I recently wrote a post entitled, The Future of Recruiting is Inbound inspired by the concepts of inbound marketing. I hope you’ll check out the post and let me know what you think.

What is employer branding?

The most commonly used definition of “employer branding” is Brett Minchinton’s from The Employer Brand Institute, which defines employer branding as, “the image of the organization as a ‘great place to work’ in the minds of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders).”

A company’s employer brand is made up of numerous components. Corporate Eye blog breaks these components down quite well. What’s important to realize is that the employer brand is really based on human relationships and human emotions vs. anything else. It’s those companies that think of HR as “Human Relationships” vs. “Human Resources” that are on their way to building and promoting a successful employment brand.

The components of an employer brand

Here are some things to consider with respect to your employer brand:

Two of the biggest elements of employment branding are communication and culture. People always want to feel like they “fit in” and they always want to be communicated to in an open and authentic manner. This holds true whether you’re thinking about internal employees or external job seekers and candidates.

Promoting your employer brand to the outside world

Companies have gotten better and better at promoting and managing their employment brand internally, but to the outside world they often fail to communicate effectively. This is especially true when looking at how companies reach out to and communicate with job seekers and candidates.

And companies need to move quickly on promoting a strong employment brand if they hope to stay competitive – in the job market and in their own businesses.

…a strong Employer Brand – built from honest dialogue – is an important ingredient in the ability to attract, engage and retain top talent. – Dan Stuart, Head of Strategic Initiatives, Bayt.com

Today’s Web 2.0 and social media technology make it possible for companies to easily have honest dialogue with job seekers and candidates. That’s a critical shift from years past when developing attractive and interactive career sites and recruitment micro-sites was too expensive for most companies. Technology is much more accessible and affordable, although at the same time advancing at a faster pace.

Brands and brand advertising remain important weapons in the War for the Best Talent. The memories you create among the candidates in your recruitment process, however, can be just as powerful sources of brand equity, and for many organizations they are a far more realistic goal to pursue, especially in a difficult economic environment. – Peter Weddle, CEO WEDDLE’s

Peter is making the point that implementing a memorable and positive recruitment process is key to successful recruitment. And that process is part of your employer brand.

Employment branding is a must if you believe in recruiting top talent. And if you look in-house, promoting a strong employment brand is a must to retain your best people. Both recruitment and retention are key issues that will truly differentiate the successful companies from those that fail.

Here are some great resources on employment branding:

• Why employer branding is here to stay
• 10 Employer Branding Strategies to Become the Employer of Choice
• The Candidate Experience Still Sucks, And Yes It Does Matter
• 5 Tips for Getting Started with Employment Branding
• The Top Role of Brand in Recruitment

Career sites and recruitment micro-sites

One of the most important elements of your external employer brand is your corporate career site. It serves as the hub of your recruitment efforts, where you –

• drive traffic through recruitment marketing and advertising campaigns;
• promote your corporate culture and give people an “inside peak” at your organization;
• communicate actively with job seekers and candidates; and,
• make sure job seekers and candidates are treated well.

As well, more and more companies are taking advantage of recruitment micro-sites – targeted, niche career sites directed to specific job categories or used for event-based recruitment. Recruitment micro-sites are great for targeting unique audiences – say sales people or engineers – and demonstrating the appropriate and relevant components of your company’s culture and brand.

It’s important not just to have a career site or recruitment micro-sites, but to make sure that they’re working right. Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself:

1. Is my career site well-designed? Is content easy to find? Is the site attractive looking?
2. Does the career site reflect well on my corporate brand? And does it speak to the right audience?
3. Can job seekers and candidates interact with me on the career site through social media and Web 2.0 functionality such as comments, blogging, chat, etc.?
4. Does the career site leverage new technology such as video and search engine optimization to attract the right audience of job seekers and keep them engaged?

Once you have a strong career site or recruitment micro-sites you can more effectively market and advertise jobs. Job marketing and advertising becomes an extension of your career site, and therefore an extension of your employment brand.

