iCIMS Hire Expectations™

As a Marketing professional at a company that produces technology for Human Resources professionals, I’m coming to realize that Marketing and HR have a lot in common. At the end of the day, we’re both selling something – Marketing is selling a product or service, while HR is selling an employment opportunity. There are certain techniques that are revolutionizing the field of Marketing, and I believe that HR can embrace some of these tools to gain an advantage when it comes to recruiting.

To begin, let’s take a look at the foundation of marketing: the marketing mix, also known as the 4 Ps.

1.Product: An item that satisfies a consumer want or need; either a good or service.
2.Price: The amount the consumer pays for the product.
3.Promotion: The methods of communication used to provide information about the    product.
4.Place: The distribution channels through which the product is provided for    consumers to access.

Now let’s translate this to HR:

1.Product (Opportunity): The position, culture, and employment brand you offer to    candidates.
2.Price (Value): The compensation package you’re extending to the right candidate.
3.Promotion (Communication): The communication you use to recruit and source    candidates.
4.Place (Recruitment Channel): The channels through which you broadcast your    opportunities.

Cover the Basics with Product & Price

You may not have an abundance of control over your “product” and your “price,” since the job descriptions and salaries will be dictated in large part by Hiring Managers and budgets. However, you do have control over your company culture, your employment brand, and some of the peripheral benefits of working at your organization (the “perks” of the job – game rooms, free food, etc.).

Build a strong company culture predicated upon shared values and a strong mission, and clearly articulate it to potential candidates on your corporate career site and social media accounts. Take advantage of images and video to brand these properties, and give candidates a glimpse inside your organization. Show candidates what it’s like to work for your company, and how they’d fit in.

Stand out from the Crowd with Promotion & Place

Marketing has developed a wide variety of tools to promote products. HR has adopted some of these methods, but in my opinion, they can expand upon these tactics by taking advantage of the channels and techniques that are currently revolutionizing Marketing: social, mobile, search, and automation.

Social: By now, it should go without saying that HR should take advantage of social networks for recruitment. LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are all prime locations for finding candidates for jobs, and there are tools available that make it easy to get the word out about your opportunities. Make sure your job postings are social-optimized to allow for easy sharing, and make it easy for candidates to follow you and receive updates from your company.

Mobile: It’s estimated that by 2015 more people will access the internet via a mobile device than via a desktop computer. It’s important to mobile-optimize your career site to provide a seamless experience for job-seekers searching on mobile devices. Make it easy for candidates to find relevant jobs, regardless of how they’re accessing your career site.

Search: There is so much information out there; it’s hard to make sense of it all. Do your candidates a favor, and make it easy for them to find your opportunities. Search engines index millions of pages of job-related data, so you need to make sure your candidates can find your jobs easily. Make sure your jobs and career sites are search engine optimized so they show up on page one search results, allowing candidates to come straight to your career site (thus cutting out the job board middleman).

Automation: Nurture your candidates through automated communication campaigns that target them when the time is right. If you’re using a robust sourcing solution, you can build Talent Pools that you can enter directly into “drip” email campaigns that use logic to send communications at a determined interval. You can also set logic to send communications to certain pools when a relevant opportunity opens up.

As far as I’m concerned, there are basically two ways to prepare for a summer BBQ.

The first method is to prepare for the party by breezing through a giant discount warehouse, where you can get everything from outdoor furniture to food and decorations. The store is large, industrial, and devoid of personality, but it allows you to get the job done quickly. The store sells larger portions than your guests will ever consume and your options are limited, so you can take them or leave them. If you need assistance, you’re on your own, since the staff consists of cashiers and shelf stockers with no expertise on any of the myriad products. You’ll buy some low-grade burger patties that aren’t very fresh, along with some frozen items and trays of pre-made food, but you figure the kids won’t notice and the adults will tolerate whatever you serve them. When this is all over, you’ll store the leftover 274 burgers in your freezer and forget about them until you start planning next year’s event.

The second method is to prepare for your party by navigating your way through a half dozen specialty stores that have the freshest ingredients in town. You head first to the local butcher shop – a small storefront with a lot of character, where the expert storeowner waits on you and knows you by name. The store has a large selection of high-quality meats you didn’t even know existed, and the storeowner carefully explains each item and painstakingly prepares your order to your exact specifications. You make the decision to cut back on some non-necessities so you don’t have to scrimp on your primary course. You buy only what you need and won’t have much, if anything, leftover. You make each item from your own recipes, never using pre-packaged items or stale ingredients. The kids don’t pay much attention to your gastronomical feats, but the adults all become loyal patrons of the local butcher, and will never miss another event you host.

