Quadient’s Key to Internal Mobility & Creating an Agile Workforce That Lasts

Employee experience is finally having it’s well deserved time in the spotlight — especially as more companies feel the squeeze of tight labor markets and aim to reduce turnover with a unified talent solution that also facilitates internal mobility. 
 

The prioritization is warranted. Although 94% of employees said they’d stay with companies they believe are invested in their careers, most organizations struggle when it comes to developing their internal talent pool and increasing visibility of career growth opportunities for their people. 
 

But there are key strategies and technology that can help. Shelia Gray, VP of Talent Acquisition at Quadient, shared how the international customer communications leader overhauled its approach to internal mobility to power a better employee experience and turn intention into action.
 

Why Internal Mobility Is More Critical Than Ever
 

On the heels of the pandemic, organizations have emerged with fresh insights when it comes to fostering employee agility and career growth. Two top motivators companies need to consider, according to Gray: 
 

Your employer brand and employee value proposition are at stake. Internal mobility represents a commitment you make to your employees — and you need to demonstrate that you value it, Gray said, or your employer brand can suffer. Even more importantly, “You definitely do not want to lose your employee value proposition,” she revealed. “If employees don’t feel that the organization truly values them, they’ll seek opportunities that do.”
 

Candidates view internal mobility as a differentiator. When choosing between potential employers, key considerations for top talent include salary, purpose, culture, and professional development opportunities. Gray’s team commonly fields questions regarding career growth offerings from both external candidates and internal employees. They’re looking for a “differentiator” and a stand-out candidate or employee experience, she said.
 

The Disconnect Between External vs Internal Apply Experience
 

A poignant fact Gray emphasized: More than 50% of respondents to Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends survey thought their employees would have an easier time finding a new job with a new employer than within their current organization.“That’s a reflection on us as HR professionals,” Gray said. “What are we doing to make the internal experience meaningful?”
 

A very visible starting place is the experience that employees encounter when they apply for an internal position. How does your internal job site stack up against your external career site? Chances are, it’s not as “sexy,” Gray pointed out. 
 

Instead of a seamless experience filled with engaging video content, personalized job recommendations, and a job seeker-friendly chatbot to handle FAQs, interview scheduling, and more, employees may not even have a central organized place to see internal opportunities and apply.
 

This was the case for Quadient. Despite their amazing candidate experience, the apply process for employees was notably less sophisticated and efficient. “When it came to internal mobility, we were sending out old-school emails, we were putting stuff on bulletin boards internally to the organization instead of leveraging technology and building off of our community,” she said. 
 

The unfortunate consequence of this approach? Employee resumes can easily fall into a black hole, Gray noted, instead of ending up in front of recruiters and hiring managers where they belong. 
 

CASE STUDY: How Kuehne+Nagel built a scalable internal sourcing strategy

Prerequisites to Support An Internal Talent Marketplace 
 

Gray knew that to improve internal mobility, the concept would need to be holistically integrated into organizational culture. But how?
 

Ask the right questions. “The first piece for me on my journey with my organization was to look at our culture around internal mobility. How easy is it to move from one opportunity to another? How do you know what opportunities exist? Do we have platforms, tools and support? And what is our philosophy in terms of managers supporting the movement of their people throughout the organization?”
 

Invest in the right technology. Gray was laser-focused on making Quadient an enabler of internal mobility, and something she knew they needed was the technology to support it at scale. Quadient chose to invest in Phenom Employee Experience and its internal mobility capabilities, which provides AI-powered job recommendations, as well as learning and upskilling opportunities tailored to an employee-defined career path. 
 

To create and develop a flourishing internal talent marketplace, visibility is key. A convenient employee microsite now gives employees a one-stop-shop to browse and apply for open roles, keep track of applications, identify growth opportunities, and even make referrals.   
 

“We spent time with our employees and actually created a name for it: the Career Hub,” Gray said. “So people know, ‘If I’m looking for opportunities for development, I go to the Hub.’ It’s a wonderful, wonderful catch-all.” 
 

Align employees, recruiters and hiring managers. At Quadient, Gray established policies to guide the posting of internal jobs and the movement of eligible employees. When developing internal mobility policies, organizations need to consider: 
 

Should hiring managers be able to proactively contact internal employees and encourage them to apply for open positions without discussing it with the current manager or HR? 
 
Do employees need to inform managers when they’re looking at internal opportunities?
 
Do managers need to know when team members are being considered for another opportunity?

“Think about those questions carefully, because it makes a statement to employees,” Gray advised. “If you require them to notify their manager every time they’re applying for another position, what does that say about their ability to own their career?” On the other hand, once things have progressed to the point where employees are being considered for an opportunity, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to managers. 
 

Encouraging managers to champion internal mobility is another important piece of the culture. But it can be difficult for managers to lose an employee they’ve invested in and coached, Gray acknowledged, so it’s important to help them embrace new thinking. 
 

“The message to managers here should be: You’re not losing them – the organization is gaining that knowledge. Feel proud as their manager and coach that you’ve allowed them to grow to meet new opportunities,” she said.
 

Assessing Workforce Planning Metrics
 

Aligning employees, recruiters, and hiring managers is central to all successful hiring initiatives — internal positions included. According to Gray, part of that alignment comes down to understanding and sharing two essential workforce planning metrics:
 

Attrition. Continuously backfilling the same positions may indicate stalled growth. ”When we find we’re spending most of our time filling turnover roles, we have to ask ourselves why people are leaving,” Gray said.
 

Exit interview data. When asked “Why are you leaving?,” exiting employees overwhelmingly cite “better opportunities”. That needs follow-up, Gray said. “Do we ask, ‘What does that look like to you?’ Do we learn from that?” Digging deeper to uncover trends and areas of improved career growth visibility can only strengthen your internal mobility initiatives. 
 

“When I look at the jobs we fill, I look at the time, effort, and dollars we spend in the external market. I always stop and say, ‘Is there a better way to do things? Am I fully utilizing internal mobility to benefit the organization? Is my organization and my function delivering on our commitment to employees?’”
 

Having access to powerful real-time talent analytics that provide key data and insights into all of your talent experiences can expose areas for improvement and ways to track success. 
 

Tying Internal Mobility to KPIs 
 

Organizations are beginning to take better ownership of employee development, as evidenced in a study by CEB, a subsidiary of Gartner, which found that senior executives at 20% of companies surveyed had a performance objective tied to internal mobility metrics.
 

This is good news for employees and organizations alike, because accountability inspires action. “We own the concept of being internal coaches and sponsors for our employees,” Gray asserted. “That’s a big commitment, and now we need to live up to it.” 
 

In addition to tying internal mobility initiatives to KPIs, many companies are going beyond a check-the-box approach to internal mobility by offering mentoring programs, too, Gray mentioned. The right mentor can be instrumental in helping someone learn, network, and develop a fulfilling and successful career trajectory.
 

Gray’s parting words of advice: “When you think about internal mobility, think about it as an investment. Think about it as a long-term strategy… and how much richer your organization will be if you invest in it.” 
 

Employees are paying attention, and it is a game-changer to attract and retain top talent in this competitive market.

See what Phenom Employee Experience can do for your most valuable assets! 

jennifer.thomas
Fri, 06/18/2021 – 15:00

It’s All About the Bot: How Stanford Health Care Connects with Candidates

Michelle Hart, Lead Talent Strategist at Stanford Health Care, joined Talent Experience Live on June 10 to discuss how implementing a chatbot on their career site has transformed the talent experience for the organization. Get the scoop on what they learned, benefits of the chatbot, and how they’re planning to optimize their hiring strategy for future candidates!

Most of us are familiar with chatbots from shopping our favorite brands online. But they’re not just for consumer sites – chatbots can help employers provide a stand-out experience for candidates, giving TA teams the ability to deliver personalization at scale by automating sourcing, screening, scheduling, and FAQs. 
 

However, our State of Candidate Experience: 2021 Benchmarks report revealed that only 9% of Fortune 500 companies have a chatbot on their career site.
 

How exactly can an automated chatbot – essentially, a 2D robot – help provide a more personalized, candidate-friendly experience? Isn’t that an oxymoron? Discover how Stanford Health Care’s chatbot is doing just that — watch the full show below and read on for highlights! 
 

Chatbot FAQs reveal what candidates want
 

Chatbots save time for both recruiters and candidates. Beyond this key advantage, chatbots also provide insight into how employers can continuously adapt and improve the candidate experience on their career site.
 

For Stanford Health Care, a U.S. News & World Report Best Hospital, this benefit crystalized right away.
 

Leading up to the chatbot’s launch, Hart and a team of recruiters brainstormed FAQs they thought would be the most common and useful for candidates. Once the bot was up and running, however, a different picture emerged. 
 

“What it began to show us was some of those FAQs were not necessarily the same as what our candidates were wanting. So we were able to tweak those,” Hart said. She and her team adjusted the scope of FAQs to match what candidates asked about most often – an insight that wouldn’t have been so readily available before implementing the chatbot. They also mine questions coming in through the chatbot on a regular basis to guide career site changes and additions (more info on this later!).
 

Simplifying the candidate journey
 

Nurse recruitment is a challenge for any healthcare organization right now. Covid-19 further strained the existing nursing shortage, creating an extremely competitive market.
 

Stanford Health Care’s chatbot makes it easy for time-strapped nurses to complete the application process at their convenience, right from their cell phones. “We get a lot of responses and actual applies for our nurses through the chatbot,” Hart said. 
 

Relevant job matches. The chatbot takes nurses through a few questions, then suggests positions that best fit their skills and experience. 
 

Applying made easy. If a job candidate can’t complete the application process in one go, the bot allows them to pick up where they left off at any time. “If they happen to get disconnected, they can come back … or we can follow up with them,” Hart said. “The process is so simple.”
 

