Employment Brand Live! – is a weekly gathering of employment brand leaders who get together to share ideas & best practices, and discuss current events impacting the market. For the latest in the weekly series featuring brand leaders from across multiple industries, host Doug Hall was joined by Ashley Cheretes, Head of Recruitment Marketing and Branding for Cigna, and Miki Johnson, Cofounder of Job Portraits.
“I’m just going to be honest and say I’m tired of talking about COVID,” says Cheretes. “But I will use it as an example because I think that it’s important that we show how we can be flexible during these situations.”
The session was pressure-packed with information about up-to-the-minute trends in candidate engagement and content for applicants and hires.
“I think one of the things that we’re really seeing right now is that we since COVID has happened, we’re also already seeing a real shift towards thinking about how content can build community and belonging and a sense of security and team within the company,” Johnson said.
Among the main points raised during this week’s discussion:
Employee generated content is highly valuable already, and is only going to become even more important.
Knowing your audience is of utmost importance. There’s a big difference between people who already know about your company and employer brand, and those who are coming in with less information on who you are. You can’t assume that passive talent knows who you are, so your approach has to be fundamentally different. This means you’ll have to think about making different content available for both types of talent. “And that’s really the punch line here,” remarked Cheretes.
Make sure you’re getting the most out of your ATS and other recruitment channels before branching into new ones.
Candidates are very thankful when they can find all the information they need about your company and the job in question in one place. They will not automatically find themselves drawn to whichever pieces of content you are hoping they will, so make it easy for them. This means experiences of similar candidates, details about company leadership, and information about company products.
The better you are at preparing your candidates, the more likely you are to overcome biases in the system, including favoring those who come into the experience with the specific information they need to succeed during your hiring process.
Have a standard hashtag for information regarding your employer brand. Click that hashtag in social media and it creates a kind of storyboard for curious job seekers about what it is like to work for your company.
Consider giving every job candidate you interview your cell phone number. Let them know you’re available as a resource to them whether they get the position they’re interviewing for or not. Candidates will light up at the offer.
Candidate touchpoints can include a wide array of things, from reading a job description to reading a LinkedIn post to the actual interview itself. Whatever it is, you want them to walk away from the process thinking, “That’s a company I want to work for.”
While the idea of free content is enticing, remember that nothing is actually free in terms of both money and time. If you’re going to try to create a stirring piece of employer brand content, don’t bother unless you can give it the time it requires to develop into a substantial and compelling piece of content. You have to create something very special in order to break through the enormous amount of content that is out there for job seekers.
With things being how they are in the world right now, there will be certain new employees who never meet you in person or visit the office before being hired. This will be as strange to many as the idea of an Uber might have been when it was first floated. Have content in place around a strong enough vision of your company that job candidates will feel like they know what it’s like to work for your company before they meet anyone.
Know which sources are driving traffic to your job postings. Use Google Analytics to identify which channels you should be investing in or just where your specific audience is located.
Conduct regular editorial content meetings. Make sure everyone is using the same messaging and knows which platforms are being focused on.
There needs to be consistency between consumer brand and employer brand. It’s important for these two segments to be in some kind of harmony. This will be easier for certain companies than for others.
Make sure the marketing department doesn’t feel threatened by any inroads recruitment marketing has carved into their territory. Let them know you’re not trying to take anything away from what their department is doing.
