Attract Quality Candidates by Thinking Like a Product Marketer
Talented people are bombarded with opportunities. So many that yours could easily be lost in the crowd. There’s a simple way to make your opportunities stand out — package your jobs as if you’re marketing a product. I was reminded of this method when I was in the tea aisle of Whole Foods Market.
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How Design Thinking Might Humanize Talent Acquisition
We’ve heard it all: AI will take over the world and eradicate mankind. What if we are the robots? Over the last century we certainly have been busy rationalizing the “human” out of human resources. Paradoxically, our humanity, and more specifically our ability to empathize, be creative, and solve complex problems will remain our competitive advantage for the foreseeable future.
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JCPenney is enticing workers with free vacations to New York and Miami as retail’s ‘war for talent’ heats up
JCPenney is looking for ways to stand out from the crowd as a “war for talent” hits the retail sector. On Tuesday, JCPenney hosted a nationwide hiring day where applicants were invited to come in to its stores and interview for jobs. To entice workers, it offered expensive prizes to eight lucky candidates.
Let’s talk declines! Nobody likes delivering bad news but declines don’t need to feel like the door is forever closed. ⠀
Here are five ways to decline #LikeABoss ?⠀
From the outset, treat the interview process as an exercise in relationship building. Modern talent attraction is about building real relationships with a talent community and THEN exploring if it is a match vs. treating the process as an assembly line. A well optimized process can coexist with one that feels genuine, comfortable, and human.⠀
2) Pick up the phone ☎️
If someone has taken the time to interview with you, close the loop in a human way. This is not the time for an ATS autoresponder or worse, radio silence??. ⠀
3) Make it personal and human
Come from a place of empathy and genuinely thank them for getting to know your company. Share the decision but recognize what you gained from the interaction (“We loved learning about …”). In doing so, hopefully they too will reflect upon the opportunity as a learning experience. It’s not the outcome they had hoped for, but a positive interaction and experience nonetheless. ⠀
4) Learn about their experience
Take time to understand their candidate journey. This is a great way to learn how to optimize the candidate experience and demonstrate that despite the outcome, your candidate matters and you care.⠀
5) Keep the welcome mat out.
Invite them to apply again and stay in touch. Transform “no” into “not at the moment”. People evolve and so do business needs. Close the process loop, not the door. ?
The golden rule applies here… treat others how you wish to be treated. Your employer brand AND consumer brand will thank you and so will your heart. ⠀
✌️, ❤️, & meaningful careers!
Really to ditch the employer brand shame and discover who you really are? We are making employer branding accessible to all! Click here.
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80% of LGBTQ workers are ready to come out at work, but only half do
Eighty percent of LGBTQ employees said they’re ready to disclose their orientation to their workplace, but only half actually have, according to a report emailed to HR Dive from the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). BCG’s fourth-edition global survey on the perceptions of LGBTQ employees also found that a third of these workers said they believe that being out at work would hurt their careers.
Need help modernizing your talent attraction practice? Hit us up.
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In holiday ‘war for talent,’ retailers offer turkey dinners and haircut deals to lure temp workers
It’s only September, but the holiday hiring frenzy is in full swing. For proof, just walk through the mall: “We’re hiring and we’d love to meet you,” signs outside Pottery Barn and Pottery Barn Kids said on a recent weekday at Tysons Corner Center, a sprawling shopping mall outside Washington.
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While the Talent Attraction community at large may be investing more than ever in their employer branding (EB) efforts, many have been tasked with building out an EB strategy on a shoestring budget.
To those who may be bootstrapping their way to the top, take a deep breath because we’ve got your back.
We have put together an action plan to help you on your EB journey.
Gain instant access to our EB on a budget video by clicking on the image below.
See you soon!
Ready to amp up your EB game? Give us a shout!
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While the Talent Attraction community at large may be investing more than ever in their employer branding (EB) efforts, many have been tasked with building out an EB strategy on a shoestring budget. To those who may be bootstrapping their way to the top, take a deep breath because we’ve got your back. We have put together an action plan to help you on your EB journey.
