Mike Moore on Employment Branding
- Author: Cathy Card
- Posted: May 16, 2008
- Category: Employment Branding
- Tags: Center of Excellence, Employment Branding
- Comments: 0
Mike Moore, CEO of RCI Recruitment Solutions, speaks about Employment Branding, the third of eight steps to achieving recruitment success.
To view more of our videos, visit RecruitmentSolutions on YouTube.
Eight Steps to Recruitment Success
- Author: Kyle Callahan
- Posted: January 17, 2008
- Category: Sourcing Strategies, Workforce Planning, Screening and Assessment, Recruitment Solutions, Profiling, Employment Branding
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
Mike Moore, CEO of RCI Recruitment Solutions, talks about the eight steps to recruitment success.
For more information on how your organization can better implement any or all of these eight steps, contact us today.
It’s Time to Kill the Diversity Ad
- Author: Eric Peterson
- Posted: October 18, 2007
- Category: Sourcing Strategies, Employment Branding
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 4
Having served as the Creative Director for RCI Recruitment Solutions since 1991, the five words I have come to dread most are “We need a diversity ad.” I have nothing against diversity, mind you; to the contrary, I acknowledge the strength that an inclusive organization gains by filling its corridors with people of various backgrounds, experience and perspectives. And let’s not forget that equal opportunity is the law. But what bothers me is how companies approach the opportunity to address a minority audience.
For one, a company seeking a diversity ad will often insist that the headline screams “DIVERSITY!”; for example, “From diversity comes strength.” But as I mentioned above, it’s unlawful to discriminate during the hiring process, so a headline that screams diversity doesn’t do anything but tell the audience that your organization is a law-abiding equal opportunity employer. Does that support your employer brand? It boggles my mind that companies would invest hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to uncover and develop just the right employer brand, only to run from it in a diversity campaign. Diversity may very well be an important pillar of your employer brand, but is it the heart of your employer brand? If it is, then I suggest you’re not showing how your organization differs from the millions of other law-abiding employers.
Also, when a company requests a visual representation in their diversity ad, I typically get one of two edicts handed to me. It’s either, “Give me a photo showing a group of people from every imaginable race, gender, height, weight and shoe size,” or “We’re placing the ad in Black EOE Journal. I want a photo of a black person.” The first edict is, in my opinion, a surefire way to water down the impact of any ad. In this day and age, it’s all about me, not all about us. As the old advertising adage goes: When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.
The second edict sticks further in my craw. Does including a photo of a black person (to follow the example) make the black audience feel more comfortable? Let’s face it: When it comes time for the interview, the candidate is going to find out real quick whether your organization is diverse. Will he or she see a company that is not all black, not all white, and not all Asian? Hopefully, what the candidate will see is simply the best darn people for the job. If a black candidate can’t get past the fact that a Hispanic woman is featured in your ad, then how well is she/he going assimilate into your (hopefully) diverse environment?
A diversity ad cannot be about patronization. Organizational diversity isn’t something that can be claimed in an ad. It must be demonstrated through experience and promoted through reputation. A company needs to have faith in the competitive advantages of its employment offering and be confident that those advantages transcend race, gender, height, weight and shoe size.
What organizations need to understand is that diversity campaigns are not about the types of ads they run. Diversity campaigns are, purely and simply, about media plans. You need to find a diverse audience and steadfastly communicate to them the qualities that make your organization a special place to work—not just for minorities, but for everyone who possesses the skill sets, experiences, and personal characteristics that make candidates a “right fit” for your organization.
Call me an idealist, but I believe a campaign based on a diversity-screaming headline and the race of the people in the photo only serves to prolong our obsession with the outer shell. The concept of diversity gains strength from referencing not ethnicity or gender, but a healthy variety of ideologies, perspectives and experiences. Until the day comes when companies and candidates alike can stop focusing on the outer shell, we will never truly focus on the value and relevance of the content within. We will never make Equal Opportunity Employer mean “we hire the best darn person for the job. Period.”
Your Employer Brand: The Bottom Line of Top-of-Mind
Part II
- Author: Anna Kassulke
- Posted: September 14, 2007
- Category: Employment Branding
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
[Editor’s note: In Part I, Anna explained the bottom-line reasons for developing an Employer Brand. In this conclusion, she’ll explain how to brand your company effectively.]