An engaging experience, site-wide

Candidates often enter a company’s career site from job boards and other channels, so their first encounter is not necessarily on the home page. But no matter where a candidate enters Stanford Health Care’s career site, the chatbot is there to engage and answer questions. 
 

Another benefit to having the chatbot available across the site? The bot “follows” candidates on every page and throughout the application process, which means candidates don’t have to leave the page they’re on if they have questions when applying for a job. 
 

“I also like that it remembers you, and will pick back up from conversations you’ve had previously, so you can see the interaction you’ve had with it,” Hart said.
 

With chatbot-CRM integration, personalization soars 
 

Although the chatbot launched in July 2020, it wasn’t until January 2021 that Stanford Health Care went live with a new integrated CRM. Now when the bot captures candidate details and the positions they’re interested in, that information gets passed along to the CRM. 
 

It’s made a dramatic difference in their recruiters’ ability to execute highly targeted email or text campaigns, or conduct personal follow-up with candidates. “It allows us to not miss out on candidates,” Hart said.
 

Staying connected with partial-apply candidates

Recruiters send “let’s stay connected” emails to keep Stanford top-of-mind with candidates who leave the career site or drop off during the apply process. “We’re saying ‘Hey, let’s stay connected. This time may not be right, but let’s look at the future – here’s the job you were interested in,’” Hart said. 
 

Personal FAQ follow up

Similarly, the recruitment team can see candidates’ specific questions on the FAQ page. Because the chatbot captures their email addresses along with the question, recruiters can follow up if needed to make sure questions were answered adequately. “We take it to the next level, and we can respond individually to them,” Hart said.

Related: The Value of 1M Chatbot Interactions: Southwest Airlines Tells All

Metrics: A quarter of a million chatbot interactions
 

As with any new technology, Stanford Health Care leaders initially questioned the chatbot’s ROI, Hart noted. Analytics made it easy for Hart’s team to demonstrate its value, showing that the bot drove: 
 

35,000 unique visits
11,000+ candidate leads
12,000 apply clicks
 
But the metric that made the biggest impact? Since the re-launch in January, the bot has garnered a quarter of a million interactions. “That was surprising to them, that there’s that much interaction that takes place on the career site. And for many [candidates], that’s the only interaction they have,” Hart said. 
 

“I think our leaders were truly blown away by the fact that that so many people interact and get a lot of their responses that way – so that’s why it’s even more important that our responses are relevant and meeting the candidates’ needs.”
 

Chatbot analytics enable agile career site optimization
 

With a daily check-in on chatbot analytics, Hart has been able to quickly adapt the career site to better meet candidates’ needs and expectations. 
 

“Our chatbot, along with our net promoter score … those two pieces provide me insight into how the site is doing, and any challenges somebody may be having with the site,” she said.  This feedback has prompted changes from minor tweaks that prevent frustration (e.g., fixing broken links and upload failures) to more major revisions. 
 

For example, Hart’s team noticed many questions coming in from newly graduated nurse candidates about the application and hiring process. “We realized there was such a need that we’re actually creating a more robust landing page on our career site with videos and links and more details, just for our new nursing grads. And that came from our chatbot,” she said. 
 

Reducing the number of support tickets

By using insight from the chatbot, Hart’s team can proactively address issues that typically would have resulted in calls and emails to HR from confused candidates. As a result, support tickets in the recruiter queue have dropped from an average of 50 per week down to one or two, according to Hart. 
 

Next up: automated scheduling 
 

In talking with department leaders, Hart has discovered that scheduling is a major bottleneck in the hiring process. Needless to say, she’s looking forward to implementing automated scheduling through the bot. 
 

“We want to add that so we can save our recruiters even more time, [as well as] our hiring managers – and have that strong candidate experience,” she said.
 

Check out Stanford Health Care’s career site for inspiration and to view the chatbot in action!
 

Sign up to get notified about future episodes of Talent Experience Live! Catch us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook every Thursday at noon ET to get the latest in recruiting, talent acquisition, talent management, and HR tech.

Level up your candidate experience with a chatbotRequest a demo
 

monica.montesa
Thu, 06/17/2021 – 23:12

The Definitive Guide to Recruitment Marketing

Recruiting top talent has changed a great deal in the last decade. Gone are the days of posting a job, running an advertisement or sharing an opening on social media, and hoping that it lures job seekers in to apply. 
 

Technology has transformed recruitment. Now, HR teams can rely on artificial intelligence, automation, and HR technology to connect with candidates, hire talent, and build relationships faster.
 

However, technology alone isn’t enough. If recruiters want to attract, engage, nurture, and convert job candidates, they have to act — and think — like marketers. Marketers are trained to influence and engage an audience and convince that audience to take action. To hire and retain top talent, recruiters need to adopt a marketing mindset and marketing strategies.
 

The challenge: Marketing and talent acquisition teams traditionally operate as distinct entities. However, recruiters can use many of the same marketing tactics and strategies to improve talent acquisition practices through recruitment marketing.
 

Recruitment marketing can help talent acquisition teams reach top talent, establish a positive employer brand, and provide a fantastic candidate experience from initial engagement to hire. 
 

Here at Phenom, we created The Definitive Guide to Recruitment Marketing to help recruiters and talent acquisition professionals understand how to reach top talent, create an ideal candidate experience, and bolster their employer brand. This guide will help you:
 

Understand exactly what recruitment marketing is
 
Build an effective recruitment marketing strategy
 
Tap into the best marketing channels and tactics to find and attract top talent
 
Establish a strong employer brand that reflects your mission, values, and culture
 
Measure and optimize your recruitment marketing efforts
 
And much more!

 

What is recruitment marketing?
 

Recruitment marketing refers to the strategies and tactics an organization’s talent acquisition team can use to find, attract, engage, and nurture talent before they apply for a job. Traditionally, marketing is used to raise brand awareness, drive engagement, and convert leads into paying customers, but talent acquisition teams can apply similar practices to find the best talent and culture fit for their company. 
 

Chelsea Eaton, Knowledge Management & Marketing at Phenom, says effective recruitment marketing is about proactive and reactive job sourcing.
 

“Recruitment marketing is not just about posting potential jobs and hoping to find your purple squirrel — your one-in-a-million, dream candidate. Recruitment marketing is about creating a strong magnet that draws talent to you. But to do that, you need to be sourcing above the funnel.”

Proactive campaigning happens before the immediate need to fill a role presents itself, like in the case of preparing for seasonal or cyclical hiring. Reactive campaigning, on the other hand, happens as the result of an unplanned departure. 
 

Recruitment marketing tactics are also relevant for both external candidates and internal candidates. While external recruitment marketing focuses on bringing new talent into an organization, internal recruitment marketing educates current employees on different career paths available in the organization, and helps them progress and build skills to move their career forward. 
 

Regardless of whether the recruitment is proactive or reactive, internal or external, the recruitment marketing funnel can be used to illustrate how a job seeker moves through each stage of their candidate journey.
 
1. Awareness. A candidate’s first impression of your employer brand. They likely encountered your brand through their job search on a third-party site or social media.
 

2. Consideration. This is the time introduce your value proposition as an employer. The candidate researches the role and your organization more thoroughly to consider whether or not they are interested. 
 

3. Interest. The job seeker has a positive, personalized experience through various recruitment marketing channels which encourages them to apply. 
 

4. Application. During this phase, job seekers apply and interview for the role. Applying to a role should be a seamless experience so candidates can apply quickly and are left with a positive impression. A difficult or confusing application process can increase friction and decrease your applicants. On top of that, hiring managers, recruiters, and others participating in the interview process should “sell” working for the company. Explain the value, benefits, and skills the job seeker will get as an employee.
 

5. Selection. A candidate is selected to fill a position. They use all of the information at their disposal, including their perception of the employer brand, salary, benefits, and more to decide whether or not to join an organization.
 

6. Hire. Finally, if a candidate accepts the offer, they are hired as an employee. It is in this stage where they can post a review of their recruitment experience. 
 

The recruitment marketing tactics discussed throughout this guide will help you move job candidates through the recruitment marketing funnel from awareness to application.
 

However, while many recruiters and talent acquisition teams use the terms “recruitment marketing” and “talent marketing” interchangeably, “talent marketing” is a broader concept which involves the entire talent lifecycle — including the awareness, hiring, employment, and post-employment stages — while recruitment marketing typically only includes the hiring stage.
 

For the sake of this guide, we will refer to talent marketing as the broader, entire-lifecycle strategy within which recruitment marketing fits. Our focus in this guide is to teach you about the successful marketing strategies and tactics recruiters can use up to the point of hire. 
 

What is an employer brand and why does it matter?
 

Before jumping into the specifics of recruitment marketing goals and strategy, it’s important to define what an employer brand is. Building a positive employer brand is an important part of every recruitment marketing strategy, as it impacts your ability to attract and retain top talent.
 

An employer brand reflects the values of a company. It’s also a way for businesses to differentiate themselves from other companies in order to interest future employees and retain current ones.
 

On top of that, an employer brand is a company’s reputation. It affects how employees and job seekers perceive the company. It also impacts whether or not a job seeker will want to work for them. In fact, 86% of women and 67% of men in the United States wouldn’t join a company with a bad reputation.
 

How to Build a Recruitment Marketing Strategy
 

Defining a recruitment marketing strategy helps talent acquisition teams and recruiters understand their goals and what steps they need to take to reach them. 
 

Think of your strategy as a blueprint to attract top talent, establish your employer brand, and provide job seekers a positive candidate experience. Establishing your strategy upfront makes marketing recruitment much easier in the long run. Here are three ways to get started.
 

1. Set recruitment marketing goals
 

Having documented goals can help you more easily identify the best marketing recruitment channels and tactics to accomplish them.
 

