Recruiters know that their jobs involve a lot more than just finding resumes and submitting them to hiring managers, hoping that job postings and resume submittals will land the company a new employee. There is so much more involved in recruiting another than employment websites and job fairs. Recruiters are your ambassadors of your company, event planners, marketing and branding experts, and often the evangelist and promoter of the technology, affiliations, associations, and best business practices the company has dedicated itself to.
A company’s branding goes beyond just what the sales and marketing team envisions for the company, its products, or services. A company’s brand includes how the company is perceived as an employer and how its management team is to work for. Many companies need to be concerned with the fact that many prospective candidates are also prospective customers – so if the recruiting process is not handled properly, the company could lose a customer as well as a prospective employee (this “prospective employee is also a customer” concept has often been referred to as the “WalMart Syndrome”.)
According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), a company’s brand articulates to the world who the company is and what it delivers. An employer may also build a solid employment brand (in conjunction with a company’s brand) that can help attract and retain high-value employees. The Society of Human Resource Management provides members with a Branding Toolkit to help employers build a brand as a strategic tool to attract, recruit, and retain talent. The recent economic downturn has had a direct impact on employers and employee trust. If employees are uncertain about their future with the company, this can be communicated to prospective candidates via online communities, industry discussion forums, via rumors and grapevine communication channels, and even Facebook and Yelp!
Staffing agencies and contingent recruiters will often advise a submitted candidate to do their due diligence in investing the organization via the internet and financial reporting services like Hoovers and Reuters (often accessible via public libraries; academic institutions, and other paid online services.) Internet investigations should include review the company’s LinkedIn profile as well as the profiles of individuals who have been recently been hired, moved on, and individuals managing the hiring department and leading the team. Candidates should review the LinkedIn profile of the hiring manager as well as preview any recommendations from any past or current team members (often no recommendations can be perceived as a “red flag”.) A company’s LinkedIn profile can provide prospective candidates information on recent hires, the company size, recent news referenced, company annual growth, and information on the company’s employees - like the company’s job function composition; amount of professional experience; level of educational degrees, and what academic institutions the majority of the current staff came from; along with who’s following the company and what groups the company’s members follow.
In certain organizations, it is the recruiters that are managing online communities on LinkedIn, Google, and MeetUp – in other companies, the sales or marketing department is responsible. Human resources and recruiting need to leverage a recruiting strategies that compliments a company brand and the company’s dedication to technology, methodologies, and best practices. When sales or marketing managing is responsible for managing and promoting these groups, there is no collaboration with human resources or consideration about recruiting. Sales and marketing should educate human resources and recruiting staff members on how to assign tags to job postings that will compliment the company’s overall business strategies and brand, along with how to use tags, meta-tags, and SEO/SEM practices. Having recruiting tag job descriptions and social media efforts will help draw attention to the company, what the company is all about, what the company is working on, and the fact that the company is hiring
If a recruiter is not attending MeetUp events, they should be hosting and moderating a group. If there is no MeetUp or LinkedIn group in your neighborhood that is relevant to your company, it is the perfect opportunity to start one. Senior management and C-level executives have to get sales and marketing folks to strategize with recruiting and human resources. Job posting should include information about what MeetUp and LinkedIn events the company will be attending; and what conferences or expos the company is participating in. Conference booths should include a job description handout along with a sign that states the company is hiring!
If a company’s different departments learn to strategize together, the organization will achieve a better return on the investment (ROI) and can consolidate and leverage expenses in many more aspects than the one dimensional, one department return most organizations see from strategies that are solely the goals and ambitions of one department or company pursuit.
References:
Employer Brand and Employee Trust in a Turbulent Economy. March 1, 2009. Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) viewed on November 23, 2010 via: http://www.shrm.org/Research/Articles/Articles/Pages/EmployerBrandandEmployeeTrust.aspx
Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) Branding Toolkit (2010); Reviewed July 2009. Viewed on November 23, 2010 via: http://www.shrm.org/TemplatesTools/Toolkits/Pages/BrandingToolkit.aspx
0 comments:
Post a Comment