You already have an employer brand, though it may not be deliberately expressed by management. Those working for your organization and those who have come into contact with it have already formed a specific perception of what your company does and what it values. Your brand exists. The trick is to understand what to do with it.
To develop a strategy that will allow you to take advantage of your existing brand, you need to be rigorous in identifying your strengths and weaknesses, and describing your culture in ways that speak meaningfully to your various audiences. It is a process that demands honest appraisals and the projection of that honesty through your brand. If your branding asserts that your company promotes accessibility, it should be very rare for a manager to slam a door in a new hire’s face.
With effective employer branding, you will be more likely to set-up honest and attractive expectations for your employees, and you’ll be more capable of helping your people actually meet those expectations. This alone will have a significant effect on retention: morale will improve, productivity will increase, and your employees will speak highly of your organizations to others, increasing the quality and quantity of employee referrals.
Your employer brand exists. If you’re not aware of what it actually is, you take the risk of communicating a false, misleading brand, setting your employees and your organization up for failure. And that’s the bottom line.
Ready to get started? Then read about the specific Employment Branding services provided by RCI Recruitment Solutions. You won’t regret it.
Your Employer Brand: The Bottom Line of Top-of-Mind
- Author: Anna Kassulke
- Posted: September 10, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Employment Branding
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 15
According to recent research, employer branding may be more important for your organization than profits. It lowers recruitment costs, shortens time to fill, retains the right people, and provides your company with a long-term competitive edge. As Nicola Hunt, co-founder of Management-Issues.com, writes, “The value of companies…is more than three times the value quoted on balance sheets, and the difference is to do with the reputation, brand and emotional capital of an organization.”
The point cannot be stressed enough. “Chief executives used to be driven by marketing, sales and financial numbers,” says Simon Barrow, author of The Employer Brand, but “the past three years have seen them realize that the attraction, retention and motivation of their best people has become their number one determinant of performance.”
Further research shows that 49% of American workers indicate that their companies’ brand or image played an important role in their decision to apply for a job at their respective workplace.
With such results, organizations have to ask themselves if they can afford not to focus on their employer brands.
We have said this before, and we will say it again: the most important initiative any company can take, regardless of their industry, is learning how to effectively hire and retain quality employees. And this research demonstrates that branding is a key component of that fundamental initiative.
Some organizations may claim that they’ve never needed to develop a strategic employer brand before, but Watson Wyatt research shows that “the very same models of hiring, developing and retiring employees that worked so well over the past decades could backfire if continued into the next.”
It is time to face the facts. Your company needs to begin the strategic development of its unique employer brand and it needs to begin now. A strategically developed employer brand will not only make your job easier, but it’ll make your organization more successful in the pursuit of its mission.
In Part 2, I’ll explain how you can begin the process of effectively branding your company, but if you don’t want to wait, feel free to explore the Employment Branding services provided by RCI Recruitment Solutions.
Online Recruiting: One Step Back…
- Author: Anna Kassulke
- Posted: August 13, 2007
- Category: Sourcing Strategies, Employment Branding
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
Hopes, Dreams and Realities of Sourcing on the Internet: Part One
When the World Wide Web first became part of our lives, it appeared to be a godsend for HR and recruiters alike. It felt like the most time-effective place to advertise open positions, because it is relatively cheap and generates a fast response. Today, most of us continue to gamble on the assumption that within 10-15 seconds of posting a position online, a resume - or even resumes - will appear in our inbox. We believe we’ll beat the odds that the right candidates, out of the 4,000,000 people in the US who look for work online every day, will be drawn to us like magnets. But is it a good strategy to go the web with postings if you get inundated with responses from unqualified or uninterested people, or people hundreds of miles away?
Perhaps you post on your organization’s website. In 2001, an estimated 9 out of every 10 companies in the US had a career section on their website, 80% of those advertised open positions, and 70% accepted online applications and resumes. We would wager that many of them found that limited traffic actually made it to the site, and that of the people who did apply online through the site, many were unqualified.
Many organizations have also turned to job boards. Which one do you post on? According to our research, there is strong brand loyalty, with most people only using one site - among the most popular are Monster.com and Careerbuilder. But we need to remind ourselves when we make use of a job board: there is no single site that lists every job posting, nor one that lists every resume. There are thousands of niche sites that are specific to geographical location, skill sets, job titles, salary ranges, and ethnic groups. In 2003, it was estimated that 60% of all resumes on the net were posted on niche sites.
Talent Management or Brand Management?