For instance, if one of your main goals is to increase candidate engagement with your employer brand, then you may place high importance on optimizing your career site to include chatbots (more on that in a moment). Or, maybe you want to increase the number of job applicants received through social media. In that case, you may prioritize social media marketing over other tactics.
 

Other recruitment marketing goals you may want to consider include:
 

Increasing the number of completed job applications
 
Growing your job applicant pool
 
Increasing web traffic to your career site
 
Improving job acceptance rates
 
Increasing employer brand awareness
 
Improving quality of hire
 
Whatever your goals are, document measurable goals and set a time period within which you would like to achieve them. Share your goals with your team so everyone understands what you are working toward. 
 

HR technology can help you track your progress towards your goals with analytics. We’ll talk more about analytics later on in this guide.
 

2. Define your audience and build personas
 

Identifying your target audience and building personas is a critical step to any recruitment marketing strategy. Marketers use the term “personas” to refer to their ideal target audiences. Personas let you attach a name and characteristics to a fictionalized person that mimic characteristics of your ideal job applicant. This helps you reach and attract them to your employer brand with targeted messaging. 
 

Create a persona for each ideal job applicant you have. If you’re recruiting for a technology company, for instance, the persona for an engineering candidate will likely differ greatly from the persona for a marketing role.
 

Your different personas will include information, like:
 

Demographics. What is the ideal applicant’s age, gender, marital status, number of children, location, and level of education?
 
Behavior. Where does this persona turn for information about a company? What websites and blogs do they read? Who do they engage with on social media?
 
Psychographics. What does this persona believe about themselves? What are the short and long term goals? What values drive them? What are their challenges and pain points? 
 
Geographics. Where are they located? What are their geographic preferences? 
 
You can use worksheets like this template to help you build your ideal job candidate personas. 
 

3. Select your marketing channels and tactics

When thinking about which marketing channels to use, first think about where your personas go online to seek information about jobs and employers. It’s likely there are generational differences across your personas, so keep that in mind when seeking diverse talent.
 

There are four highly-effective channels talent marketers rely on to optimize their candidate funnel and build their employer brand:
 

Career sites for job seekers and employees
 
Social media marketing for recruitment
 
SMS marketing recruitment
 
Email marketing for recruitment
 
We’ll cover each channel in detail in the next section of this guide. But, depending on your unique goals, know that you may choose a couple — or all of these channels — to support your recruitment marketing strategy. 

Case Study: Land O’Lakes Campaign Gets Critical Jobs Filled Fast 

4 recruitment marketing myths
 

There are a few persuasive misconceptions (or myths) that could hurt or misguide your recruitment marketing strategy. Below, we’ll briefly debunk them.
 

Myth 1: You should only promote your employer brand when you have job openings.

Recruitment marketing isn’t only about promoting open roles. It’s also about marketing your employer brand and building a large talent pipeline you can call upon once you do have an open role. Strong recruitment marketing strategies enhance the reputation of your employer brand, build your talent pipeline, and help you fill roles. 
 

Myth 2: Job seekers only care about money and perks.

On the contrary, data shows that job seekers care about your employer brand and reputation. In fact, 84% of employees would consider leaving their current role for another company with an excellent reputation. A great employer brand is a benefit that can make up for a lower salary or fewer perks.
 

Myth 3: Just posting your opening on a job board is enough to fill roles.

While this is one strategic way to promote a job role, there are many effective recruitment marketing strategies and channels (as mentioned in the section above) that help recruiters build their employer brand and promote roles. To quickly fill reqs and build your talent pipeline, you should rely on multiple recruitment marketing channels.
 

Myth 4: Long application forms only deter uninterested applicants.

Sixty percent of job seekers quit the online application process due to form length or complexity. That 60% includes great applicants. High-quality applicants can be selective as they apply for roles. A long, difficult application process may stop them from ever applying, as they have other options.

 

Career sites for job seekers and employees

Career sites showcase employer branding and encourage job seekers to learn more about what it’s like to work at your company. They also keep recruitment efforts separate from a company’s primary website, which is often used for marketing products or services. 
 

Effective career sites should highlight elements of your culture, core values, benefits, and more to resonate with your candidate personas and be consistent with your employer branding. It’s the perfect place for you to control your message and share your brand’s story. 
 

There are six core elements to an effective career site: 
 

1. Personalized job and content recommendations. Career sites that leverage AI and automation can deliver tailored jobs and information to candidates based on their skills, experience, and location. This ensures they find what they’re looking for faster, ultimately leading to increased conversions.
 

2. Job postings. Job postings should be up to date and clearly accessible within your career site. Make sure your apply flow is optimized to ensure candidates have the smoothest journey to apply. 
 

3. Testimonials. Gather testimonials from current, happy employees in various departments and display them prominently on your pages. This is an effective form of social proof — a form of influence that highlights how others achieve positive results — that contributes to creating a positive employer brand.
 

4. Videos. Show candidates what your employees love about your company, rather than simply tell. As attention spans get shorter, video content is more likely to capture candidates’ attention.
 

5. Glassdoor reviews. If your company has Glassdoor reviews higher than four stars, display your reviews on your career site. You can ask employees to write Glassdoor reviews, but make sure you encourage employees to leave honest feedback — whether it’s positive or negative.
 

6. Chatbots. Chatbots are a tool to build help grow your candidate pipeline, build quality relationships, and provide helpful information through automating conversations. “Chatbots should be set up to sound friendly and answer commonly asked questions. Job seekers should be able to quickly get answers to their most pressing questions, and chatbots are a great way to scale that part of the process,” says Eaton. 

For example, Brother International Corporation incorporates a chatbot — which they named “Ays” for “at your side” — that makes it easy for job seekers to get quick answers and recommendations for potential jobs based on keywords they enter in the chat. 
 

These six elements should appear on both internal and external career sites. Since internal job seekers and external candidates are ultimately different audiences, Eaton advises talent acquisition teams create separate career sites. 
 

“Your internal career site or employee portal should be used to promote your company culture. If diversity, equity, and inclusion is a big part of your employer brand, it should definitely be top of mind within the site. This is also a great place to create employee resource groups and events for different demographic groups to share their experiences in the workplace and ensure their voice is heard.”

Related: Diversity & Inclusion: The Definitive Guide for HR

However, for a career site to effectively convert job seekers into candidates, potential candidates need to be able to find it online. SEO — or search engine optimization — helps to make your career site more discoverable in search results. 
 

Following some SEO best practices, like setting up your metadata, indexing proper pages, using alt text on images and videos, and optimizing your URLs, can ensure your site is easily found in job searches. These SEO elements are managed within your career site’s Content Management System (CMS).
 

Mobile optimization is another key consideration. Glassdoor found that 58% of their users look at jobs from their phones. If candidates have a bad experience on your career site because it isn’t mobile-friendly, they are more likely to bounce and look for jobs elsewhere. 
 

But, ultimately, one of the biggest elements to keep in mind when creating your career sites is accessibility and inclusion.
 

Having an accessible site not only ensures that you’re compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, but also that you’re expanding your candidate pool as wide as possible and attracting diverse candidates, including those with auditory, visual, cognitive, and mobile difficulties.
 

To make your site WCAG compliant, you need to:
 

Include alt text on all images and descriptive captions on all videos
 
Make sure the site’s color contrast is set appropriately for those with visual impairments
 
And organize the content on your site to be easily read from a sight reader
 
Having an accessible career site can make a huge difference for diverse job seekers. 

Related: Every Career Site Should Be Accessible. Here’s Where to Start.

Social media for recruitment marketing

Social media marketing contributes to creating an online employer brand that attracts and engages potential candidates. In fact, 92% of companies use social media for recruiting, and 62% of job seekers use social media channels to evaluate the employer brand of a company.
 

While LinkedIn is most commonly used for recruitment marketing, other channels include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Each platform serves a different purpose, so it’s important to only pick platforms that enhance your company’s brand. 
 

Your candidate personas will determine which channels to prioritize. For instance, advertising job openings on TikTok is a strategic move to attract a younger audience for internships and entry-level roles, as 60% of TikTok users are GenZers. 
 

Here are six things you need to consider before using social media for recruitment marketing:
 

1. Set up separate social accounts to support your recruitment efforts. Because your recruitment personas and marketing personas are likely very different, it makes sense to have separate social accounts to best communicate and engage with job candidates. 

2. Include a link to your career site in your social bios. Make it as easy as possible for those who want to learn more about your employer brand and job openings to do so. 

3. Create social content that reflects your employer brand. Content that engages potential candidates should be helpful, engaging, important, and memorable. It should contribute to the feeling you want followers to have about your employer brand.

4. Encourage employee referrals. Leverage your employee’s existing talent networks to reach your ideal candidate. Make sharing job postings and events easy by providing content for employees to post on social media and consider an employee reward for successfully referring a candidate.

5. Evaluate paid social ads. After building your social presence on your chosen platforms, consider allocating a budget towards paid media, which can help target your job postings to a more specific audience.

6. Measure results and adjust course. Nothing is ever set in stone when it comes to marketing recruitment. It’s okay to go back to the drawing board if you don’t see results. Measure, iterate, and try different tactics.

Related: LinkedIn Tips & Tricks for Recruiters & Job Seekers

Your social media presence is a part of your employer brand and reputation. It’s also a key recruitment marketing strategy. With that in mind, it’s important to know what to avoid so you don’t negatively impact your employer brand or your recruitment marketing strategy. Here are four mistakes to avoid on social media:
 

1. Don’t be insensitive or careless. World-renowned brands have damaged their employer brand through careless social media posts that were insensitive or hurtful. To avoid mistakes like this, develop a consistent employer brand voice you can use across your social media channels. Also, educate anyone who posts on your employer brand social media accounts on best practices.

