Tag Archives: Marketing

Recruit Better By Thinking Like a Marketer (Free eBook)

Recruiting has been changing for some time. It’s no longer about simply tracking candidates–not if you’re trying to beat the competition, anyway. Sourcing, or seeking out candidates, is a powerful part of a recruiting strategy, but there are also elements of recruiting that have changed in recent years as the recruitment marketing field has grown into its own discipline. From custom landing pages and search engine optimization to candidate engagement and social/mobile, there are so many ways to reach employees that weren’t even in existence when most of us started recruiting.

Side note: I haven’t done a video in quite a while, so I wanted to plug one in here that I did recently that ties in nicely with the topic. I love video blogs but my camera has been on the fritz, so I used the somewhat-grainy webcam. Looking forward to having my camera back in action!

In this video I explain three of the ways that recruiting could learn a lesson from marketing, including:

  • How to seeing the hiring process as a type of sales funnel
  • The importance of using personas to find the right talent
  • Why we need to be using data and measurement to prove value

Free eBook on Recruitment Marketing

The recruitment marketing superstars over at SmashFly put together this free eBook with the help of some of those who have been keeping tabs on this trend. You can get your copy here:

http://bit.ly/1X0x1Zm

What are your thoughts on this relatively new, and growing, topic? How are you changing your recruiting approach so that you’re pulling in candidates who are a fit for your company and culture? 

Split Testing Your HR Approach for Improved Results

One of the things that I have grown to appreciate over the past few years is marketing. One of the first things I wrote on the topic was actually around what Chief Marketing Officers can teach Chief HR Officers. There is quite a bit of activity that goes on in the marketing department that we should all appreciate. From tailoring your approach to your audience to relentlessly testing your campaigns, there are some great insights in how they operate. Today we're going to specifically talk about split testing.

The easiest way to explain split testing is this:

split testingLet's say I walk up to you and hold out a piece of cake wordlessly. When the next person comes by, I hold out the same type of cake in the same way, but I smile and say, “Hello!” cheerfully.

That's a split test, or A/B test. The point is to make every element of the scenario the same except for a single item that you're explicitly testing—in this case, the greeting. Over the course of multiple tests (dozens or more, not just two or three apiece) you learn how that item affects the outcome of the experiment. Then you do it again but with another element being the item tested. Continue reading →

Prioritizing Employees by Engagement Level

The most engaged… are first in line.

mailchimpRecently I read a blog post about email marketing and delivery, and that line struck me. Stick with me, because I think there’s an intriguing question it brings up.

People that run companies and blogs often use delivery services to communicate with customers and readers. I use a tool called MailChimp and have for several years. I have a little bit (okay, a lot!) of a geeky side, so I follow their blog to stay up to date on best practices for email marketing, product updates, etc. A short while back they posted an interesting piece describing how they send emails to large groups quickly. Here’s a snippet:

Our sending infrastructure is designed to turn large campaigns into smaller “payloads” to get them out the door much faster. When you click Send in the Campaign Builder, you're actually telling MailChimp to start biting off parts of your campaign. As each payload is created, it's immediately routed to our Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs) and queued for delivery. We organize this based on subscriber member ratings, so the most engaged subscribers in your campaign are first in line.

In email marketing speak, engaged subscribers are those that open, read, and click through the emails. Over time they are ranked based on how often they complete those tasks from highly engaged to not-so-much.

That made me wonder–what would happen if we could tweak our HR service delivery to prioritize those who are most engaged? For instance, if two requests come in for support and both will take an hour to complete, we would determine which employee was most engaged and handle their request first.

What if…?

On one hand, it seems like that approach could have a detrimental effect on those already on the cusp of disengagement. But should we be focusing our efforts on those individuals? I mean, engaged staff are pretty valuable to the organization…

Jim Harter Ph.D., a chief scientist at Gallup Research explained what engaged employees do differently in an email interview: “Engaged employees are more attentive and vigilant. They look out for the needs of their coworkers and the overall enterprise, because they personally ‘own' the result of their work and that of the organization.”