Benefits of a strong employment brand

The ultimate benefit is more successful hires. By presenting the right message to the right audience, you will attract and hire the right people. That will increase the success of those people within your organization and improve retention.

EMC is a huge company. As such they have the resources to develop comprehensive employer branding and recruitment marketing campaigns, targeting specific audiences with different messages and tools. Dan Schawbel (who works with EMC on their social media efforts) describes 10 employer branding strategies used by EMC to become an employer of choice.

Some of the highlights:

• Employee testimonial podcasts
• Employment branding blog
• Visual identity (branding)
• Twitter careers

The goal is to leverage different technologies – be it audio, video, Twitter, social media, etc. – to distribute a message and brand, and do so in a way where the audience can respond and interact.

Each of Dan’s ideas is interesting and worth exploring, and it’s great to see companies like EMC experimenting with these opportunities. They clearly get inbound recruiting and the fact that recruiting is an exercise in sales and marketing.

Of course the challenge for a small business is a lack of resources: time, money and people. It’s very difficult for a small business to execute on so many different efforts and roll them all up into a comprehensive employment branding and recruiting strategy. But, it’s necessary. Companies will need to do more to reach the right audience of job seekers, with the right message, to convert those job seekers into the right applicants and hires. The problem of bringing on top talent and the right cultural fits isn’t going away, and it will only get worse.

5 Tips for Getting Started with Employment Branding and Inbound Recruiting

1. Dip a toe. The best way to start is by dipping a toe in the waters and figuring things out. One of the simplest things to do is blogging. Audio podcasts or videos of employees are also easy; grab a decent camera, shoot some video and post it. Video doesn’t have to be complicated.

   If you’re still unsure, just check out all the valuable HR resources available online, including RecruitingBlogs.

2. Talk to employees. Even in a small business there are going to be some employees that are quite knowledgeable and interested in social media and social networking. Tap them for advice, suggestions, etc. Get them involved – even in a lightweight manner – to participate.
3. Think about message. Your message is everything. What do you want to project to job seekers and candidates about your company? What makes it an interesting place to work at? What’s the culture like? What are the people like? EMC most likely uses outside resources to help with their messaging, but it’s not an absolute requirement. Your messaging doesn’t have to be ultra-polished or perfect; in fact, having things a bit “rough around the edges” can work to your advantage; it emphasizes authenticity and uniqueness.
4. Network and learn. It’s never been easier to get online, connect with people and learn. There are lots of recruiters on Twitter and various social networks openly willing and eager to help. Networking and connecting with likeminded individuals and others that have already walked the path you’re about to, will help enormously. And it doesn’t take a ton of time. In 10 minutes a day you can start to build out your social media profile.
5. Stay focused. It is easy to get overwhelmed with options, ideas, etc. Stay focused on setting small goals – building a bit of traffic, adding a few new contacts to your network weekly, etc. – and you’ll start seeing quick results. Remember: You’re not trying to develop the most popular blog in the world or grow your traffic to a million visitors per day (although that would be nice!) You’re trying to reach a specific audience of job seekers and potential job seekers, show them what makes your company interesting and get them engaged.

Please share your ideas! How are you developing and leveraging employment branding and inbound recruiting strategies to benefit your company?

I recently met Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot. HubSpot is a software product, which they call an Inbound Marketing System. The premise is that marketing departments and small businesses need to make themselves more available and accessible online, which in turn will attract those people that are looking for them already (but to-date haven’t found them.) It’s about blogging, search engine optimization, leveraging social media and social networks, and measuring everything to understand what’s working, what’s not working, etc. Unlike outbound marketing (think: Google AdWords), HubSpot is about attracting people by “being out there” and being able to properly convert those people into leads.

This is exactly what HR needs to think about and start acting on immediately.