2. Don’t stop posting. Long periods of time where you don’t post on your employer social media accounts can leave a bad impression among job seekers. Above all, it’s difficult to build an audience if you don’t post regularly.

3. Don’t only post job openings. Instead, think about ways you can add value to your followers. Post content that’s helpful and interesting to them — like career advice, insights on the hiring process and interviewing, or even employee perspectives on your company and culture.

4. Don’t post the same content on all of your social media platforms. Certain types of content perform better on different social media platforms. For instance, images are the focus of Instagram, and without an interesting image, your posts are unlikely to perform well. In comparison, written copy tends to perform best on LinkedIn. To maximize your engagement, customize your posts to each platform.

 

Short Message Service (SMS) for recruitment marketing

It’s no surprise that SMS — or text messaging — marketing is becoming so popular. SMS receives impressive open rates of about 99% — with 97% of those messages being read within the first 15 minutes of being sent.

Case Study: How Mercy Converted 69% of Job Seekers with SMS Marketing and a Recruitment Marketing Strategy 

Recruitment marketing is about creating personal relationships, and SMS is one of the most personal ways to connect. It’s meeting the candidate where they are — on their mobile device — and quickly communicating with real-time job status updates, event invitations, job postings, and interview appointments.
 

Here are four tips to incorporate SMS into your recruitment marketing strategy:
 

1. Personalize your text messages. SMS is a highly personal channel. Add a personal touch to texts by using the potential candidates’ first names and only sending them event or job updates relevant to their professional interests.
 

2. Strategically use one-to-many SMS messages. Not all texts need to be one-to-one. You can send mass text messages to a wide recipient base as long as the content is relevant. 
 

3. Enable text-for-info. Allow your candidates to text a keyword to receive up-to-date information about your job postings and events, and even get answers to commonly asked questions. 
 

4. Be mindful of timing. Consider your audience and text during your candidates’ preferred time frames.

Read more: Connect with Candidates Faster Using Phenom SMS Messaging

Email marketing for recruitment marketing

Email marketing helps you to stay in touch with and nurture job seekers in the recruitment funnel throughout their candidate journey. 
 

However, whether job seekers entered your recruitment funnel through applying for a potential job, signing up for company updates, or attending an event, you need to get their permission to email them due to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which dictates that sites clearly articulate how a visitor’s data is used. Getting permission can be as simple as a potential candidate filling out a form to hear about job updates from your company.
 

Thankfully, following a few best practices will ensure you won’t have any issue staying compliant with GDPR. Here are seven tips to get subscriber permission and set up an effective recruitment email marketing strategy:
 

1. Ask job applicants to sign up for updates. Add a checkbox or language to your application to let potential candidates know about the benefits of being a part of your talent community and what to expect from your email updates. This helps keep talent leads warm for positions that take longer to fill, and getting permission also helps you remain GDPR-compliant. 
 

2. Create an email content calendar. Determine how often you want to reach out to your talent community and map out your email sends in a content calendar. Bonus points if the content in your email aligns with events, thought leadership content, and social content. Strategically set the email schedule as well, ensuring they’re sent at the ideal time of day and at a standard cadence.
 

3. Add a signup form to your career site. A signup form on your career site is an easy way to collect job seekers’ email addresses to grow your email candidate pool. 
 

4. Set up automated email campaigns. Automated drip campaigns keep candidates connected to your employer branding and informed of new job opportunities. You can even send candidates personalized, curated job listings based on what you know about their job preferences. 
 

5. Write compelling subject lines. Subject lines are one of the main reasons a candidate will open an email. Effective subject lines are short — about four to seven words — and speak to your candidates’ motivators. Try asking a question and approach writing subject lines with a conversational tone.
 

6. Segment your email list. Send highly personalized emails to a clearly defined segment of your audience to improve opens, clicks, and engagement. For example, send personalized emails to segments based on job title or department, experience level, or location. 
 

7. A/B test your emails. The best way to improve your open and click rates is by measuring what works and what doesn’t, and A/B testing is a great way to do this. An A/B test is when you send two variations of a nearly identical email to segments of your list to see which performs better. For example, you can test a short subject line against a long subject line to see which earns a higher open rate. You can test almost anything — like send time and day, content length, button colors, and more — to optimize your campaigns.
 

8. Track email performance. Monitor open rates and click through rates to determine what’s working and what isn’t — and make changes as needed.

Get inspired: How to Become a Recruitment Marketing Leader with Newell Brands 

How to track and optimize your recruitment marketing campaigns

Analyzing and tracking results and making data-informed decisions helps you optimize your recruitment marketing funnel and have more meaningful conversations with candidates. 
 

Some key recruitment marketing metrics you will want to track include:
 

Number of job applicants and returning job applicants
 
Page views, bounce rate, time on site, number of pages viewed, and new and returning traffic to your career site
 
SMS open and click rates (The average open rate for SMS campaigns is 98%.)
 
Social media engagement — such as likes, comments, and shares
 
Email marketing open and click rates (The average email open rate is 18% and the average click-through rate is 2.6%.)
 
The number of completed applications
 
Time-to-hire
 
Time-to-apply 
 
Apply rate
 
Cost per application

Ultimately, you have to test to see what works. That includes testing elements of your recruitment marketing campaign, like the best time to send email campaigns and what types of content get the most engagement on social media. 
 

Checking the results of your tests along with traditional recruitment metrics will give you a holistic look at how your recruitment marketing efforts are paying off. This information will help you optimize your recruitment marketing strategy to attract, discover, engage, nurture and convert more top talent.

Read more: Driving Successful Business Outcomes with Talent Analytics 

Summary of recruitment marketing strategy and tactics

Recruitment marketing is more than a means to hire top talent. It’s a strategic approach to attract, engage, nurture and convert candidates, as well as create an ideal candidate experience and bolster your employer brand. 
 

An effective recruitment marketing strategy takes both external job seekers and internal job candidates into consideration. It includes reactive and proactive marketing efforts. 
 

Set and document personas and goals to give your recruitment marketing strategy direction and inform which marketing channels and tactics will help your team accomplish them.
 

Review your career site(s) to ensure they are accessible to all potential candidates, optimized for search engines, and ensure the best possible candidate experience with automated conversations.
 

Personalize communication with your talent community through social media, SMS, and email marketing.
 

Track and measure results for all campaigns. Don’t be afraid to change course — no recruitment marketing strategy is ever written in stone.

 

Optimize your recruitment marketing with Phenom

Phenom’s suite of recruitment marketing tools will help talent acquisition teams and recruiters attract, discover, engage, nurture, and convert job seekers into high-performing employees:
 

Personalized Career Sites: Easily create and manage career sites to deliver recommended jobs and content to candidates, grow your talent pool, and stay engaged throughout the candidate journey.
 

Talent CRM: Build engaged candidate pipelines, easily identify top talent, and rediscover quality candidates with the AI-powered CRM. 
 

Conversational Chatbot: Automate sourcing, screening, scheduling, and FAQs with a recruiting chatbot that’s available to connect with job seekers 24/7.
 

Marketing Campaigns: Automate and optimize candidate conversations with email marketing, SMS, and 1:1 messaging technology. Nurture talent leads by cultivating and maintaining relationships for upcoming career opportunities. 
 

Automated Scheduling: Conversational AI allows candidates to self-select their ideal meeting time based on real-time team availability.
 

AI Insights & Analytics: Get recruitment insights to discover and rediscover candidate leads based on fit. 
 

Crush your recruitment marketing goals with Phenom!Request a demo

monica.montesa
Thu, 06/17/2021 – 08:37

Introducing Phenom Mentoring: Elevating Employee Experience & Creating Meaningful Connections at Scale

In today’s competitive job market, employee engagement has emerged as a critical driver for retaining top talent and attracting best-fit candidates. Companies that prioritize employee development — embedding it as a key pillar in their strategic workforce plans — increase productivity, improve quality of work quality, and ultimately influence their future success. 
 

One way to help employees learn and evolve? A well-functioning mentorship program that supports employees in their professional growth.
 

To make it easier for employers to implement or level up their existing mentoring programs, we’re excited to announce Phenom Mentoring — a new Employee Experience product that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and automation to connect employees and experienced leaders seeking a mentor-mentee relationship. 
 

As a result, organizations boost employee engagement, support onboarding, and accelerate career growth and success.  
 

Read the press release here >
 

Why mentorships matter — and how Phenom can help 
 

Meaningful mentorships enable employees to learn and develop by building one-to-one relationships with internal leaders, increasing knowledge, and building skills for future goals and milestones. A mentor serves as a teacher, counselor, and advocate to a mentee, resulting in a mutually beneficial professional relationship over time.
 

Phenom Mentoring simplifies and optimizes the matching process, pairing mentors and mentees based on their skills, career paths, location, goals, and mentoring styles. Using the product, all employees can:
 

Discover AI-recommended available mentors based on suggested criteria
Request a compatible mentor to help them reach clearly defined goals
Initiate and manage mentorships within Phenom’s talent experience platform
Track mentorship goals, objectives, session summaries, and resources
Build 1:1 connections to foster hard and soft skills and navigate career paths

Here’s a sneak peek at how it works:
                        

INTELLIGENT MATCHING

Within the employee portal via Phenom Employee Experience, AI matching connects mentors with mentees faster based on skills, career paths, and goals. Mentees can then request a mentor that they would like to work with.
 
MENTORING ACTIVITY 

Participants get access to a collaborative portal where they can manage goals, session summaries, and resources. 
   
ENGAGEMENT TOOLS

With email and in-app notifications, mentors and mentees can easily connect, share their progress, and stay aligned.
 

Building the foundation for a strong mentoring program
 

According to a recent study, 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if they were offered opportunities to learn and grow. By tackling common industry and professional skill gaps, mentoring enables companies to keep their employees’ skills in sync with the constantly changing world of work, develop a stronger workforce, and encourage career mobility. 
 

