�e Tru FilesCULTURE BRANDING

1TRU HEAT

INDEX

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@BillBoorman

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We scoured presentations and conversations from the last twelve months of TRU events to bring you the best future-looking ideas in the field of recruiting. 48

8,00010events

attendees Big ideas

a guide to rethinking Blowing up your recruiting strategy.

culture branding /03

to hire the very Best, you’ll have to recruit fewer applicants.

Invariably when pundits talk about brand culture, companies like Google and Apple come up. There’s chatter about oddball perks employees enjoy (e.g. foosball, sleeping pods) and the quirky things these companies do to identify prospective employees who will fit in.

Most of us can’t relate to Apple and Google. And that’s just fine.

Every other company in aggressive pursuit of top talent must find ways to attract the most sought-

after knowledge workers on their own terms. How should they woo the very best if they’re not a

mega-hot Silicon Valley tech company?

What we’re going to discuss here is an idea that should make your head hurt and stomach churn.

If you’re a recruiter, HR executive, or anyone responsible for talent attraction, the following pages

will cause you to rethink how you acquire talent—and whether you’re going about it all wrong.

[Spoiler alert: You probably are.]

The crux of the problem is this: Your recruiting program is currently designed to net the

largest number of potential candidates possible, and then disappoint all but one. And you’re

disappointing people who are potential customers and future job candidates. It’s simply a

wrongheaded approach … and we’re going to point out a much better way.

culture branding /04

Let’s talk about why companies need to be faster and wilier than their peers when it comes to identifying, attracting and retaining top talent. It barely requires mentioning, but …

• In today’s economy, talent (not capital) is the basis of global competitive advantage. Talent

fuels innovation. Your roster of engineers, designers, developers, analysts, forecasters,

attorneys, digital marketers, and data jocks (among many others knowledge workers) are

pushing your organizations to outmaneuver the competition.

• The best in each of these fields is sought out by dozens of companies at once. (The UX

designer who made your last project succeed beyond expectations fielded three recruiting

calls last week.)

• These individuals have strong opinions about where and how they want to work. While the

size of the paycheck matters, other intangibles are equally important. They want a sense of

belonging with their employer … a feeling they work for an organization with values that

overlap their own. They prefer certain locations over others (e.g. hip urban centers over

suburban office parks), specific work styles (e.g. mobility, flexible schedules, etc…), and non-

financial benefits such as skills training and credentials.

culture branding /05

first, the required exposition.

Attracting and retaining these knowledge workers isn’t as simple as offering a job description

that matches their qualifications. They will want to know whether the entire package—including

your company’s culture—is attractive. Knowledge workers are in such high demand they have the

luxury of considering these non-financial rewards … and companies hoping to retain them must

adapt to recruit them successfully.

/06culture branding

/07

Let’s get one classic mistake out of the way: If your company is a traditional, buttoned up financial services firm, don’t try to pretend otherwise.

your job is to:

(a) Identify the actual culture of your organization, and find reflect a true picture of what it’s like

to work for your organization. Have an entrepreneurial culture? Show it off. A culture that

encourages head-down work over long hours? Be clear about that too.

(b) Find ways to enhance what you already do. For example, if your organization supports

an entrepreneurial culture, think about creating internal idea hatcheries to encourage

new thinking. Or for the head-down company with long work hours, you may offer

on-site massages to ease the pressure. The idea is to do more and better what you

are already good at.

Ultimately you’re looking to define what your company and its employees stand for, what

potential employees in high-demand fields are hunting for, and figuring out the happy overlap

between the two.

culture branding

don’t oversell yourself.

/08

Google: A culture of experimentation. Google’s famous fail fast philosophy asks

employees to take risks and try out new ideas. Ever heard of Google Buzz? Google Wave? Both

are failed experiments. In another organization employees leading those projects would have

been fired. At Google, those detours are just “research.”

Zappos: Empowering employees. The online shoe company rocketed to success

by giving customer service reps broad leeway in how they satisfy customers. Zappos has won

massive social media attention from customer anecdotes about Zappos’ employee awesomeness

(such as the Zappos employee who sent flowers to a customer who mentioned her mom passed

away1). And the company practically begs employees to leave the company if they don’t fit in; at

the end of the first week of new employee training, everyone is offered $2,000 to quit.2

1 http://consumerist.com/2007/10/16/zappos-sends-you-flowers/2 http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/zappos-ceo-tony-hsieh

culture branding

let’s consider some real-life examples.

/09

GE: Celebrating hobbies. Due to GE’s work in aviation, energy, transportation, mining

and industrials, the company is hyper-focused on attracting top talent in the STEM fields. GE

found that both customers and employees identified strongly with the maker community—

hobbyist designers, builders and tinkerers of all kinds. To enchant makers, GE created a moveable

show called GE Garages where visitors can experiment with technologies like 3D printers, laser

cutters and injection molders. Rather than tell potential employees how interesting work at GE

can be, Garages gives them a hands-on experience unlike any other.