Louise Kursmark at Career Hub makes reference to this in her recent post, What keeps recruiters up at night? –

My final thought about recruiting: It needs a shot in the arm from the marketing department. In fact, successful companies need to market themselves to future employees just as seriously as they market their products or services to consumers. Yet most HR people are not marketing oriented, and despite the ubiquitous trend toward employment branding, most companies don’t invest the resources and talent necessary to make their recruiting function as vibrant as their marketing area. Those that do make the investment will reap the rewards – a more talented, more engaged workforce that creates and supports a winning culture.

HR is fairly good when it comes to outbound marketing. We post on job boards (although not always the right ones) and we source online (and offline) to find job seekers and bring them in. But when it comes to inbound recruiting, Human Resources is far behind. People are talking about this concept, although not using the term inbound recruiting, but it’s clear where the leaders of HR are pushing the industry. Kevin Wheeler talks about strategic actions HR can take in a recession. Just look at point #5 in Kevin’s list — Building Relationships — I could copy the whole thing in here, but I won’t…

HR = Marketing

It becomes more and more clear every day that HR has to evolve into a marketing arm of the enterprise. HR has to become about outreach (both outbound and inbound marketing), and focus on building employer brand, corporate presence and accessibility. HR has to become more strategic.

I would not propose that HR stop marketing in an outbound way – job boards can work, sourcing can work, 3rd party recruiters can work – but HR is missing out on inbound opportunities: creating a strong recruiting presence, optimizing it, testing it and creating community, accessibility and affinity.

Inbound marketing for HR. What do you think?

The most common approach to recruiting – especially for small and medium-sized businesses – is really short-term; a “shotgun strategy” whereby a company realizes it needs to fill a position and races around to do it as quickly as possible. Of course, in too many cases, they needed to hire that person a few months ago, and only pulled the triggered on tackling the problem when it became dreadfully obvious.

Companies can’t ignore short-term recruitment strategies – for example, posting on job boards with a 30-45 day window to drive job seeker attention and flow.

But a longer-term view of recruitment is going to be more effective.

Jason Buss talks about optimizing your 2009 recruitment budget and has some great ideas. But I think it’s also time – given the economic slowdown and uncertainty – to optimize your recruitment strategy.

Fewer companies are hiring in the short-term. That’s a given. And more questions are being asked about whether or not a company really, really, really needs to hire someone today or can it wait a little while longer? Those are valid concerns and questions. But very few companies stop hiring forever. And too few companies are prepared, during a hiring slowdown, to think long-term.

The two most common forms of recruitment are job boards and recruiters. They’re also “shotgun” strategies, used to fill positions as quickly as possible and then they return no future value. The next time you have to hire people, you have to start from scratch.

Budgets will shrink over the next little while for these types of recruitment strategies. But I think HR and employers will look longer term at how they can build up increasing value over time. They may not want to spend a ton upfront on job board postings and recruiter fees, but if a company ignores HR completely at this stage in the game they’re missing out. Now is precisely the time to look at long term opportunities, re-jigging HR spending and how you can gain more control and power over your recruitment strategies and recruitment marketing.

Why do companies still treat candidates like crap?

It makes absolutely no sense, but the reality is that too many companies still treat job seekers and candidates poorly — from the minute the job seeker is introduced to the company via a job description or their career web site, through the application process and beyond. The experience sucks.

Jason Buss shares this story from a recent job seeker:

I actually applied for one job online that literally took me through a two hour application on their website. They asked me to upload my resume and a cover letter, and then took me through a complex application in which they asked me the same questions that my resume already covered, such as my education and intership experiences. It was one of those situations that I was expecting to spend 20 minutes filling the form out, but once I was already one hour in to the application, there was no way I was going to quit and start over some other time, but I had no idea how long it was going to take me to finally finish it. And that company has yet to follow up with me at all.

Even if the company was trying to filter out the wrong people from applying, it shouldn’t require a 2-hour process! You can probably block most people from applying with just a few additional questions. It shouldn’t be that complicated or frustrating.

