hashtag streams, that you can “watch” for content.

I love to remind our employees to use the hashtags any chance I get. 

Newsletters:

We also send out a weekly newsletter to our entire Recruiting organization with customizable and socially sharable content. In this email, I take the time to put out a request for content. Our Recruiters are interfacing with employees, hiring managers and new hires ALL the time.  In my opinion they are the pulse to our content strategy and it feels natural to lean on them.  I love having this platform as a FREE way to give the recruiting teams something they can use and also have the opportunity to shamelessly ask for help.

Campaign/Content ideas:

While I can’t brain dump (wish I could) exactly what goes through my mind; I figured showcasing some recent and active campaigns would be most helpful.

 Following trending topics:

I love keeping an eye out on topics that are trending on the internet and all social media sites. I love figuring out how our mission of attracting top talent can align to the trends. And like most of you, I do not always have imagery available that matches the story I want to tell. So it can be an idea that never comes to life or one that takes longer than the trend is alive. Below you will find several that are performing quite well across multiple channels.

#WellnessWednesday

This hashtag and trending topic, aligns well with one of our core values:  “Healthy body – Healthy mind”. 

 We didn’t have content available to go, but were able to curate content quite easily for this campaign, thanks to our Recruiting partners.

 

#ILookLikeanEngineer

I came across a blog post from an Engineer in the Bay Area and I immediately felt compelled to share our story.  In less than 8 hours, we found 9 amazing Engineers across 4 regions that submitted their photos. I added it to a collage maker and shared it. 

 

#MotivationMonday

This idea came from the fact, that who can provide the best advice and motivation to our target audiences? Our resident career experts! Posting our tips leveraging a popular hashtag has really helped generate engagement. The Recruiter shared that the campaign in less than 72 hours gained him more than just internet popularity – he actually connected with qualified candidates.

This post can’t begin to articulate all of the work that goes on behind the scenes. However, I am hoping that being able to see real examples of content that are currently running on our channels and performing well, will share some insights into the content engine that is constantly running in my brain.

I have been sharing these very same ideas with my team and they seem to find value in them as they grow their social media content pool.  I know I am somewhat of the elephant in the room, as I have a team that can help bring my ideas to life! But everything I have shared today, can be done very easily using FREE tools, if you have the creativity and time.  Pulling content together should feel like a fun task, vs. going to the dentist. Leveraging real stories and pooling your resources should help with that. 

If you want more inspiration; please follow our employer brand journey! Instagram, Facebook, Twitter

Celinda Appleby is a “wanna be” blogger that is passionate about sourcing, social recruiting and employer branding. She previously held recruiting roles within corporate and agency enterprises. Celinda has over 12 years of recruiting and human resources experience across a broad range of industries including technology, accounting, marketing and government sector. Feel free to connect with Celinda on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

Filed Under: recruitDC Conference, recruitDC Events Tagged With: celinda appleby, culture, employment branding, Instagram, Twitter

To Find the Right Candidates, Take a Different Approach

June 1, 2015 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

Thomas Handcock, Practice Leader, CEB

Most companies that are hiring for sales or customer service roles tend to do so at large volume, attracting thousands of applicants. Yet, despite the multitude of applicants, CEB data show that 72 percent are of average quality at best.

The reason why? Candidates today are far less picky in the early stages of a job search than they were in the past. A quarter of them apply, often online, to at least 10 companies, even applying for jobs they know they have little chance of getting.

At the same time, recruiters have limited time to reduce a long list of applicants to a select few to interview. So it’s no surprise that one in five new hires are regretted, or that 65 percent of hiring managers aren’t satisfied with the work of their recruiter.

The problem is clear. Despite the volume of applicants and the short deadlines, it’s still critically important that the right person is hired for these types of roles – especially as most of them involve direct contact with customers – and recruiters are struggling to deliver.

What should recruiters do?

75 percent of recruitment and HR teams think promoting their company as a “great place to work” will help solve this problem. However, the approach of mass “branding for appeal” only attracts more mediocre candidates. Those candidates only continue to slow down overworked recruitment teams and force them to dismiss more candidates.

Even more importantly, many candidates, and notably the ones companies really want to attract, don’t pay attention to this type of branding. This is because companies are not applicants’ only source of information when they are looking for jobs. In fact, 80 percent of the information that candidates learn about employers comes from sources outside a recruiting department’s control, for example, sites like Glassdoor. And there’s an easy answer as to why – nearly two-thirds of them say they are skeptical about what employers say about themselves, so they find the information they want to know elsewhere.

To win the war for talent, recruiters need to shift their strategy to help candidates decide whether the organization is the right fit for them and if they have the qualities the company is looking for. Rather than branding for appeal, they need to “brand for influence,” and be a consultative partner to candidates.

This shift to branding for influence yields much better results. In fact, this type of strategy results in a 54 percent increase in quality of applicant pools, five percent more high-performing new hires, and a 23 percent decrease in new hire turnover.

How can my organization brand for influence?

  1. Focus branding on critical talent: Instead of branding across a wide range of talent segments, focus your resources on the talent that you really need now and in the future. Make sure you understand what is important to these people and tailor messages accordingly.

  2. Challenge and tell, don’t sell: Think of yourself as a consultant to applicants. Challenge their ideas about your organization and the kind of role they think you offer. Offer realistic previews of the role and the firm’s culture to help them truly understand the culture and what it’s like to work for your organization.

