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 8th installment in the weekly series featuring brand leaders from across multiple industries, host Doug Hall was joined by Mary Sellaro, Talent Branding & Event Specialist from CarGurus, and Corey Twitty, Head of University Recruiting and Programs for Lyft. The guests led a discussion about the current state of university recruiting, and how the necessary trend for more remote working (and hiring) means EB leaders need to focus on other virtual avenues of college-age talent recruitment including the use of varied video platforms and new social media channels, Also discussed was how Lyft decided to go ahead with their 2020 internships.
Twitty, still new to his role at Lyft having been hired pre-COVID, says he has been “in the trenches with his team, not having met any of them in person” since the crisis hit. Experiences like Twitty’s are becoming less and less rare as companies being to adapt to whatever this New Normal is going to be.
Since the topic of conversation for this episode was how to engage university recruits at the moment and in this new era going forward, Twitty explained that Lyft’s internship program was continuing, despite some initial misgivings.
“Do we cancel our internships? Do we not? We modeled out different scenarios for good, better and best,” says Twitty. “Given that we have lots of employee employment brand folks on this call, we took a hard look at what are some of the ramifications in short term and long-term effects of canceling an internship program and what that does to your brand.”
“We kept our program, but we did have to some substantial changes, but at the end of the day we felt it was best to keep going,” Twitty added. “The program is a great accelerator for diversity, with about 70% our of class identifying with a historically marginalized group. And it’s a pipeline for future talent.”
“I think everything is going to change,” said Sellaro. “Who knows when we’ll actually be able to get back onto a campus again for recruiting? It’ll be different for each state. And I think people are starting to value the remote way, that remote virtual lifestyle, especially for the next generation that’s coming up. It’s easy for them to engage with a seminar by signing onto a laptop.”
Other key points made during the talk:
- Get creative with resources. Creativity loves constraints, and the current recruitment scenario is nothing if not constrained.
- Research what is going on in your community. Make sure you know how to best engage with the audience that you’re trying to recruit for.
- Dynamics are changing, and that can mean great opportunities for new ideas.
- The Covid-19 pandemic has had the effect of highlighting various company leaders in public in both good and bad ways.
- The time is right to begin showcasing some excitement for the future, post-lockdown world.
- There’s such a thing as “Zoom exhaustion.” This would be true of any platform being used to suddenly across-the-board. So vary it up for your employees in any way you can.
- Lyft is facilitating “Lyft families,” which splits their entire class of interns into smaller “family groups” of 8 or 10 that are easier to map and match people into. It also makes the perfect number for team events requiring teams.
- Make sure employer brand messaging is coming directly from leadership at the top. Otherwise, it will feel inauthentic. That sort of decisive leadership is craved now more than ever.
- Take time out to celebrate small victories right now. Small actions taken now during times of hardship and worry with be magnified tenfold in more optimistic times.
- Social media is still the most impactful place to communicate employment brand messages. Companies have been experimenting with a number of different platforms as well because the social media landscape has changed rapidly over the last few years LinkedIn will always be important, but other platforms are becoming nearly as relevant for job seekers.