Why did obsessive filtering start?

Companies went overboard with their filtering and data collection processes because they were being overwhelmed with resumes. Having to go through 300 resumes is time consuming. It is like looking for a needle in a haystack. So I understand the interest in pre-screening people out. But there are limits!

Recently, I was speaking to a recruiter who told me that some companies will simply select a pool of candidates to review at random. They get 500 resumes, set a target of 50 for review, and automatically discard 450. Then at least, it’s much less work to review 50 resumes. Except it was random! Very scary…

The candidate experience has never been more important

• If you treat leads and prospects poorly they don’t buy from you.
• If you treat customers poorly they leave.

Generally, people have more choice and consumers are in the driver’s seat.

The same holds true in HR.

Job seekers should be some of the most carefully and well-treated people your company does business with. They’re active (in terms of their involvement), engaged (in terms of their interest in your company), and they’re also the future.

If you can’t hire the right people, your business is dead; so why treat those people poorly from the get-go?

As I read Peter Weddle’s post, You Are What They Remember, I kept nodding to myself. In a few instances I caught myself agreeing verbally. “Yes…yes…yes…” (You can skip any obvious jokes with that last sentence…)

What’s Peter’s point?

It’s simple:

1. Companies need to be memorable to succeed in selling their products and services.
2. The same holds true in recruitment.
3. Positive memories are created and fostered by repetition. That’s why marketers hammer home the same messages over and over.
4. The same holds true in recruitment.
5. Marketing in this fashion is very expensive. Big companies can do it, small ones can’t.
6. The same holds true in recruitment.
7. There are other ways of marketing and becoming memorable for selling products and services.
8. The same holds true in recruitment.

Recruitment – at least the part of it that involves getting top candidates to the door and engaged – is all about sales and marketing. But since there are very few companies outside of the Fortune 500 with significant budgets for big recruitment marketing campaigns, what alternatives exist?

Here’s what Peter writes:

You can create an experience in your recruiting process that is so positively compelling and differentiating that it actually acts as an advertising message. To do that, you must move your entire organization (that means your hiring managers, employees and senior leaders as well as your fellow recruiters) from the transactional, supply chain mentality that dominates recruiting today to a relationship-based community development perspective.

Bingo. And employer brand and candidate experience meld together and will stay forevermore attached at the hip.

Peter goes on to say:

If you then trigger viral behavior on the part of candidates-if you formally and respectfully ask them to pass the memory along to their friends and colleagues-you can probably reach as many prospective candidates as you would with more traditional brand advertising.

This is absolutely true, and where so much of what we know about social media can be leveraged for recruiting. Even when it comes down to rejecting candidates you can create a positive experience and encourage viral spreading of your message.

Peter goes on to explain some ways that small and medium-sized businesses (and large ones) can improve their recruitment process, build up employer brand, and enhance the candidate experience.

In my mind, one of the key issues is your career site (no surprise!) I think of the career site as your recruitment hub. You drive people towards it and hope to convert those people into candidates. Your marketing strategy isn’t the hub, because you could drive hundreds of candidates, but without a good career site, you won’t convert the right ones. Your applicant tracking system isn’t the hub, it’s there to catch applications and move them through the recruitment / hiring process.

It’s the career site that matters most; because if you can’t convert the right candidates it won’t matter what kind of applicant tracking system you’re using, and it won’t matter how much you spend to drive candidates to the front door.

Your career site is one of the first and most prominent branding pieces of the puzzle that people will see. If it’s not up to snuff – if the hub isn’t working – all the other elements, the spokes of the wheel, fall apart.

HRMToday has a very interesting and amusing story about a rejected candidate that was eventually hired and became a star player. It’s a great anecdote and reminder of a couple things:

1. We reject too easily.
2. We always benefit by treating people well.

Quick Resume Rejections

The fact is, when resumes start coming in, companies reject quickly. In some cases they have to, because they don’t have the time to really explore each resume. Criteria get setup to reject people quickly – it might be typos in a resume, or missing the magic number of years experience that the job required. I don’t think we can eliminate rejection criteria, although stories like this do give us pause to reflect on whether we owe it to ourselves, as employers, to look at each candidate a bit more thoroughly. I wonder how many more star employees are missed because of hasty rejections?

