Blog
Mobile Job Searching
February 2010
With Google Nexus now added to the ranks of mobile communication devices, puffing its chest up next to the iPhone and Smartphones, more job seekers are using their mobile phones to browse for employment information. And now with the addition of the iPad to the mix of portable information and communication devices, short messaging tactics are the way to go.
When writing your mobile recruitment ad or planning a marketing campaign, the question is: What media do I use so my 8-point-font sized message will catch candidates’ attention over a 480 x 800 pixel screen?
Here are some ideas:
- Tweet your followers and hit TweetMyJobs subscribers
- Update your Facebook page and LinkedIn status, alerting your fans and professional connections
- Start a Google AdWords campaign
- If you haven’t done so, place an RSS feed link to your job postings site so passive job seekers can subscribe and have the newest job postings sent directly to their email inbox.
- And, what I think is going to have a resurgence (as if it needs one!)—YouTube links: post a link to your favourite network, showing a charming DIY or slick recruitment video that job seekers can watch on their mobile screens as they walk, ride the bus, or sit at their desks.
Talking it Up—5 Rules For Recruitment Communication
January 2010
As we craft recruitment campaigns, employer brands and other recruitment-related HR communications for our clients, we try to stay focused on these enduring for rules for honest, credible, high-quality recruitment communication.
1. It's the truth
We're an employer of choice! We value our employees! We're number one! . . . . so many companies have spent so many years touting themselves in these unsubstantiated ways that these collections of words have really ceased to have any meaning. Today, great recruitment messaging is based on the truth. It's based on what it's really like to work in a specific place, it's based on what employees identify as the best things about working there and it's based on the real policies and practices that make it a great place to work.
2. It's not about you
The focus of effective recruitment communication is always the potential applicant. All of the messaging we use must pass the "so what?" test, examining how this information would be relevant to someone trying to make a decision about whether or not to apply.
3. Recruitment is competitive
Not unlike the stereotype of the humble Canadian, many companies are uncomfortable singing their own praises. But as the race for the best and the brightest begins to heat up again, it's going to be vital to clearly and proudly let people know why and how the employee experience you offer is better than that of your competitors.
4. A promise is a promise
When we craft an employer brand promise, we remind our clients that it is a promise in the true sense of the word. For example, if you're building your brand on the premise that you are a flexible organization in which people will find autonomy in how they do their jobs, then you've got to commit to ensuring that micro-managers are banished and complicated procedure manuals are eliminated for years to come. Always be careful to ensure that you can truly deliver on your promises in the long term.
5. The outside has to match the inside
Recruitment communication is all about managing your reputation as an employer and very much about setting up the expectations of potential employees. What a potential employee learns about your company from the outside has to be true and hold up to the test of authenticity once they get inside your company, start working and live that employee experience for themselves.
The Importance of an Engaging Careers Website
December 2009
Creating an employer brand is, in many ways, a process of creating a bond. Your corporate careers site is one of the most significant introductions a potential employee has to your organization—it is the starting point for an important, and potentially long-lasting, relationship. More than a place to list job postings, it is the home for your employer story.
So who's getting it right? Visit these corporate career sites to see some excellent—and diverse—examples of career sites that provide a warm and compelling introduction to the employee experience.
1. Metro Vancouver: www.metrovancouver.org
Basing the careers site on its "We'll surprise you" campaign, this long-time Midlyn Day client has done an excellent job of incorporating employees into this site, taking it a step beyond the original campaign and featuring testimonials on their experiences at work for Metro Vancouver.
2. IBM Canada: www-o3.ibm.com
Posing the question "Are you an IBMer?", this site draws you in with a a sense of wanting to belong and to be part of it's attractive promise to "change the way the world works."
3. Sodexo: www.sodexo.com
Engaging quotes pique your interest: "The first 40 years of life at Sodexo was an entrepreneurial adventure of challenge and change to become global market leaders. As we prepare for the next decades, our culture of ambition and motivation remains unchanged." Compelling (and telling) tabs such as Growing with Us, Inspiring Careers, Your Future—So Sodexo and Your Turn to Talk—will keep you here.