  3. Build a network of brand influencers: Focus on improving the way you manage relationships with the people that influence candidates. These “brand ambassadors,” whether they’re from inside or outside of the company, can have a significant impact on the quality of the applicant pool.

When done properly, a branding for influence approach means better people are hired at lower cost. But not only that, the higher quality of hire that can be realized by this type of approach yields new hires that are higher performers and turn over at a lower rate. And these results don’t come at a high price tag – just about a three percent increase in employment branding costs. Even if your organization doesn’t have the funding to devote additional spend to branding for influence, adopting the strategies suggested above can still go a long way toward improving the quality of the applicant pool and, ultimately, the quality of hire – even in high-volume service roles.

Thomas Handcock is a Practice Leader in CEB’s HR practice. You can connect with him by visiting his LinkedIn profile

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: CEB, employment branding, HR, recruiting

Brand Like A CMO – Employer Branding Training From exaqueo

May 8, 2015 by recruitdc 2 Comments

We’re always sharing opportunities for learning and development for the recruitDC community. Interested in amping up your Employer Branding efforts? exaqueo is hosting their “Brand Like A CMO” class on June 11th and 12th in Washington, DC.
If you’re a Talent Acquisition and/or Employer Brand leader, no doubt you often struggle with how to best position, partner and understand your CMO and his/her team. As Employer Brand leaders—we need our marketing colleagues as partners, whether it’s for help, support, or even access to relationships and tools. We’ll be better at our jobs too, if we understand brand the way marketers do.

In this leadership class, exclusively for Talent Acquisition and Employer Brand leaders and practitioners, participants will become CMO students. You’ll take off your HR hat, and learn marketing like CMOs do including brand equity, brand positioning and brand personality. You’ll walk away knowing how marketing really works, with a clear foundation and understanding. And you’ll return back to work with a fresh perspective — that of a marketing leader.

Already confirmed as participants to attend are employer brand leaders from the Boston Consulting Group, CEB, Marriott and more.

JOIN YOUR PEERS AND REGISTER NOW!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: employment branding, exaqueo, marketing, Susan LaMotte

The Greener Grass

February 25, 2015 by recruitdc 2 Comments

By Lori Reed
For nearly half of my life, I have worked in recruiting and shown candidates the way to greener grass. Having just returned from the proverbial “other side of the fence”, I cannot resist the temptation to find the teaching moments for myself and my community of Recruiters.

Job searching and recruiting, two pillars of the hiring process, generally start with a practical approach. Candidates and companies alike begin the process by listing facts and figures. Recruiters often make use of Boolean logic and applicant tracking systems as a first run at matching the two. At a certain point, however, the emotional component of interviewing that too many of us rely on in the form of a “gut” feeling can taint the recruiting process. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Candidate Experience, employment branding, Interviewing, MBTI, recruiting

2014 Candidate Experience Awards – Celebrating 6 DC-Area Winners!

September 24, 2014 by recruitdc Leave a Comment

By Ben Gotkin
Last week I had the privilege of attending the first ever Candidate Experience Symposium in Chicago, where the 2014 Candidate Experience Award (CandE) Winners were announced and where we heard from many of the winners themselves and HR luminaries such as Libby Sartain on what it takes to deliver a world-class candidate experience.  I was particularly proud to see six local companies named as winners this year, including Capital One, Hilton Worldwide, Lockheed Martin, SNL Financial,The Bozzuto Group and Sodexo USA.

The 2014 CandE program was bigger and better than ever with 62 winners announced, a dozen ‘Winners With Distinction’ (including Capital One, Hilton and Bozzuto), and over 95,000 candidate survey responses.  The number of candidate survey responses in 2014 was double the 2013 number, providing us with some incredibly rich data.  Up until recently, we essentially had to assume what truly defined a world-class candidate experience, and the impact of that experience upon an organization’s brand and bottom line.  The data we have now is backing up the historically anecdotal evidence with hard numbers.

We are still learning a lot, and it will be very interesting to see how the data trends year-over-year.  The 2013 survey data pointed to the candidate experience having a direct impact on brand perception, net promoter score, willingness to reengage both as a candidate and as a customer and more.  The 2014 data is just beginning to be analyzed, so keep an ear open for the release of the 2014 CandE eBook where we will all see just how the data is trending and if in fact we can continue to draw that direct correlation between the candidate experience and an organization’s recruiting and financial results.

I also encourage you to consider participating in the 2015 CandE awards program.  The program is FREE to join, it will only cost you the time and effort to complete the employer survey and, and potentially distribute a candidate survey.  You will have access to not only your survey results, but how those results compare to the aggregate.  Year-over-year participation will allow you to benchmark yourself and track the impact of process improvement efforts.  Only the winners of the award are made public, so it is possible just to complete the employee survey for benchmarking purposes if you wish to remain anonymous.  So no excuses, right?

To learn more about this year’s award winners, to access the 2013 eBook and to express interest in the 2015 survey and awards program, please visit www.thecandidateexperienceawards.org.

Ben Gotkin is the Founder & President of recruitDC, and is a Principal Consultant with Recruiting Toolbox.  You can connect with Ben on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter at @bengotkin

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Ben Gotkin, Candidate Experience, employment branding, Gerry Crispin, recruiting

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