Treat Rejected Candidates Well

You rarely win by treating people poorly. You almost always win by treating people fairly and respectfully. The HRMToday article points out a few reasons why rejection letters are often vague. I understand these points, and I wouldn’t expect most employers to provide detailed rejection letters. Fact is, too many employers don’t even bother with rejection letters at all. Even the simple step of saying, Thanks, but no thanks is too time consuming and difficult for a lot of employers. And that’s a very bad thing.

I’ve had numerous experiences where I’ve rejected candidates via email only to have them email me back and say, “Thank you. Most companies never respond at all. I appreciate that.” It’s never led me to hire anyone that I’ve rejected, but at least I’m more confident in the idea that the candidate had a decent candidate experience with me as an employer.

People Talk

I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but rest assured that people who have a bad experience with your company talk a lot more than those who have a good experience. This is common knowledge when it comes to sales & marketing departments, but too few companies think about this from an HR perspective.

Treat someone poorly through the application and recruitment process and they’ll talk. More than that, they’re less likely to buy from you. So now you’ve tarnished your corporate brand because your recruitment process sucked. That’s ridiculous, and so easy to fix.

Just Communicate

HR is really about sales and marketing. And you can’t market or sell effectively without communication.

Communication is easy. It’s natural for most of us (we are human after all!) but HR is too often caught up in the day-to-day exercise of “processing applicants.” If that’s all HR is about – moving people through the recruitment process like cattle – then you can be sure that candidates will get frustrated. They’ll tell others. And your corporate and employer brand are tarnished.

Rejecting candidates is hard. I feel bad when I do it, but you’ll always reject more than you hire. Given that fact, HR should focus on policies that ensure a positive candidate experience for rejected candidates. It starts with simple communication, and can go beyond that.

For example, could you offer an Amazon.com gift certificate to thank applicants for applying? Or maybe a discount at your store? Or better yet, think viral, and see if you can’t give rejected applicants something they can share with friends … even if they were rejected for employment, they’ll have reasons to speak positively about you to others. That will lead to an improved brand overall, and might lead to new candidates too.

My apologies for the intrusion, but we’ve revamped the Standout Jobs site and I have to test if all the parts are moving the way they should.

So far so good…

Welcome to the new Standout Jobs website. This is a significant departure from our old site which a much simpler, leaner design. It also speaks to the transition we’re making from a technology company to a service-oriented company. We recognize that many of our customers and companies out there need more hands-on knowledge and help with social recruiting. And we want to make sure that people realize that we can offer that level of knowledge, help and implementation in the realm of social recruiting.

I’ve always believed that recruiting should be given a higher priority within most companies. We see that movement today, but still not enough. And I’ve always believed that recruiting needs to be a strategic, long-term initiative, not a shotgun approach driven by advertising as the core solution. And again, we’re seeing movement in that direction, but still not enough.

If you look at what’s going on today in marketing with companies like Hubspot and their focus on “inbound marketing”, I fundamentally believe that the same principles and strategic can apply to recruitment. Make yourself as an organization findable, accessible and open — and people will come.

At the same time, recruiting isn’t a passive activity. You have to be reaching out, sourcing, building communities, keeping in touch with people. You can’t just throw something up on the wall and wait for people to flock to you. It just doesn’t work that way.

We (at Standout Jobs) want to help you get this sorted out. We want to do it in a way that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg (it doesn’t have to!) We want to do it in a way that empowers you to make things happen, so you’re not dependent on us; after all it’s your company not ours, you should be telling its story.

Welcome to the new Standout Jobs site. Please stop by, say hi and feel free to get in touch.