These summer barbecues are just like your options in the world of HR software. Would you prefer to stock up for your party at the large, impersonal, generalist store, or the small, personalized, expert shop? I’d take the latter any day of the week!

This is the difference between a best of breed technology and a large ERP or HCM platform. Would it be convenient for me to get easy-to-use, configurable, high-quality technology for each stage of the HR lifecycle from one vendor? Absolutely. Can I realistically do that right now? Unfortunately not. While the vision of a one-stop-shop that produces superior products in every category is a valid and excellent goal, HR technology just isn’t there right now. Technology providers need to focus on adapting to the changes occurring in the industry, and a specialist shop can adapt more quickly and effectively than a behemoth generalist. Moreover, a specialist provider can provide expertise and personalized service that will create a positive experience for you and your team.

If you’re looking to get everything in one place and aren’t too concerned with the quality of the product or the level of service you’ll receive, an HCM platform will do just fine. But if you’re looking for high-quality, cutting-edge technology and a superior customer experience, a best of breed provider is the only choice for your HR technology needs!

It's 2012, and the corporate landscape is a lot different than it was 20 years ago.

The media has undergone fundamental changes, and the way companies engage with customers has evolved. Social media has revolutionized the way people experience and engage with brands. More importantly, it’s changed what people expect from brands. It’s no longer enough for companies to simply push their goods. People want to learn, share, experience something novel, and form relationships. And they want to do all of this quickly, easily, and intuitively.

At the same time, our understanding of human decision making and buyer behavior has evolved, thanks in large part to the work of behavioral economists. It’s not enough to produce a high-quality, affordable product. Focusing strictly on quality and value is unreliable, and largely irrelevant, these days. Someone else will sell whatever it is that you’re selling, and they’ll do it better, or more affordably. Further, if people only bought the cheapest or highest-quality products available, 99% of us would be out of business. My point is that people don’t always make decisions logically; instead, decisions are heavily influenced by social and cultural factors.

It seems that while behavioral economics and social media emerged and evolved independently, they both lead us to the same conclusion: it’s all about the experience you can provide your customers. If you stick to traditional (push) methods, you will fall behind. No one will trust you, you won’t stand out from your competitors, and you won’t grow. To stand out nowadays, you need to build an emotional connection, tell a story, and deliver an experience that taps into the needs and desires of your audience.

The same holds true for HR. Your market consists of your candidates and employees. Offering a competitive salary and an interesting job description is no longer enough to make you stand out. Top talent has tons of options, and can find similar job requirements and salaries at plenty of companies. So what makes them apply to yours? What makes them choose your company once they’re offered a job? And what makes them stay at your company once they’ve accepted a job? It comes down to the experience you can offer your candidates and employees.

Build a strong employment brand

Make it easy for people to find you and quickly understand who you are on social networks and your company’s website and career page. Tell a story. Tell people what makes you different. Use your company’s logo, colors, and other branding. Take advantage of video. People are particularly responsive to faces, so show pictures and video of your current employees. Talk about company events and achievements. Interact with potential candidates. Answer their questions. Make sure your candidate experience is pleasant – after all, if you don’t value them as a candidate, you won’t value them as an employee.

Additionally, make sure you stand for something. A strong mission statement and clear values should not be underestimated.  If it’s engaging enough, it might even gain you recognition – take, for example, the Holstee Manifesto, which has been shared online over 500,000 times and viewed 60 million times. That’s right – a mission statement was viewed 60 million times. I’ll admit, reading it made me want to work for them – simply because I was inspired by what they stand for.

Foster a Positive Company Culture

Differentiate yourself. Build a strong company culture that people want to be a part of. Your employees will perform better if you can make work a pleasant experience that they look forward to.

Make sure your employees feel valued – or better yet, make sure your employees ARE valued – from their very first day on the job. Nurture your new hires. They want to know what it will be like to work for your company. They want to know who they’ll be working with. They want to know what the office looks like. (Shameless iCIMS plug: An Onboarding portal is a great tool for giving new hires a glimpse into your company culture and allowing them to get the headaches of HR paperwork out of the way before their first day on the job.)