The Nerdery: Work as play. This US-based interactive production shop that provides

digital and interactive know-how to big agencies. In other words, they are the developer/

tech savants that make the most interesting, novel projects work. The Nerdery needs to recruit

top developer talent to St. Paul, Minnesota (not the typical tech urban center). The company

celebrates a nerd culture and ensures employees balance hard work and long hours with humor

and playfulness. Says one employee, “Work never feels like work and my co-workers are all just

friends. We get work done but we have a lot of fun in doing so.”

culture branding

/10

The important thing in each of these examples is that not everyone will fit in. While The Nerdery

sounds like a fun place, some employees simply want to show up, put in the hours and go

home … and for them The Nerdery sounds too cultish. Some won’t be attracted to the constant

camaraderie and informal work style.

For that reason, it’s critical you don’t hype your company or oversell it. Your recruiting efforts must

communicate what it’s really like to work in their organization, day in and day out—as if you’re

holding up a mirror to daily life. The American Red Cross, for example, must recruit lab employees

who can follow directions repeatedly, without straying from strict instructions. Employees must

follow the same 48-step process each day, without deviation. Creatives and independent

problem-solvers need not apply.

Ultimately you don’t want hundreds of people to apply for open positions. You really only want

the perfect one.

culture branding

/11

Currently when a recruiter opens a new job, they may receive hundreds of applicants for each role. Multiply that by the number of requisitions a single recruiter manages, and it all adds up to an unmanageable morass of applicants.

It’s no wonder job applicants complain they feel pressing “send” on an application is like

pressing “shred.” One applicant on Reddit recently complained, “The biggest frustration about

[applying for jobs] is completing the long-ass form for a job you are definitely qualified for, if not

overqualified, and then never hearing back.”3

Mystery Applicant, a company that helps companies assess candidate experience by polling

applicants at each step of the process, released a survey that found 46 percent of applicants rated

their experience as “poor” or “very poor.” And only 37 percent would recommend the company

based on their experience.4

3 http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/1ubv8o/the_biggest_frustration_when_job_searching/4 http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/the-candidate-experience-are-companies-listening-infographic

culture branding

please do not apply.

/12

Shocking? Not really. That’s because companies still treat job candidates as applicants for a single

job at a single point in time. If Susan Brown applies for the role of chemical engineer and isn’t

offered the position, we aren’t going to sweat about whether Susan’s happy. Are we?

Nonsense. In a climate in which knowledge workers are (a) in high demand, (b) a source of

competitive strength, (c) have historically high rates of turnover, and (d) are socially connected to

share information freely and easily … your recruiting efforts should focus on courting Susan Brown

throughout her career, not just at this single moment in time.

culture branding

/13

Technology now makes it possible to ensure Susan Brown has the right qualifications to meet your needs before she applies.

The recruiting process will be less about verifying her skills and expertise, and more about

ensuring a cultural and personality fit between employer and applicant. Why do we say this?

• Sourcing technologies can scan vast databases of talent data, including social network data,

to cull a highly relevant list of possible candidates, filtered by how ready they may be to

switch companies.

• Assessment tools can weed out candidates who simply don’t have the technical chops,

intellectual rigor, or even cultural fit to meet your needs.

• On-demand video interviewing can automate a large part of the recruiting process so less time

is spent sorting and disqualifying and more time concentrating on high-value finalists.

In other words, technology will transform the hiring process from one spent figuring out how to

eliminate applicants to one focused on wooing the most attractive and qualified candidates. And

to do so, employers will need to spend a lot more time thinking about, defining and enhancing

their culture brand.

culture branding

and one last thing…

/14

Don’t be an idealist, be

a realist. Survey your

employees and ask them

what it’s like to work at

your organization. What do

they enjoy most? What is

particularly challenging? What

would they want to relay to a

new employee?

Even more … of those

employees who are

particularly satisfied

and productive at your

organization, what do they

have in common?

Only then are you prepared

to begin defining your

employee culture. Capture

both the good and the not-so-

good. Find a way to celebrate

your unique, even quirky,

internal culture.

culture Branding: actionaBle insights

define your culture.

/15culture Branding: actionaBle insights

think aBout recruiting fewer.Look at each aspect of your

recruiting efforts and study

how you can attract fewer of

the wrong candidates, and

zero in on the right ones. In

your studies, consider:

sourcing technology.

How well do your current

tools scour available talent

and recommend the

right candidates?

the initial interview.

Can you eliminate the poor-fit

candidates more efficiently …

before you’ve invited them

too deep into your hiring

process? Consider video

recruiting tools to improve

the process.

improve your talent network.

Rather than “start cold” for

each new search, invest in

your existing talent network.

How can you capitalize on the

contacts you have amassed

from previous searches?

How can you ensure the

contacts are kept up to date

and, even more, can you keep

these relationships warm for

future searches?

culture branding /16

I first discovered the Unconference concept when I led a track at #Recruitfest in Toronto

in 1999. I was taken back by the way discussion flowed and the difference to a traditional

conference format. I led a track all day under a tree and learnt far more than I gave.

Two months later and back in the UK, we ran the first #truLondon at Canary Wharf in November

2009. Today, we’re running dozens of #tru events a year across Europe, North America, Africa

and the Asia-Pacific. Thousands of recruiters, HR leaders and providers coming together in an

informal spirit of information sharing and networking.

#tru is based on the BarCamp principle, which means that everybody can be an active

participant instead of listening to speakers and watching presentations all day. The emphasis is

on communication and the free exchange of ideas and experiences where the participants fuel

the conversations.

the #tru story

Bill Boorman

for more thought leadership go to talentproject.com

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TRU HEAT INDEX