Mentoring has grown significantly in the last few years with more and more businesses embracing the concept of mentoring as a professional development tool. While there are many different types of mentoring relationships, organizations, mentors, and mentees should identify what style(s) work best for them.
 

Types of Mentoring
 

1-1 Mentoring: The most traditional of all types of mentoring. Only the mentor and mentee are involved in this type of mentoring, usually a more-experienced individual paired with a less-experienced mentee.
 

Distance or E-Mentoring: A one-to-one relationship facilitated by technology. Participants can connect virtually without losing the personal touch (e.g., Skype, email).
 

Situational mentoring: Used for a short time and happens for a specific issue or purpose such as preparing for a new assignment.
 

Group or team mentoring: A program that can either consist of a mentor with several mentees, or a mentee with several mentors. This model is commonly used by schools and youth programs.
 

Peer mentoring: This mentoring relationship is more reciprocal than hierarchical, aimed at promoting a sense of community. Participants usually have the same role or come from the same department. In some cases, they might share similar work and life experiences.
 

Reverse mentoring: An approach that flips the traditional model. A less experienced, often younger, employee mentors a more experienced individual, encouraging both parties to teach and learn at the same time.
 

It’s important to remember that mentoring success does not happen overnight. Effective mentoring takes effort, and creating successful mentoring relationships requires specific skills, sensibilities, and structure from both the mentor and the mentee. 
 

Success happens when both parties take responsibility for making it work. Many effective mentoring relationships that have developed over a long period of time are successful because learning happens on both sides.
 

Not only does Phenom Mentoring enable mentees to learn and achieve goals rapidly with real-world experiences, mentors also gain key leadership skills. And the benefits go beyond just the mentor/mentee relationship: As employers empower talent to elevate their professional relationships and take charge of their career growth, they’re able to attract more best-fit talent, boost engagement, and improve retention. 
 

It’s a win-win for everyone.

Designing a fulfilling employee experience
 

Employees today are consumers of the workplace. Many are no longer satisfied with simplify clocking in and out — they’re constantly looking for growth and development opportunities that will help evolve their careers. 
 

Within Phenom’s Employee Experience, Mentoring adds a critical component to a robust talent marketplace that gives employees full access to determine their career trajectory, discover open roles, gain new skills, seek out real-world work experiences, and network with relevant groups. 
 

Infused with Phenom AI and machine learning to deliver personalized recommendations and content, Phenom Employee Experience includes an array of tools to help organizations transform their people, such as Career Pathing, Internal Mobility, Learning and Development, Gigs, Employee Resource Groups, D&I, and Referrals. 
 

Whether you’re building an effective workplace mentoring program, or taking your existing program to the next level, now’s the time to drive employee engagement and future-proof your workforce. 
 

Explore how Phenom Mentoring can help organizations increase employee engagement, nurture emerging talent, and build a strong, more cohesive company culture.
 

To learn more, join us for a live Phenom Mentoring demo on July 8! 

Register now
 

monica.montesa
Wed, 06/09/2021 – 22:31

Sustainable Work-Life Balance: It Takes Two to Make A Thing Go Right

Maintaining a healthy work-life balance depends on commitment from both the employee and the employer, say Ioana Lupu, Associate Professor at EESEC Business School France and Mayra Ruiz-Castro, Sr. Lecturer at the University of Roehampton, UK. On last week’s Talent Experience Live, they discussed shifting perspectives among at-home workers and what that means for employers. 
 

The prominence of work-life balance is here to stay for many organizations, but how can they maximize productivity and wellbeing among employees? The long-simmering issue sits on the forefront of HR, but the right approach and communication plan have yet to be determined.
 

Work-life balance should be sustainable, and many employers see it as a problem they’re trying to solve. Continuous work-life balance is possible, say Lupu and Ruiz-Castro in their research-based Harvard Business Review article (which includes their work on the effects of Covid-19 on work habits and employer responses).
 

Watch the full TXL episode with Lupu and Ruiz-Castro in the video below, or read on for key takeaways! You’ll hear sustainable recommendations for work-life balance, as well as attitudes and activities employers should to explore.
 

 

What we learned from the pandemic: A different approach is possible
 

Remote work was unthinkable for many companies at first. But when the majority of the workforce transitioned to places other than the office to do their jobs — and leaders saw new levels of productivity — they eventually learned that virtual operations were possible after all, according to Lupu.
 

“Surprisingly, many, many companies were already prepared for this jump to working from home, so it wasn’t [about] the technological obstacles. They really were equipped to have teams working from home,” she said. “It was mostly a cultural obstacle. Many people thought it wasn’t acceptable and feared being sanctioned or penalized in their careers, or not being considered committed workers.”
 

Just as organizations couldn’t imagine their teams working from home, employees themselves didn’t consider a different way of working, either — until they had to. The pandemic opened workers’ eyes to new ways of performing their jobs and meeting expectations. 

RELATED: Leading HR Through a Pandemic and Beyond

“People now realize that work-life balance is not something that is unattainable, or a ‘nice-to-have, or some sort of privilege,'” Ruiz-Castro said.
 

As employees grow their awareness of better work-life balance, companies’ should respond similarly by offering alternative approaches and means to work, she added.
 

Considerations for global organizations

Attitudes about work-life balance, including hours and vacation policies, vary from country to country. “We have to distinguish between organizational culture and national culture. Both are strong forces,” Ruiz-Castro said. 
 

National cultures influence the understanding of and approach to work-life balance. For example, France has a strong national culture that prioritizes work-life balance, where labor laws cap the number of hours employees can be required to work per day and per week. 
 

On the other hand, the U.S. values autonomy, in which workers self-govern their effort in meeting expectations and accomplishing goals. They often put in long hours of work to make success possible. 
 

Contrasts like these can impact arrangements companies make for employees in different countries where work-life balance beliefs and cultures aren’t the same.  
 

Work-life balance messaging: From flexibility to wellbeing 
 

Ruiz-Castro’s current research targets the impact of Covid-19 on work habits. Her studies include speaking with employees who say their main concern has shifted away from flexibility to well-being and health.  
 

“The emphasis went from ‘how many hours or days a week do you want to work to balance work and life’ to ‘let’s make sure you’re alright,'” she said. “Let’s protect your well-being and health.”
 

For example, some managers are sending messages to employees that encourage them to take breaks as needed. Additionally, many companies are implementing policies that control when meetings can, or cannot, take place. For some, that means no meetings are allowed during lunchtime, and that a 10-minute break is required between each meeting. It’s important for employees to get up and move around during the day, and regular breaks promote well-being. 
 

Some employers are also offering yoga, pilates, mental wellness-focused activities, and sending employees wellness packages, Ruiz-Carlos said.
 

Working from home: Balancing the positive with the negative
 

Formulating new policies on flexible work hours takes more than one step. First, organizations must understand that there are positive and negative impacts of fluid work schedules, and that various employee groups are affected in different ways. 
 

As part of Ruiz-Castro and Lupu’s ongoing research on employee perspectives of working from home, they have uncovered trends in the benefits and drawbacks of remote work.
 

Many employees who work from home report feeling more focused than at the office, which enables them to get more done in a shorter amount of time. They also say they appreciate the ability to interweave things like housework and supermarket runs into their workday. “They feel they’re able to be more autonomous regarding work and their personal life,” Ruiz-Castro said. 
 

A commonly mentioned negative impact of remote work is the feeling of isolation. Ruiz-Castro finds newer members of the workforce are missing out on face-to-face learning activities with their colleagues, and remote workers don’t always feel properly trained or rooted in company culture. 
 

Employees also report working longer hours in response to hyper-visibility. Apps like Microsoft Teams and Slack enable colleagues to communicate and stay connected, but it also allows managers to see who is actively online. 
 

“In response to these demands for hyper-visibility, they try to adapt some strategies to render themselves more visible. Some of that may be around working more hours and showing more availability,” Lupu said.

WATCH: Reversing Remote Work Burnout: Insights from Gallup

Reaching “optimal busyness”
 

Throughout her research, Lupu has identified three general levels of what she calls “temporal experiences” that employees tend to navigate between:
 

Extreme busyness: Employees feel overburdened by being excessively busy. They feel out of control and errors increase.
 

Optimal busyness: The moment when employees feel they’ve achieved balance. They’re meeting deadlines and feel autonomous and stimulated.
 

Boredom: Productivity lags and employees feel under-stimulated by work. 
 

The takeaway? If employers can find a way to help employees understand and achieve that desired “optimal-busyness” level, productivity and happiness should soar. 
 

Managers’ role in helping employees find a balance 
 

Managers are a key factor in the work-life balance equation. “There must be a stronger sense of responsibility for employees’ well-being, especially during these times,” Ruiz-Castro said. 
 

Encourage acts of self-care 

According to Ruiz-Castro, managers should make it a point to simply ask employees if they’ve done something for themselves, as part of their supporting well-being and balance. 
 

“If they want their employees to feel happy, and be productive and in balance, that’s something that managers can do,” she said. 
 

RELATED BLOG: Connecting with Care: How Employers Can Better Support Working Parents

Provide frequent feedback (but don’t overdo it)

Leaders can help boost employee engagement and increase productivity by giving feedback regularly rather than here-and-there throughout the year, leading up to an annual review. 
 

“One thing is sure — and we see this trend accelerating — we’re moving away from this kind of outdated annual or bi-annual feedback, or evaluation with teams toward more continuous feedback, almost real-time feedback on performance,” Lupu said. “This trend can go in a very, very good direction.” 
 

But she cautioned that it can go too far. “How much is too much? How much goes beyond the limits of what’s good for employees?” 
 