Once they’re up and running, give your employees what they need to grow. Help them learn. Guide them. Be accessible. Social media has led millennials particularly to expect transparency, openness, and collaboration. Reward them for their successes, and help them learn from their mistakes. Be patient. Acknowledge their hard work. Provide incentives to motivate them. Help them to feel connected to your company’s goals and mission. Help them see how their work impacts those goals. The more connected and valued they feel, the more likely they are to thrive, grow, and stay at your company.

In the world of Human Resources, the best employment brand and company culture will win the hearts – and therefore, the minds – of top talent. Provide a positive, motivating, engaging experience, and you’ll see your quality of hire and retention rates soar!

Recommended Reading:

http://danariely.com/tag/behavioral-economics-2/

http://nudges.org/2011/10/09/where-is-behavioral-economics-headed-in-the-marketing-worlding/

http://www.hrexaminer.com/employment-branding-elephant

Well, recruiters, recent reports show jobless claims are at a six month low, while job growth is short of estimates. With fewer new positions and fewer new hires, it’s time to focus on developing and retaining the top talent you’ve already got.

Previous surveys have shown that 60% of employees plan to leave their jobs when the market gets better. This may not concern you in light of lagging job growth, but think about this: 25% of employer-identified, high-potential employees plan to leave their current companies within the year. If you want to keep these top performers, you need to focus on engagement strategies.

Engagement isn’t just a warm and fuzzy theory. Engagement is a series of strategic actions that produce real, tangible financial results for businesses. Engaged employees are better for the bottom line; they outperform disengaged employees by 20-28%. In one study, companies with engaged employees showed a 19% increase in operating income over a 12-month period, compared to a 33% decrease in organizations with disengaged employees. In fact, the cost of disengagement to U.S. employers is estimated to be as much as $350 billion per year.

So how do you create a culture of engagement? Here are a few tips:

1. Make a strong first impression. Effective onboarding and coaching of new hires allows your employees to get started on the right track, and it has a tremendous impact on morale. The best onboarding programs allow new hires to assimilate into the culture through a combination of training and mentoring. iCIMS’ executives actually sit down and talk with each new hire class. This might not be realistic for larger companies, but the gesture is not lost on our new hires.
2. Continue the dialogue and help them grow. Allow for two-way feedback and stay invested in your employees’ development, so they never become bored or complacent. Keep them challenged by offering opportunities for growth and training. Provide clear career development opportunities and conduct frequent career conversations to determine how their goals are evolving.
3. Reward exemplary performance. Implement competitive compensation and benefits. If you’re not sure what a competitive salary for a certain position is, utilize a service such as Payscale. You should also consider implementing merit-based pay raises and award programs to keep employees motivated. But compensation doesn’t just have to be monetary in nature; a little recognition can go a long way, too. You should make sure your employees are shown appreciation for their accomplishments, and that they understand their role in the company’s success. Recognition should be given quickly and often. The once-a-year performance review is becoming a thing of the past; many would argue that the future is in more frequent or social performance reviews.
4. Foster connectivity among employees. Allow for cross-departmental collaboration that will lead to inspiration and deeper involvement with the organization and its goals. The more invested employees are in your company’s initiatives and the more involved they are in the successes across departments, the more satisfied they will be. iCIMS has implemented a program called iLead, which has been an effective way for our employees to develop leadership and project management skills while working across departments. An iLead is a high visibility, cross-departmental initiative, and the application process is competitive. The skills developed through participation in these initiatives have proven to be invaluable.
5. Provide leadership that inspires trust. This is particularly important at the executive level. Executives should provide a clear vision and frequent, thorough communication. They must be consistent and transparent. Large group meetings are a great way for executives to boost morale and give employees insight and awareness of company strategy. Additionally, company leaders should allow decisions to be made at the lowest level possible, so employees at all levels are invested in the company’s initiatives. The more informed, involved, and empowered your employees feel, the more likely they’ll be to stay motivated and satisfied with your company.

As difficult as it may be to discover new talent, the real challenge is retaining the talent you already have in your organization. With a deliberate, active culture of engagement in place, you’ll be sure to keep more of your top talent!