10 Surprising Facts About Social Media
November 2009
Social media has exploded in recent years—well months, heck, even days and no doubt minutes—and this new way of communicating has quickly become the number one activity on the web. It's an activity in which over 2/3 of the world's online population participates and Canadians are among the head of the pack—we have over 11 million people on Facebook alone (and there are only about 35 million of us!).
As we look at how the rise of social media impacts our businesses and our HR practices, it's interesting to begin with a look at how people's behaviours and practices are evolving as they incorporate these new media tools into their lives. With this in mind, we offer 10 surprising facts about social networking today:
1. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 4th largest between the US and Indonesia
2. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55- to 65-year-old women
3. 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met via social media
4. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire populations of Ireland, Norway and Panama
5. 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices
6. Generation Y and Z may consider e-mail passé … many colleges and universities have stopped distributing e-mail addresses to first-year students
7. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
8. 54% of bloggers post content and/or tweet daily
9. 25% of Americans said they watched a short video in the past month … on their phone
10. Facebook users share more than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, photos) each day.
Getting Personal:
A New Generation Brings a New Take on Privacy
October 2009
As an HR professional, you've no doubt seen it. The careless web link, the open-for-all-to-see Facebook page, the candidate blog that adds up to much more than you ever wanted to know about the person.
There was a time when résumés included such personal details as age, height and weight, marital status, children and other particulars of people's lives. Thankfully, we now deem such information too personal—and simply not the business of a would-be employer—to put on a résumé.
But many job seekers are still giving up intimate details of their private lives to potential employers, and they are going far beyond revealing their height. One recent job seeker laid out for an employer a year-long chronicle of her recent divorce, detailing her pain, her explosive battles with her ex, and her evolving relationships with her family members. How? A tiny link at the end of her e-mail signature that said: "Visit my blog." By not remembering to remove this link (or perhaps by deliberately leaving it?), she turned her "Thank you for the interview" e-mail into an invitation to the insides of her private life.
While some forget to remove links to blogs or personal web pages from e-mail signatures, others proudly include them on résumés and other business communications, perhaps wanting to show off their writing skills but forgetting what else they may be showing in the process.
And growing legions of people—and not just young people—have Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and various and assorted profiles (and personalities?) all over the web.
What strikes me as fascinating is not so much the debate around whether or not potential employers and recruiters should be using that information to make hiring decisions (and really, most of time, how could you help but look at it?), but on how the boundaries of privacy have stretched. A new generation of young people (and a whole bunch of web-savvy Boomers and Xers alongside them) just don't have that same sense of privacy that once ruled our professional lives.
It can be an uncomfortable shift for many of us, these blurring lines between work life and life life (an old Seinfeld episode about "worlds colliding" comes to mind). But I think many people are walking into their careers with an attitude of "this is who I am—whole and complete, a little messy and complex, but all me—now let's get to work".
Maybe not such a bad thing.
Millennials: A Fresh Look at a Fresh Generation
September 2009
Born between 1980 and 1992, the Millennial Generation (aka Generation Y) is a cohort known for incredible digital fluency. Findings of a US-based project report that the group should be known for its cultural fluency—and involvement—as well. The project originators set out to prove that Millennials are a far cry from the over-entitled, apathetic, culture-vulture stereotype with which they are so often saddled.
The Millennials Changing America (http://change.org) compiles the stories of hundreds of Millennial Activists. These young people combine their passionate commitment to social causes with their incredible connectivity (think social networking in warp speed). Add to that the kind idealism that is the right of the young and voilá—a social movement is born.
You are Wonderful: Must-See Video on the Power of Validation
August 2009
Our latest favourite YouTube film (and at 15 minutes, it really is a film—but so worth the time) focuses on how much we all need to be recognized and appreciated in our daily lives—at work and beyond. Validation, a mini-flick from director Kurt Kuenne, miraculously weaves together a love sick parking attendant, the DMV, a downtrodden photographer and an amusement park entrance into a modern-day fairy tale that reminds us of the power of both recognition and simple, attentive, thoughtful kindness.