Be genuine

It’s important to always offer sincere support. “Attention to employees’ well-being has to be genuine. If it’s just a box-ticking exercise, employees of course won’t like that. Employees are not naïve. They know when it’s genuine care and when it’s in the interest of profits,” Ruiz-Carlos said.
 

 

Sign up to get notified about future episodes of Talent Experience Live! Catch us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook every Thursday at noon ET to get the latest in recruiting, talent acquisition, talent management, and HR tech.

holly.pennebaker
Wed, 06/09/2021 – 02:41

Mars’ Secret To A Sweeter Candidate Experience

On the surface, your career site looks sweet. Authentic messaging? Check. Engaging content and video? Check. Personalized job recommendations, chatbot, hiring events? Check, check, check. 
 

So why are you still experiencing high candidate drop off and a low ratio of completed job applications to job views? Most likely, it comes down to a critical yet often overlooked element — an inconvenient apply process that stops otherwise eager job seekers dead in their tracks. 
 

But with the right tech, TA teams can do something about this unsavory experience, says Josh Ayala, Global Process Manager of Talent Acquisition at Mars, the world’s leading manufacturer of chocolate and fan favorite confections.
 

Ayala shared the secret to what’s driving more conversions and powering better performance than ever for the Mars career site during Phenom’s IAMHR virtual conference. Find out what Mars and other Talent Experience Management (TXM) customers are using to sweeten their candidate experiences from “hi” to “apply” and beyond.
 

Treating Candidates To A Seamless Experience 
 

As the parent company of top candy brands and pocketbook staples like Extra, Altoids, and Lifesavers, Mars understands that job seekers expect a certain experience when perusing and pursuing open opportunities.
 

When their TA team turned to Phenom to improve their candidate experience, they had just gone through a global rebrand and wanted to weave their new brand identity into all aspects of the candidate journey — apply process included. 
 

“Being able to customize our apply flow to meet our Mars branding, purpose, and identity — and be able to share that experience with the candidate — was one of the top reasons we did that at first,” said Ayala. “We saw the advantage of being able to own that candidate experience [and] what the candidate will go through.”
 

Without it, a job candidate lands on a fabulous, modern career site, finds the perfect job, and clicks “apply,” only to be booted to an antiquated, clunky application process that’s anything but personalized. The result? Countless candidates abandon ship, recruiters gather zero information on partial applicants, and what could have been a match made in heaven instead leaves both parties wondering what could have been.
 

This broken experience can overshadow even the most advanced career sites — but it doesn’t have to, Ayala points out. Together with Phenom’s CRM and seamless ATS integrations with countless partners, Hosted Apply gives candidates the ability to complete every step in the apply process without ever leaving a company’s career site.

Learn how Brother increased completed applications 85% with Phenom 

 

The Benefits of Hosted Apply 
 

Here are the top ways Phenom’s Hosted Apply flow has empowered the Mars team to improve their candidate experience, resulting in more “submits” and less drop off.
 

Increased conversions. Keeping the apply process streamlined on your career site provides a more consistent, cohesive candidate experience that significantly increases conversion rates.“Analytics show performance is better than our previous career site, including more visitors and a higher percentage of conversions,” Ayala revealed.
 

Instead of re-entering the same information over and over again, candidates are given the luxury of applying through various social profiles, which prefills required information — or they can instantly upload a resume via the cloud. Easy, peasy.
 

Lead capture for partial applicants. Behind the scenes, AI captures profile data of partial applicants and feeds it into the CRM. This means that a candidate who doesn’t actually submit a resume can still become a viable lead for a recruiter to personally engage and nurture.
 

AI’s sophisticated matching capabilities makes it easy to personalize the communication with relevant content and targeted recruitment marketing campaigns that are more likely to inspire a completed application. 
 

Real-time candidate traffic patterns. The CRM also shows in real time when and where a candidate drops from the application process. By being able to pinpoint this information, recruiters can dig deeper to figure out if there’s a root cause along the way that can be fixed to encourage a complete apply. For example, many companies realize they need to shorten the application, modify specific questions, or reduce certain requirements.
 

In addition, the ability to analyze where job seeker traffic is coming from helps teams easily measure ROI and adjust ad spend depending on which job boards are generating the most leads. 
 

Analytics to optimize content. When apply conversion rates lag, the job title or description itself (rather than the application process) may be the reason, Ayala noted. Apply flow analytics can help TA leaders uncover and remedy potential bottlenecks with data-backed insights. 
 

“A lot of times, drop off is not just in your application. It could potentially be your job titles or job description. This gives us a way to revisit the job descriptions … and see how we can make this a little bit more of a persuasive and engaging job description to get the candidate excited,” Ayala revealed.
 

 

The role of analytics in optimizing career site content is especially important to companies today, as they vie for top talent and look to differentiate their employer brand. Given the spotlight on diversity equity and inclusion initiatives, a global view of regional career site performance also reveals which sites may need revisions to attract more candidates. 
 

Looking forward, Ayala anticipates maximizing Phenom’s localized career site subtenants according to regional needs and preferences to improve the candidate experience even further. “That’s where we want to go next,” Ayala said. “We know that there are different needs by region and by country, culturally. We have customized career sites specific to location, and that was the purpose — a better candidate experience.”
 

The Phenom Difference 
 

Beyond improving apply conversion rates and overall career site performance, Ayala noted other ways partnering with Phenom has given his team a competitive edge.
 

Best practices. Ayala has been able to put Phenom’s experience and insights to work for Mars. “They advise on what makes the most sense for the brand, and share what other clients are doing to engage candidates,” he revealed. Personalized ongoing customer support including platform optimizations and expansion opportunities is a key differentiator Phenom bakes into all partnerships.
 

Downtime support. “As we all know, systems are imperfect at times,” Ayala said. But the hosted apply flow allows Mars to customize error messages to give candidates accurate FYIs about temporary downtime, or a heads up when their application may not have made it into the system. This type of transparent communication is paramount to making candidates feel informed and respected, which goes a long way in building brand affinity. 
 

Providing an application process that matches the convenience and class of your career site is essential — especially in today’s tight labor market. Thanks to Mars’ proactive, personalized approach to the candidate experience, one thing is certain: job seekers will never leave their site with a bad taste in their mouth. 
 

Interested in how you can take advantage of Phenom’s Hosted Apply and seamless ATS integrations?

Request a demo!

jennifer.thomas
Fri, 06/04/2021 – 09:50

Career Site Essentials: How UScellular Connects with Top Talent

UScellular recently overhauled its career site, putting candidate experience front and center by adding user-generated content, personalization, AI, and analytics to reach its goal of forging connections with candidates. Eric Clemons, Sr. Manager, Employment Brand Strategies, oversaw the project and shared his story on the May 27 episode of Talent Experience Live.
 

As online consumers, we’ve come to expect things like personalization, customized content and easy, seamless interactions that allow us to find what we’re looking for faster and take immediate action.
 

Think of Amazon, Netflix, and Spotify — their services for us, according to our unique preferences, keep us coming back for more shopping, movies, and music. This is what we’ve all come to expect when visiting a website — and career sites are no exception.
 

Job seekers expect the same consumer-like experiences that have been normalized by popular consumer brands, but too many organizations are failing to deliver. Employers must optimize their career site and candidate experience to attract top talent, and then engage those candidates with a compelling, personalized experience. 
 

So where can your company begin? 
 

Get the details behind UScellular’s newly refreshed career site, including its all-new personalization features and video and employee testimonials! Watch the full episode in the video player below, and read on for highlights. 
 

Telling authentic UScellular stories

As a senior-level TA manager for the nation’s fourth-largest cellular provider, Clemons leads his team as they recruit for roles that span the talent spectrum, from frontline sales and customer service positions to engineers and IT professionals. 
 

When a company-wide rebranding initiative spurred a career site refresh, Clemons took the opportunity to modernize the site so it matched the needs and expectations of candidates. 
 

“It was one of those situations where while you’re under the hood, you might as well address everything down there,” he said. 
 

Getting cross-department input was key for identifying changes and selecting new content for the site. “It gave us the opportunity to meet with different stakeholders and subject matter experts throughout the organization to say, ‘Look, here’s what we have. How can we really make this page pop? What stories can we share? What testimonials and videos can we put up?’”
 

Real stories from real employees

For true authenticity, Clemons opted for user-generated photos and video instead of stock images. Employee testimonials are a major element — Clemons believes having associates share real-life stories of their experience is far more impactful for candidates. 
 

”We want to put our storytellers out there,” he said. “I personally can tell you how great of an organization it is from an employer branding perspective, or I can let the actual associates tell you.”
 

Highlighting the commitment to DE&I 

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) sits at the top of the priority list for many job candidates. 
 

UScellular, named by Forbes as a best employer for diversity, wanted to better communicate its dedication to DE&I and how those efforts benefit employees. 
 

In addition to giving the DE&I page link a more prominent position on the site career site, Clemons worked closely with their internal DE&I team to design a new, high-impact page, drawing on employee resource group activities for content.

READ MORE: Diversity and Inclusion: The Definitive Guide for HR

“It’s really just taking some of their best stories and pushing them out to the site,” he said. “If you have a great story to tell, it’s a matter of how do you want to tell that story. How do you want to share that externally?” 
 

Ensuring job candidates are comfortable with the process

Making sure applicants are comfortable with your company’s application process is a critical part of delivering a great candidate experience. 
 

“As we think about the interview process, we want everyone that applies to be successful,” Clemons said. “This isn’t a ‘gotcha’ moment. We want to set expectations up front.”
 

He and his team developed a “What to Expect” page that includes video tips from TA advisors that cover helpful tips, like how to dress and how to answer behavioral interview questions. “It puts a face to the other side of the email,” Clemons said. 
 

UScellular also makes it as easy as possible for candidates to access “What to Expect” information. Instead of making applicants dig for it on the career site, they’re automatically redirected to the page after scheduling an interview through the site’s chatbot. 

