A tangled web: Recruitment and branding

Today, consumers research the brand for every item they buy or restaurant they visit. The effort to buy a book can lead to a flurry of Amazon reviews, and no trip can be planned without consulting the millions of opinions available on TripAdvisor. So if someone is taking 20 minutes to look up reviews for lint rollers, for example, “you can be sure that if they have the opportunity to look at reviews for jobs, they’re going to do it,” said Alison Hadden, director of product marketing for Glassdoor, an online career community that holds a growing database of 6 million company reviews CEO approval ratings, salary reports and interview reviews. Hadden presented on how to build an employer brand that “attracts rockstars” at the 2014 Recruiting Trends conference outside of Washington, D.C. last Thursday. The biggest takeaway? If you don’t manage your employer brand, someone else will write the story for you. The importance of brand Sixty-nine percent of Americans, Hadden said during her presentation, would blow off a job — even if they were unemployed — with a company with a bad reputation, and 84 percent would consider leaving their current job if offered another role with a company that had an excellent reputation, according to Corporate Responsibility Magazine. Development organizations like Pact and Population Services International have recently undergone rebrandings, and nonprofit CEO Vicki Escarra recently shared Opportunity International’s rebrand effort, saying: “It required a very rigorous approach and going line item by line item through the vision, mission and values, making sure that everyone signed off on everything. We’re operating in some very diverse countries with diverse mindsets.” This was the first piece of homework that Hadden assigned to recruiters hoping to help reinvigorate their brand for candidates. “You have to be authentic as a company first,” she said. “You have to feel like the values you represent on your career page are aligned with what’s really happening at the company.” But attracting candidates doesn’t necessarily mean a massive brand overhaul. Hadden offered several quicker tips. Looking for content for to create a richer career page? Survey your new hires. Ask them: “Why did you choose us?” “We know as recruiters why we chose them,” Hadden said. “We rarely understand why they chose us.” Talent communities In a later presentation on building talent communities, Tracy Ferry, future workforce solutions lead for Deloitte, shared the story of Deloitte’s new online talent communities built for women in technology as well as veterans. “I keep calling them talent communities, but really they are talent pools,” Ferry said of the online groups, which feature “people sliders” so that members can become familiar with Deloitte employees on a particular team — women in tech within Deloitte for instance — and a slideshow of photos to portray what it looks like to work at the organization. Even if your organization can’t take on the task of creating talent communities, start a LinkedIn group for a specific pool of candidates that you think would be interested in working for you, Ferry advised. And Hadden recommended asking employees to start writing reviews on sites like Glassdoor or wherever online group your organization has a presence. Abt Associates for example, has an authentic story, said Director of Global Recruiting Karen Amatangelo-Block, who was present at the conference, but there’s always room for improvement, and asking her employees to review their experience is a good place to start. It helps, too, if a leader from the organization addresses any negative messages. Hadden referenced one example of a CEO who was so engaged in online mediums that he was responding to reviews, and people later told him that it was a large factor in their decision to join the organization. Measuring success On sites like Glassdoor, recruiters can track profile page views and compare these analytics to at least two other companies. They can also access information on the age and gender of people searching for them and other companies and job titles they've been clicking on. Deloitte is still in the infancy stages of its talent communities, but in the first week, 50 women had joined the “Women in Technology” community and 74 had joined the forum dedicated to military veterans. A few weeks later, 200 women have joined, and 380 veterans. There are links to available jobs so those in the community can apply directly, which Deloitte will be able to track. This is just one more way for “like minds to come together and make things happen,” Ferry said. Please leave a comment below, tweet @devexcareers or join the Devex LinkedIn group for recruiters.