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: June 13, 2007
- Category: Talent Management, Employment Branding
- Tags: Employee Engagement, Employee Retention, Employment Branding
- Comments: 3
From The Impassioned Workforce…
In my professional capacity I operate in the field of Marketing and Business Development, helping the organisation establish and grow its brand presence and convert prospects to advocates. Why then, some might ask, am I speaking/writing about employee engagement, recruitment and retention issues and other such stuff? Surely these are HR topics and belong to the realm of human capital experts? But not so. These topics are critical to everyone wishing for the success and longevity of an organisation, and with brand equity increasingly becoming the domain of the CEO, it is vital that everyone plays a part in creating and sustaining an impassioned workforce.
Job Branding: Getting Beyond Blah
- Author: Anna Kassulke
- Posted: June 5, 2007
- Category: Recruitment Communications, Employment Branding
- Tags: Employment Branding, Profiling
- Comments: 0
Completing a two part series:
In Beyond Ads, Postings and Job Descriptions we started by suggesting that employer branding is at the core of all recruitment communications with a call to action for realistic, accurate branding that will give your organization an edge when it comes to attracting the right talent for your organization. Building on that then…
Employer branding communication travels along three conduits: one, from management to all employees; two, from employees to their informal networks; and three from the organization to the outside world (including the talent it seeks to attract).
Your employment branding travels along each of these communication pipelines, so the messages that reflect job branding at a tactical level must be crystal clear.
Management must speak honestly to its employees, who will in turn speak honestly to people they know. Your branding should be honest and fresh, and appeal to the right people outside. Honesty is critical, as critical as the communication itself.
Just how honed are your branding and communication strategies? If you have uncovered your employer brand, then it is up to you to ensure that it is disseminated internally and externally so that your organization is the first on everyone’s lips as an employer of choice.
How? Break out of the traditional molds.
Job Branding: Beyond Ads, Postings and Job Descriptions
- Author: Anna Kassulke
- Posted: June 4, 2007
- Category: Recruitment Communications, Employment Branding
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
Part one in a two part series:
Employer branding does not stop with identifying your organization’s DNA. It marks the beginning of an ongoing communication process, with employees and potential employees.
A recent survey of 600 employees found that an organization’s reputation as an employer is important in a candidate’s decision to work for them in 9 out of 10 cases.
- 86 percent would not work for an organization with a bad reputation, even if they offered more financial incentives than one with a good reputation.
- 61 percent said they would not work for a company whose vision, values and culture did not match theirs.
- 23 percent said they would resign if the organization did not stick to its culture or branding
- To sustain an organization’s culture and branding with existing constituents, communication, professional development, employee involvement, management style and a consistent image demand continual vigilance.
This research clearly shows that clear, honest communication with all employees is vital, and yet many organizations neglect this.
UK-based Personnel Today surveyed people who drove the recruitment processes in their organizations. 95% of them believed that branding is important, and 80% said that it will become more so. And yet less than a quarter of them were given the responsibility of employer branding. Nowadays it is critical that HR is viewed as a strategic partner; it should be responsible for branding, as branding heavily impacts the bottom line.
It is time to act now, because realistic, accurate branding will give your company the edge when it comes to hooking and keeping the right talent for your organization. Let’s assume you’ve done your employer branding; now is the time to implement it and measure the results.
Tick…tick…boom(ers)
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: May 25, 2007
- Category: Recruitment Communications, Employment Branding
- Tags: Recruitment Communications, USNews & World Report
- Comments: 0
In this article Planning for Tomorrow Today the issue of aging boomers in the workforce – specifically the healthcare industry – is detailed. One quote stands out:
“A recent report by the U.S. Government Accounting Office shows that most employers have taken little action to prepare for the demographic transition that will come when their baby boom employees retire.”
As detailed in previous posts here and here, the hiring of qualified healthcare professionals can be a daunting task – even for the most seasoned HR professionals. Add to that the fact that many of the nations’ soon-to-retire boomers are in the healthcare field, and the task becomes even more difficult.
As stated in the article, U.S.News & World Report’s America’s Best Hospitals ranked NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital should be considered as a model of an organization that has the tools in place to survive in an ever-tightening job market. What is your organization doing to ensure a fully-staffed future? Here’s an idea…
It’s important to look beyond immediate staffing needs and focus on long-term recruitment and retention strategies; and by utilizing effective employer branding, you will create a strategy that works both now and in the future.
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