As an HR professional, you know the importance—and the power—of effective employee recognition. Reinforcing and rewarding the actions and behaviors you most want to see people repeat, showing people they—and their contributions—are valued, ensuring employees share in and are motivated by the success of the organization, these are the powers of recognition. And, as Validation so elegantly illustrates, both giving and receiving that recognition simply feels great. Now that's powerful.
View the film at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbk980jV7Ao.
The Whole Click-through Picture
July 2009
CPC advertising (a.k.a. PPC [pay-per-click] advertising, contextual advertising and search marketing) and specifically, keyword-based CPC advertising is certainly the buzz around our office lately. There's Google's AdWords, Facebook's Adverts, Bing's adCenter and Yahoo's Sponsored Search Ads that provide the service, oh, and Canadian media portal Canoe just launched their own CPC-based advertising service.
Basically, CPC advertising programs that provide keyword-based ad placement are getting buzzy as a recruitment ad option for two reasons. First, they are highly cost-effective because advertisers set their own budgets. And second, recruiters can reach hard-to-find and/or key candidates because they can set specific demographic parameters—through selected keyword search phrases, personal profile details and geotargeting—to designate in front of whom the ads will appear.
Having more targeting features than other online ad programs, CPC ads are the virtual equivalent of walking up to a key candidate at a career fair and introducing yourself. For example: recruiters who want to target youth looking for health care careers on Vancouver Island can use geotargeting—e.g., creating the setting that only users located on Vancouver Island and in university centres across the country to see the ads—and they can set keyword phrases—e.g., "health care employment + Vancouver Island", "student nurse jobs", "med school in victoria"—to track down their target audience who are looking for employment opportunities online. Good CPC recruitment ads will say "Consider becoming a nurse on Vancouver Island" to youth who just queried "nurse jobs on Vancouver Island." It's as if you were reading their minds ...
It's brilliant, really.
But before you race to the Internet to log-on and click-out with CPC, keyword-based recruitment ads, remember step back to see the whole picture.
Impressions & microsites are also valuable to your CPC-ad strategy
CPC, keyword-based advertising is a highly desirable and efficient method to reach your target audience, but you still need to convince your key applicants to click on the ads, especially if the ads are the 140-character text-only format which can look suspicious or clumsy. That's why CPC-based recruitment campaigns should be sure to include display ads, such as web banners on key content sites, which can help create an atmosphere of your organization in which potential candidates will be comfortable with, informed of, and trustworthy of before they click through.
Microsoft's Atlas Institute published a study in 2006 titled "The Long Road to Conversion" which found that half of the online ad exposure (impressions) for people who converted (i.e., people who made a purchase or, in our case, applied for a job after clicking on the ad) occurred between seven to 60 days before the conversion click; less than a third of the exposures occurred in just two days prior than the conversion click. On average, converters experienced about 12 ad exposures before making the final conversion.
Seeing that many candidates need to give even your virtual mind-reading some thought, it is important to also provide a customized microsite (such as a recruitment site for Canadian student candidates) rather than your general careers site, which speaks to every potential candidate for every position you offer around the world. The microsite that the users click through to should be a natural extension of the CPC ads themselves. Just as you want the ads to speak directly to them, you want the landing site to provide them with even more relevant information, making it easy and attractive for your target audience to consider your organization as a potential employer and subsequently submit their applications online.
Chances are, users who click through will be going back to your microsite multiple times over the coming weeks in the process of considering your organization, and supporting this with a branding campaign as well as a customized microsite will assist them in their return.
Career Fair Preparation—
Tips for planning how you will stand out from the crowd to attract and hire top talent.
June 2009
Career-fair planning should begin a few months before the exhibition dates and summer is a great time for you to get organized—recruiters should ensure all display equipment is in working order, marketing materials are ordered, and a publicity strategy is in place.
