Creating a great employment brand... Part 2

A day or 2 ago I talked about creating great employment brands. I wanted to continue this conversation because the organization I'm with is in the midst of this work. In my last conversation I stated you needed several components to create a great brand.

Components of a great employer brand:
Audience + Organizational Values + Technology = A Great Employer Brand

I also believe you need a really clear idea of what you like. For instance, I was chatting with colleagues about revamping our own employer brand and each of us had a different perspective. As a result, the expectation we had of the agency we were working with definitely varied depending on who you talked to. To work through this potential conflict we discussed the kinds of career sites each of us liked and rated each site on a continuum where we identified great sites, good sites, and sites we agreed were ones we didn't want to emulate. From that conversation there was alignment on the kinds of sites we liked and the message we wanted our site to convey. This experience has taught me that part of creating a great employment brand is aligning peoples thoughts on what they like so as a group you have a cohesive idea of what you want your brand to convey. Without this alignment, we're like hiring managers who wait for the right candidate without identifying the kinds of skills or experiences the candidate needs in order to be considered "right".

Data can be your friend... Even if you're in HR...

I attended a networking function where an organization was sharing out their recruiting practices. They discussed their organizational structure and the work their recruiters do. It's at this function I learned more about the power of data. This group utilized data to justify resources and support for initiatives. Case in point, they revamped their employer website and spent about $500K doing so. They were able to get the monies for this revamp because most of their hires come from their own career site(this organization drives about 5M visitors to their website annually). The data they'd gathered provided decision makers with the insight they needed to support this initiative. In short, I learned data not only provides decision makers the insight they need to make decisions but it also helps teams get resources they need to do their jobs successfully which in turn helps meet the broader goals of the organiztaion. As a result, our role as HR professionals is to provide data that helps drive decision making. This may sound like common sense but it's still a practice we must work at refining. So if you're reading this, remember, data is your friend, even if you're in HR, so continue to use it to gather the resources you need to achieve the goals of the organization.

Creating a great employment brand & how to get it right... The first time.....

My organization is currently revamping its employer brand and its been a truly fascinating process.  You look at great brands and you think to yourself what do I like about brand X, Y or Z.  From there, you explore how to incorporate the things you like from these brands as part of your own brand. The elements we're currently exploring are videos and widgets as a way to share out our story. Interestingly enough, I'm also learning that we have to take a step back and ask ourselves who do we want, what are these folks like, who are we as an organization, and what can we provide that sets us up as a leader where the folks we're targeting are drawn to us and think of us first as they start their job search.  Based on this experience, I've created a formula for creating a great employer brand... (ps - know this is a work in progress and is subject to change)

Audience + Organizational Values + Technology = Great Employer Brand

Part of successful recruiting means forecasting - right?!

I met with a couple of hiring managers today to forecast their staffing needs.  Interestingly enough, our conversation moved from forecasting to discussing the challenges their group was experiencing based on their current needs.  As a recruiter, our role is to find and acquire talent.  To do this effectively, recruiters need to understand the businesses they support.  Good recruiters get that an unfilled need is tough on the business, great recruiters get the impacts an unfilled position has not only on the business but on the people who support that line of business.  Today, I met with hiring managers with the intent of hammering out a forecast in 2010.  Fortunately for me they had a different intent, they actually helped me move from good to great because they provided me the perspective I needed to better understand the impacts their current staffing need has on both the patients and the employees they serve.   Based on this experience, I learned that I'm still figuring out what being great looks like and thankfully, I'm open to learning so I'm excited to know that this experience was just the tip of the iceberg.  Happy Friday!

Had to share - a great story of a candidate experience...

My sorority sister has been job searching for the past year.  Its been a rocky road for her but I've been so proud to see how well she's handled it and how great she's come out of this experience.  We've all heard of peoples' stories about how tough it is to find new roles.  I remember when Hard Rock was hiring, there was a line around the block with folks just waiting to fill out an application at 7am.....  Yup, that's what I said, 7am..

Christina, my sorority sister interviewed for a job a couple of weeks ago and recieved an offer that she's accepted, which is fantastic and she's ecstatic about the opportunity.  Her experience stands out to me because of the interactions she had with various recruiters.  She'd been searching for an inside sales job and her resume listed this experience although her resume detailed her account management expertise so most of the calls she received were focused on outside sales as a result she was definitely getting calls but not for the kind of opportunity she was targeting.  She got a call from a recruiter who shared with her that she had some great experience and he wanted to consider her for an outside sales role.  Christina politely declined and he followed up by finding out the kind of opportunity she was targeting.  She shared with him that she was targeting an inside sales role and he stated she should revise her resume to reflect this, in doing so, she'd taken his advice and low and behold a couple of weeks later she's being contacted for inside sales opportunities.

Christina is an awesome girl and the company she's going to is sooo lucky to have her.  I'm glad she crossed paths with a recruiter who had the expertise and the savvy to share with her what she needed to do, in order to get the role she wanted.  Kudos to all my fellow recruiters who take an extra minute to share information and provide constructive feedback to folks who might not even be looking for it.  Know that each and every time you do this you're helping someone who would appreciate the assistance.  As a recruiter, I know what we do is sometimes thankless, but I know day in and day out all of you do fabulous stuff so I encourage you to keep doing what your doing because everyday it makes a difference to phenomenal folks like Chrisitina.... Take care and I wish you all well!
Ann Marie   =)

Jobfairs and Technology - my how things have changed?!

I was at a job fair today recruiting rehab students and there was a rehab company that had video clips of their therapists at one of there clinics.  The clip outlined what their therapists do and the kind of treatment they provide.  It was definitely neat, particularly because they were the only company that utilized technology as a way to showcase what their folks do and what it's like to work there. 

As a recruiter, I may not have the intimate knowledge of my business units that the hiring managers do, but having something like this, to help showcase a day in the life of X would be awesome because it provides someone who is looking for a role the insight he/she might be looking for from a practitioner's point of view.  In the ideal world, you're at a job fair with folks who are part of the line of business you support.  If not, why not have a hiring manager share your company's story or what its like to work in her/his area as a back up. 

Based on my experience there today, know my next goal will be to incorporate technology as part of our job fair stuff.....  Stay tuned.... =)

Developing a sourcing philosophy...

Let's say you're interested in getting your team to source more, what do you think is key in getting them to participate in this activity?