BLOG: Finding Talent in a Digital Haystack: Tips for Recruiting for Hard-to-Fill Roles

Personalizing the candidate journey

Forging lasting connections with candidates is a primary goal of the UScellular TA team, and it largely depends on the personalized experience each candidate receives. With that in mind, the team implemented a few critical updates: 
 

Skills-based job recommendations

Candidates who wish to apply for a job with UScellular have the choice of uploading their resume or filling out a questionnaire. On the back-end in the CRM, their candidate profile is automatically populated. 
 

“So each time they visit the site, they’ll have job recommendations pop up,” Clemons said.
 

Chatbot

The chatbot on UScellular’s career site acts as a personal recruiting assistant, answering FAQs and guiding the candidate through the job search and apply process. It’s a tool that makes application processes easier and more memorable for top talent. 
 

Talent community 

When candidates join the UScellular talent community, the recruitment team can create a profile in the CRM. Having candidate information on hand helps recruiters more easily stay in touch with targeted campaigns and talent, pushing out relevant content on resources and new jobs.
 

REPORT: Key Trends & Takeaways of the Fortune 500’s Candidate Experiences

Using analytics to guide career site updates

A career site refresh is a great opportunity for TA teams to more effectively reach candidates, but with that update comes the possibility of overhauling hundreds of pages and thousands of pieces of content. Daunting and intimidating, the project can cause a lot of stress and loads of extra work for the employees involved. 
 

To help prioritize efforts, Clemons relied on Phenom analytics for a clear view of how well various pages were (or were not) performing.
 

Optimizing job description pages

While the career site homepage gets a lot of time and attention – and rightly so – job description pages will likely need significant updating, too. After all, they’re the first point of interaction for candidates who find your organizations through job boards. 
 

“We looked at some of the analytics behind the pages, and one of the most interesting things we found in the process was that our job description pages were the No. 1 visited pages, but dropoff was high,” Clemons said, “What that told us was, people are coming in through job boards, they’re looking at the job descriptions, and then most of them are leaving.” 
 

The UScellular TA team is experimenting with approaches to create more engaging job descriptions, testing the impact of using video and directing users to other site pages for more information. (And Phenom’s no-code-required CMS makes it possible and easy to experiment like this.)
 

Next up: focusing on the employee journey

Clemons is noticing that the employee experience – particularly career growth opportunities – is the top driver of attracting and retaining top talent. 
 

“We’ve been working really closely with our leadership development team,” he said. “We’re finding with external data that career growth and development is a significant attribute that someone looks at when they’re making the decision to join the organization.”
 

The team plans to build out additional career site pages to showcase UScellular’s commitment to employee growth and development, including a spotlight on the company’s leadership academy and career progression resources.
 

“We know this is what people want to hear. These are the stories that we need to be telling,” he said. “It’s really just pushing the limits on this new canvas. What can we do from a greater flexibility perspective? How can we make this site stand out from the competition?”

 

Sign up to get notified about future episodes of Talent Experience Live! Catch us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook every Thursday at noon ET to get the latest in recruiting, talent acquisition, talent management, and HR tech.

holly.pennebaker
Thu, 06/03/2021 – 10:11

Reinventing University Recruiting: Meeting Talent Demand with Recent Grads

In this recap of the May 20 episode of Talent Experience Live, Kayla Drady, Director of Talent Acquisition Strategy & Operations at Mercy, shares strategies that transformed virtual university recruiting for one of the top five largest healthy systems in the U.S. 

As organizations emerge from the pandemic and manage a tight labor market, the demand for talent — including recent grads — is approaching a height organizations haven’t seen in years. 
 

Today’s students are hard to reach. They’ve been greatly affected by pandemic stressors and are connoisseurs of the virtual experience. It’s a challenge that requires employers to re-think their entire university recruiting approach.
 

With smart strategies underpinned by Phenom’s talent experience platform, the Mercy TA team stays on the pulse of university recruiting — which has led to spectacular results. “We’re really excited that even through a global pandemic and the nursing shortage and how competitive the market is right now, we were still able to make 60,000 hires into our organization,” Drady said. 
 

Watch the full episode below for Drady’s advice on standing out when attracting university students, and learn how you can apply some of Mercy’s most successful tactics to your own university recruiting program. Phenom Product Manager Chris Lysiuk weighs in as well, with an eye on emerging trends in tech-driven recruitment.
 

Shifting to a virtual approach
 

Pre-pandemic, Mercy maintained their presence on university campuses within its market. Classroom visits, lobby tables, career fair booths, and lunch and learns were tried-and-true ways to connect with students. 
 

But when the pandemic began, it erased all of those in-person points of contact. Fortunately, Mercy had already implemented Phenom’s Talent Experience Management (TXM) platform, which enabled a smooth pivot to virtual career fairs.
 

Mercy still had a big question at hand: How would they replace all of those other connection points that were so important to student recruiting? “We had to think differently,” Drady said. “What are some other ways we can meet [students’] needs, and still attract them and be unique, and a little bit different from our competitors?” 
 

Students in Mercy’s talent pool faced not only the pressures typical of nursing school, but additional stressors related to Covid-19, Drady pointed out. So she and her team came up with new methods to meet students in the moment, providing helpful content and using technology to make their lives easier.
 

Providing students with high-value content through webinars 
 

Drady said they’d have to give students additional content — more than Mercy’s employer value proposition  — if they were going to make an impact. Her team developed a webinar series to help with the interview process featuring Mercy’s nursing leaders. 
 

“We wanted to give them engaging content they could relate to in the moment,” Drady said. “We hosted different topics every week. One was around interviewing tips and resume writing — those real-world things that you don’t learn in school, but are so important for students to know as they go through the hiring process.”
 

SMS keyword texting: a better experience for students and recruiters 

Along with building engagement, of course, these virtual events had to give students a way to connect with Mercy employees. Not only were recruiters available during the webinars, they simultaneously used SMS messaging as a quick and easy way for students to share their information when they wanted to learn more. 
 

The method is simple: During the webinar, the team displays a text code with a keyword on the presentation screen. By texting the code, students would receive a link to share their contact info. 
 

On the back end in the Phenom CRM, this triggers creation of a profile that’s tied to the specific event. The SMS keyword makes it easier for students and eliminates manual work for recruiters.
 

“It’s made a difference, and the texting has been so impactful for us,” Drady said. “Candidates are responding right away. No more having to call them and leave voicemails … you can get them in the moment, get them scheduled for an interview the same day, even get an offer out the next day. It’s been a tremendous success.”
 

Reflecting the Mercy brand 

Interacting with students through SMS texting also supports the Mercy brand, aligning with the health system’s dedication to innovative healthcare. 
 

“We’re really on the forefront of innovation,” Drady said. “If that’s what we’re doing – providing that type of innovation and technology for our patients – we should also be doing the same for our candidates, because it all correlates.” 
 

Using the CRM for immediate and targeted outreach
 

Recruiters are also better leveraging the CRM’s tagging and analytics capabilities for strategic outreach and follow-up. 
 

“We can tag [students] – what school did they go to, what year did they graduate – within the CRM and be more strategic, and make sure we’re following up with those students immediately. You can send them an email blast; you can already have a template created,” Drady said. 
 

Along with greater efficiency, Drady values the analytic capabilities this allows. For example, tracking reveals who’s opening emails and who’s clicking on CTAs. 
 

CASE STUDY: How Mercy Converted 69% of Job Seekers 
 

“That’s another thing that I love about Phenom,” she said, “those real-time analytics, and being more strategic. Working smarter, not harder.”
 

BLOG: How Mercy is Hiring Nurses Faster with Phenom CRM, Events and Campaigns 
 

Nurturing relationships to support long-term recruiting goals

Even when new grads don’t initially join the Mercy team, tying their information to a specific event and graduation year gives recruiters a way to stay in touch. With nurture campaigns to keep the Mercy brand top-of-mind, recruiters build a talent pool to draw from for future positions that require some prior work experience. 
 

“You have to always be looking forward,” Drady said. “If they’re graduating in 2021, let’s tag them as a student grad for 2021. But, in a year from now, they’re going to have a year of experience …  so you can then go back and filter by those tags and lists, and then re-engage those candidates. Even if they didn’t join your organization a year ago, now is the time to reach back out to them.” 
 

Why Mercy plans to use a hybrid approach to university recruiting
 

Drady looks forward to the possibility of an in-person presence on campuses this fall. “We miss it. it’s just different being face-to-face,” she said. 
 

At this point, Mercy TA plans to pair virtual outreach with on-campus recruitment activities. Using a hybrid approach will allow the health system to continue to build new relationships with universities outside former geographic limits, tapping into new candidate markets.
 

The experience of recruiting in 2020 equipped talent acquisition teams with a blueprint for virtual success. Drady said that in looking ahead to recruiting college grads come fall, Mercy looks forward to at least (partially) getting back to in-person experiences.
 

READ MORE: Back to the Office: Exploring the Future of Hybrid Work 
 

What university recruitment trends are on the horizon?

Phenom’s Chris Lysiuk agrees that virtual recruiting has forged a place for itself that will outlast the pandemic. 
 

“Virtual recruiting is here to stay. I think in the landscape of university recruiting, it’s shown to have a lot of pros,” he said. “Now you can reach a more diverse student base, rather than shortlisting core schools. You can expand your footprint and go out to schools you haven’t thought of prior.”
 

As a product manager specializing in the university recruiting experience, Lysiuk has gained insight on other emerging trends:
 

Automation tools to streamline steps in virtual event creation and hiring process
Employer branding and candidate engagement: thinking beyond pitching to adding value
Video and customized content to personalize the virtual experience
Tools like chat platforms that can create a beyond-Zoom experience for virtual events
 
“We’re finding this newer generation of candidates requires deeper touch points than typical monotonous presentations. It’s forcing organizations now to think about creative ways on how they can further engage candidates in a digital age, outside of just talking at them.” 