The following is a collection of best practices we've come up with that can help you get your career event planning underway:
- Research the career fairs before registering to get a good idea of who (exhibitors and spectators) will be attending and what materials you will need for effectively reaching candidates: Is it a general fair for entry-level, college student positions or a specialized fair that will attract skilled professionals?
- Aim to secure a booth facing the main entrance (or as close as possible) of the fair for attracting the highest volume of traffic.
- Read the exhibitor manuals so you know what the fair will and will not provide you (e.g., power, tables, chairs, Internet connection, food, water).
- Review the floor plan to assess who will be your neighbours and if you will have any space restrictions.
- Practice setting up your booth six to eight weeks prior to the event to ensure you have all the display elements and that they are in working order; remember, it can take four or more weeks to produce new banners or other display elements.
- Strategize what marketing materials and give-away items (“swag”) to provide; don’t just bring whatever you have in the stock room, it’s important the brochures and other information you provide speaks to your audience—targeted messaging says that you mean business.
- Get the word out:
- Set up a recruitment microsite specifically for upcoming career fairs and direct interested candidates to the site. This will enable you to capture metrics directly related to career fair participation.
- Include information on your career fair attendance in recruitment ads and job postings.
- Publish small teaser ads in media where the fair is being advertised.
- Put a banner announcement on your website.
- Create a Facebook page to invite attendees and post future career fair events.
- If you have a Twitter account, send out Tweets about upcoming fairs.
- If you’ll be present at a big national recruitment event, consider outdoor advertising (e.g., billboards or guerilla marketing) in the vicinity of the event leading up to and during the exhibition.
- Set measurable goals of how many visitors you expect to your booth and how many applications you wish to receive onsite and after the event.
- Offer prizes to recruiters who generate the highest number of applicants (e.g., recruiters who generate more than eight applications during the fair receive a gift certificate).
- Ensure transportation is arranged for all the career fair team members and that they know where to park for unloading the exhibit on set-up day.
- Plan fun role-playing games for senior recruiters to train junior recruiters on what types of questions and scenarios to expect at the fairs.
Happiness at Work: Not Too Much to Hope For
May 2009
You may already have seen one of our favourite blogs listed in the LOL section of this website—Chief Happiness Officer (positivesharing.com), is a wonderful testament to the virtues of taking responsibility for your own happiness at work and creating better workplaces in the process.
Among the things we love about Chief Happiness Officer Alex Kjerulf is his thoughtful, comprehensive Happiness Manifesto. Going beyond trite notions of contagious smiles and conflict avoidance, he gets to the heart of the matter with salient advice such as “Knowing what makes me happy or unhappy at work is my responsibility” and “I recognize that happiness at work is different for everyone”.
An unexpected and inspiring point (described by one of our colleagues as a “Brilliant flash of the obvious”) defines the border between a perfect workplace and a happy one. By declaring “I recognize that happiness at work doesn’t come from the absence of bad things in the workplace,” Kjerulf reminds us that deciding to be happy does not absolve us from ever dealing with anything unpleasant or imperfect again—it just calls on us to be happy in spite of it.
Which brings us to the last point of his 25-point Manifesto: “Happiness at work comes from the things you and I do here and now”.
Download the Happy at Work Manifesto at changethis.com/36.04.HappyatWork.
Twitter: Quick-time social networking grows in popularity—but is it useful for recruiters?
April 2009
If you’ve been finding yourself thinking in crisp, 140-character thought bites these days, chances are you’re one of the 6-million-plus people sporting a bit of a Twitter addiction.
The micro-blogging phenomenon seems to have filled a desire we didn’t even know we had—to share the minutia of our lives and peer into those of others.
So what’s a Twitter?
This social networking and micro-blogging tool enables users to send and read user updates, or, in Twitter-speak, tweets. Tweets, text-based posts up to 140 characters, are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends and can send and receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or through applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, TweetDeck and others. View this video for a quick visual explanation of Twitter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o
Is it useful for Employer Marketing?