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Start with discovering your “why”. What attracts and retains your top talent and what is your organization’s promise to its people? This is your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). It’s also the foundation of your Employer Brand, so naturally, it’s where you want to start.
You can help discover this critical component to your people strategy by speaking with employees via interviews and focus groups. You can also use surveys to collect this information.
It’s also critical to layer upon your EVP where your organization is going over the next few years and to determine who your critical talent populations are. From there you can build talent personas to deepen your understanding of these populations and what channels they may be utilizing to consume content.
Once you are aware of your EVP, critical talent populations, and have built talent personas, it’s time to determine key messages and your visual identity. Consistency is a critical element to any brand.
Imagine walking into McDonald’s to order a Big Mac. You can easily identify its building from others due to steady use of images and colour, which is essentially its visual identity. You are aware of what McDonald’s stands for due to how they consistently communicate with their customers. You are not expecting a $50 steak and are thrilled with your Big Mac as it delivered on its promise of consistency thus further building brand trust. This is the power of consistency and how you build a brand.
Understanding who you are, consistently communicating your messages to the world, and honouring your brand throughout your employee lifecycle is critical in building brand trust.
With your EVP in hand, key messages determined, storytelling tools such as your visual identity mapped out, it’s time to share your epic story with the world.
Check out these low-cost ideas to help get you started:
Consider visual storytelling tools such as Instagram and Facebook. They are free to use and create dynamic and authentic content for your prospective talent to get to know your brand.
Keep in mind that unlike a consumer brand, many people “checking out” your profiles will not opt to follow you for fear of the ask to follow back. Many candidates wish to keep their social media profiles private but will investigate prospective employers prior to accepting a job or even applying. Round out the content available to candidates by offering them more to see and read than simply employer reviews.
Empowering employees to share your story is highly effective. Select and train employees to be “social scouts” and look for great social moments to share on the feed. These scouts may be given direct feed access or serve as “content collectors” for the curator to have final say.
Additionally, organizations looking for increased employee advocacy may want to check out our new employee advocacy app. This branded app is included in all our managed social media programs or may be purchased as a stand-alone tool. We built this branded app to help organizations empower all their employees to become social ambassadors while the company remains in full control of what is published on the feed. It’s the perfect fusion of authenticity and employee engagement meeting brand consistency and control.
Create a YouTube playlist of great office moments or archive video on Instagram or Facebook. Our view is that highly produced video may look great, but we feel credibility is stronger with informal selfie style employee led video. Give a tour of the office, capture highlights of a great event, tour the neighbourhood, etc. The opportunities are endless.
Add a blog and write about hot industry topics by highlighting the quality of the talent you have at your company. Awesome people want to work and learn from awesome people. Blog your way into brand relevance.
Not everyone is aware of SEO (search engine optimization). SEO helps search engines rank content and display the most relevant pieces to users. Great SEO means discoverability. From strong titles to keyword tags, be mindful of SEO with each and every piece of content you create.
Employer Branding on a budget is totally doable! It takes some skilling up, a whole lot of self awareness, and some major hustle but it so worth it in the end.
Looking for more help without the cost of a full-service employer branding engagement? We are excited to share with you how we are disrupting the Employer Branding agency model and making EB accessible to all! To learn more about The Employer Branding Co-Operative, our exciting program that helps organizations big and small afford an Employer Branding strategist on their team, give us a shout.
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The 4 Biggest Mistakes Companies Make in Employer Branding
At this stage, I’d wager that you’ve spent some amount of time seriously thinking about one of the two hottest topics in recruiting: artificial intelligence or employer branding. In your fear of getting left behind or as a means of solving a problem, these concepts seem to be where everyone is looking for help in surviving the ever-tightening talent market.
Looking for a range of Employer Branding solutions? We have programs to support organizations and budgets of all sizes. Hit us up here.
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The 5 Things Driving Online Applicants the Most Crazy
Half the U.S. job candidates who participated in our study this year say they have quit an online application. This is an increase of 6 percent compared to 2017. What are the causes? What challenges do candidates face? How can you increase your chances of finding the right talent?
Learn more about progressive talent attraction strategies and optimizing your candidate experience here.
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