 

Sign up to get notified about future episodes of Talent Experience Live! Catch us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook every Thursday at noon ET to get the latest in recruiting, talent acquisition, talent management, and HR tech.

holly.pennebaker
Wed, 05/26/2021 – 07:21

A Look Inside The Warehouse Group’s Purpose-Driven Employee Experience

A massive business re-structure that impacted thousands of roles. A new initiative focused on agile work and internal mobility. The need to educate, engage, and excite an entire workforce. And … a pandemic. 
 

That’s what 2020 had in store for The Warehouse Group (TWG), one of New Zealand’s largest retailers. What sounds like a recipe for disaster, however, resulted in an amazing story of success led by TWG’s Kim Nicholas, Chapter Lead of Talent Acquisition, and Ann Dane, Systems Integration of Talent Acquisition. 
 

Using Phenom Employee Experience to drive the transformation, Nicholas and Dane were able to meet countless challenges head on with strong communication, education, and engagement strategies — and exceed expectations for a more transparent and meaningful EX.  
 

With employee experience finally getting the widespread attention it deserves, you won’t want to miss the story they shared with us during our virtual IAMHR conference.  
 

A Closer Look at the Retail Giant’s Reorg Challenge
 

TWG is big — so big that 98% of New Zealanders are past or present customers, surveys show. It’s not surprising considering the retail giant, which owns 260+ stores across the country, represents numerous retail sectors across brick-and-mortar and e-commerce sites. 
 

Despite its size, the company is also well known for an enduring legacy of community-minded, customer-dedicated values. But to continue exceeding customer expectations and relevancy in an ever-changing retail world, TWG realized a change was needed: a shift toward a more agile way of work.
 

What came next was a major reorg for the 12,000-employee company. Teams were restructured and streamlined, many job titles were changed, and new roles were created. The transformation affected thousands of office support employees and employees across store networks. 
 

With such large-scale change and shifting business strategies, Dane and Nicholas knew they had to help TWG employees understand the journey of the business to facilitate adoption. And so, “We did three key things,” Nicholas revealed:

communicated in every way possible
educated continuously
elicited excitement about the upcoming changes 

The question you’re probably asking: How?
 

Putting Communication First

Even with the best of intentions, change management is daunting — especially with so many employees in so many locations. In addition, the restructure would create 781 new job vacancies, which the TA team planned to promote internally. 
 

Luckily, TWG had already invested in Phenom Employee Experience, and used their new internal mobility and employee portal capabilities to launch a microsite that served as a one-stop shop for education and career information during the transformation. 
 

Even before the restructure took place, Nicholas and Dane made it their mission to inform employees of upcoming changes, and how the transformation would affect them. They knew engagement and buy-in would depend on full transparency. 
 

“Sometimes you might think in a restructure, ‘well, communication might come second.’ We actually wanted to put it first,” Nicholas said. “We communicated in every way, so that team members would know what to expect, right from the start.”
 

CASE STUDY: How Kuehne+Nagel built a scalable internal sourcing strategy
 

As the communication journey unfolded into the education piece of the strategy, the team used multiple channels and methods —  including virtual fireside chats with executives, town halls, recruitment 1:1 sessions for candidates, and panel discussions to help employees understand and adopt TWG’s new way of work. 
 

“We actually over-communicated, but that was the intent,” Nicholas said. “We really wanted to make sure they had one place to go for all the information, so that anywhere, anytime, they could just pop on and get the right insights.”
 

A One-stop Shop for Education, Internal Mobility & Support

“Educating the business was key to enhancing employee experience,” Dane revealed, echoing Nicholas’ sentiment. “We wanted to ensure all 1,200 team members in our store support office could find everything they needed to know.” 
 

Through Phenom, they streamlined information into one central content hub accessible through their employee portal. The 35-page microsite — which they aptly named the Agile Career Hub — gives employees access to a range of information and resources, and helps answer three vital questions:
 

What Is “Agile?” Employees needed to know the what and why behind TWG’s shift toward more agile processes. The hub’s homepage addressed this and gave a high-level look at the new business structure, explaining timelines and terminology. 
 

How Do I Fit In? In addition to educating employees on the shift toward agile processes, TWG wanted to show team members how to navigate new career paths and opportunities within the re-structured organization. 
 

Subpages provided an in-depth look at the major areas of the business, as well as the “tribe” and “squad” structures TWG designed as part of the re-org. The pages displayed team structure maps with headshots, information on team leads, videos and job descriptions, and were interlinked to promote easy, intuitive navigation. Staff could better understand how current positions might potentially change to fit into the new way of work, as well as see potential opportunities and qualifications.
 

“These were super-easy to be able to design and post up on the Phenom site,” Nicholas added.
 

Where Can I Get Support? TWG also wanted to provide general resources to promote wellbeing and resilience, especially considering the timing of the reorg during the pandemic. From helpful resume and interview advice to webinar videos detailing how the internal recruitment process would run, Nicholas and Dane knew that thoughtful content would be pivotal to users and their overall experience. 
 

What else is possible with Phenom EX? Check out MGM’s amazing alumni success story!
 

Proving Enthusiastic Adoption with Metrics

One of the top concerns of companies investing in employee experience? Whether it’s working. For TWG, that would be a resounding “Yes,” judging by the notable performance metrics they shared. 
 

Within the first two months of going live with their new EX platform, the team saw indications of both strong engagement and a user-friendly site across the 1,500 support office employees the platform was first made available to:
 

1,400 new sign-ups in three days

12,471 employee visits

3,167 apply clicks to internal positions

2,714 logins 

97,767 total page views

6+ minutes average time on site

Better yet, the success has been ongoing, with 82% of visits to the internal mobility site made by returning users.
 

Key Attributes For Success
 

What should companies facing similar challenges and initiatives keep in mind to mirror TWG’s successful engagement and adoption of internal mobility technology? According to Nicholas and Dane, three elements are key:
 

Single platform. The power of a one-stop shop can’t be overemphasized. The ability to use a single platform to accommodate all EX related needs (as well as one that streamlines the entire talent experience including CX, RX and MX) creates an invaluable, seamless journey for employees that simultaneously educates and empowers.
 

Over-communication. As long as your content is organized and easily accessible, the more information, the better. Give employees the option to drill down into as many details as they need to understand org structure, available opportunities, and skill requirements so they can make educated decisions regarding their future career growth. 
 

Ongoing partnership. TWG was able to rely on Phenom customer support to pave the way to a smooth implementation. Especially appreciated? Phenom’s daily efforts to gain a full understanding of TWG’s needs and goals — which will continue in the form of optimizations, expansion opportunities, and continued adoption support as their usage evolves.
 

Despite its size, TWG’s purpose is simple: Helping Kiwis live better every day. Judging by their employee experience, it’s clear they’re doing exactly that for their people. 
 

See what Phenom Employee Experience can do for your most valuable assets — Get a demo today!

jennifer.thomas
Tue, 05/25/2021 – 10:20

How Phenom Uses Phenom: Video Capture

Who could possibly tell your company’s story better than the people who are building it? 
 

User-generated content (UGC) from your employees offers a unique and authentic look at your culture and brand. For job seekers who are considering applying to an open role within your organization, employee stories can also help them determine if it’s the right next step in their careers. 
 

And that’s exactly why we handed the microphone over to our team to share the news when we announced our Series D round of funding earlier this year.
 

We wanted to celebrate this milestone by looking inward and celebrating what makes Phenom so special: our people. To make it happen, we posed a couple of questions to our teammates that tied back to our purpose to help a billion people find their right job, as well as the core values that drive them to excel each day:
 

Tell us about how you found the right role for yourself.
 
Describe which of Phenom’s core values resonates most with you. 

Employees were encouraged to record their responses via video, and we promoted the campaign internally through email and Slack to drive participation. 

 

Our Process: Using Phenom Video Capture & Campaigns
 

Videos are great — we all know that! But making them is a whooole process, right? Fortunately, there’s a simpler way to create video content that showcases your employer brand.
 

Enter Phenom Video Capture, a new addition to our platform, that enables recruiters, candidates, employees, and managers to easily record, publish, and share video throughout the talent experience
 

Using the video capture feature within Phenom, our employees were able to easily record and submit their videos to our recruiting team. To collect the content, we created a new email campaign in the Phenom CRM, and then shared it throughout the company. Within the email, we included additional tips to ensure quality lighting and sound — then we were ready to call, “Lights, Built in web-camera, ACTION!”
 

Don’t have Video Capture? No problem! You can also capture employee generated content by asking your team to record via Quicktime and upload it to Google Drive or a Dropbox folder. All they have to do is open Quicktime on their desktop and select “New Movie Recording”. 

Next Steps: Sharing Our Employee Videos
 

After we received videos from employees, we had the option to share them on our social channels and landing page directly from Phenom CMS with the simple click of a button.
 

For this campaign, we decided to infuse our employee videos with more Phenom branding. Our video team took all of the video source files and composited them onto branded backgrounds with intro and outro animations. From there, each employee shared their branded video on their own LinkedIn pages.
 

Once all of our videos were promoted, we created two mash-up-style videos of our favorite clips from each prompt to share on Phenom’s social channels. Ready to check them out? Roll out the red carpet — it’s time to premiere! 
 

Prompt 1: Tell us about how you found the right role for yourself.
 

Prompt Two: Describe which of Phenom’s core values resonates most with you.
 

Offering a genuine look into your company culture has never been more important, and user-generated videos is one of the easiest and most impactful ways you can do so!
 

Request a demo to see video capture in action! 

holly.pennebaker
Fri, 05/21/2021 – 22:14