Many companies have discovered the power of social networking tools, including Twitter, for building their corporate and employer brands. They may use their pages to share links to interesting community events (@wholefoods does this well), to provide useful info related to their business or industry (@jetblue provides travel tips) or to promote employees’ outside-of-work stories (@TheHomeDepot does a great job of this). Additionally, recruiters in many industries (most prominently IT) have Twitter pages on which they post jobs, discuss search tips and share company information. Recruiters also use Twitter to follow industry leaders and the people in their networks. They can sign-up for notifications (Tweets) when people post certain words and phrases on Twitter (eg resume, engineer, job search).
Case-in-point, a recent recruiter Tweet, which was followed by a web link to a job posting, said, “Recession, schmicession. We're hiring. Web apps developer and a QA specialist. Check 'em, then bring it.”
Seems a new era has arrived.
YouTube as a Tool for Employer Branding & Marketing?
March 2009
The second biggest search engine on the planet—second only to Google itself—YouTube is an excellent place for employer marketing and branding content. With its unbeatable traffic, incredible diversity of content and almost universal appeal (Gen Y may have fuelled it but everybody’s looking at it now), it’s the Grand Central Station of video content and gets messaging out there—far out there—to everyone.
As you zoom in a little closer, the drawback to using YouTube for employer branding initiatives is of course the sheer volume of content. Even the most compelling employer marketing videos are going to have a hard time standing out in this busy, noisy environment where the most cutting edge content gets the most attention.
But that's where savvy marketing, search engine optimization and online integration of all of your employer marketing activities come into play. And in this world in which your reputation increasingly depends on your search engine results, there's a lot to be said for seeding the net with great, positive content.
YouTube also provides that “hipness by association” that’s both intangible yet powerful in this new world of marketing. A viral marketing campaign that links recipients back to YouTube rather than to an organization or government website is likely to get more mileage and have a longer shelf life.
For those of us marketing employer and recruitment brands, YouTube isn't just about watching and sharing videos. It's about sharing and creating experiences of your employer brand with potential applicants out there. Understanding what your prospects value and enjoy will help you create and launch your brand into the viral video generation.
Calling it in: iPhone becomes the next great job search tool
February 2009
Leave it to our friends at CareerBuilder—the first in our industry to bring recruitment ads to Facebook in an accessible and meaningful way—they’ve now devised a way to turn your iPhone and iPod Touch into the ultimate job search tools.
Strolling through Seattle and wondering what job opportunities the Emerald City might have for you? Not to worry, you can find your next big working adventure on your iPhone or iPod.
Using the iPhone’s geolocation technology, the app identifies which city you are in and sends you the most relevant job postings. All jobs on CareerBuilder.com are accessible and the app offers searchability that makes it just as easy as if you were job hunting on your laptop or desktop. Select hot jobs as you review them and CareerBuilder will email the list to you so once you’re back at home base, you can fire off your applications.
No word yet on when the cutting-edge feature is coming to Canada.
Recruitment Advertising Hits TV
January 2009
If you’ve been watching CBC Newsworld lately (maybe catching The National, The Fifth Estate or our favourite, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos), you might have been surprised by an interesting ad that popped up between the latest news programming and the regular Canadian Tire or Tim Horton’s ad you’d expect in that spot. Filled with beautiful shots of BC’s Lower Mainland and, more importantly, images of the happy people who work here, this is an ad inviting people from across the nation to come and work for Metro Vancouver.
Hot on the heels of the launch of their successful “We’ll Surprise You” recruitment campaign, the folks at Metro Vancouver have worked with our team to dive into television, noting that a multi-level approach to advertising is the best way to reach the broadest possible audience of potential applicants.
It’s a sign of the times. Today’s cutting-edge recruitment marketing goes beyond traditional boundaries and uses the full spectrum of media to reach out to potential employees.
It’s also a sign of who those potential employees are—media savvy, socially aware, engaged in their communities and the world at large—just the sort of people who might be watching The Hour one January evening.
View the ad on Metro Vancouver’s career pages: http://www.metrovancouver.org/careers/Pages/default.aspx