Harter, who has co-authored over 1,000 articles on the topic as well as two bestsellers, also says engaged employees “continuously recreate jobs so that each person has a chance to do what they do best.” Engaged employees “listen to the opinions of people close to the action (close to actual safety issues and quality or defect issues), and help people see the connection between their everyday work and the larger purpose or mission of the organization.” When engaged employee do this they create a virtuous circle where communication and collaboration nurture engagement and vice versa.

Considering the benefits, why do companies still struggle to foster engagement? Harter writes, “Many organizations measure either the wrong things, or too many things, or don't make the data intuitively actionable. Many don't make engagement a part of their overall strategy, or clarify why employee engagement is important, or provide quality education to help managers know what to do with the results, and in what order.” Source

On the other hand, just like we’ve learned over time that focusing on strengths can deliver more value than focusing on weaknesses, maybe we should be focusing on making sure those engaged employees get the best service that the HR team has to offer. If we consider it logically:

  1. It helps to maintain or improve engagement levels
  2. It helps to prevent a slide toward disengagement
  3. It might help to drive additional results from those individuals

Another similar example of this is handling support requests from free and paid users of a product. Often times when companies use the “freemium” model and have a free version of their tools, the paid users have priority when it comes to getting support/help from the provider.

What are your thoughts? Would it make sense to handle our requests from employees based on the individual’s engagement level? What would be potential benefits or pitfalls? 

Applying Marketing Principles to HR

Today we're honored to have a guest post from a long-time friend and fellow HR practitioner. Jane Jaxon is the rockstar HR Director for a tech company in Boston. Learn more about her in the bio below the article. 

Marketing 101: You need a product that meets the needs of your target customer or audience, then you need to promote it where it will be seen by and sought out by potential customers.

Branding 101: Define what you are about and what space in the market you occupy. Stand for something you believe in. Build such a strong connection with your audience that they take on your brand identity on as their own.

Wait, this is an HR blog, right? It is. Why are these concepts so basic when building a business and customer base, but relatively foreign in the HR world? Human capital is critical to the success of a company, yet basic marketing principles and resources are rarely allocated to our teams. It seems silly. A business cannot succeed without both the right product or service and the right people to deliver that product or service.

I suspect many of you don't have marketers on your team, but there are some simple steps you can begin to take on your own to differentiate yourself and strengthen your employer brand to attract a better pipeline.

Understand your value proposition. What value can you deliver to prospective candidates? Examples include: location, work/life balance, opportunity to work with cutting edge technologies, top-of-the-market pay or great mentorship and development programs. Ask your current employees what the best part of working for your company is. And market it! Make sure pictures and language on your website highlight your differentiators. Invite employees to write testimonials or post to Glassdoor. But above all, be honest.

Figure out your market and focus your advertising appropriately. Each position has a unique market and needs to be treated as such. For example, we ask our team to review our job descriptions when we're adding to the team to give us feedback – the oozing-with-personality job descriptions we use for entry level positions just may not appeal to senior level developers or a CFO. When I'm looking for an engineer, I ask our current team where they spend their time browsing and to tell me about the most effective cold call or email they have received and I tweak my recruitment approach accordingly. Finally, when we land a fantastic candidate, we take note of how so we can better focus our efforts next time.

Deliver. You need your public persona to match the candidate (and employee) experience. If you differentiate by the intelligence of your team, candidates expect to talk to smart people. If you pride yourself on corporate values and culture, the interview experience and questions should reflect that. You cannot attract or retain the right people if you aren’t able to deliver on the experience you’ve marketed. Just think – would you go back to a hotel that showed beautiful rooms and an ocean view but delivered an inferior product? Neither will candidates.

No company is perfect in every area, but you can be much more successful if you are able to identify what your strengths are, how you compare to the competition, and your audience, then relay that message in an effective way. How do you stack up? What differentiates your open reqs and opportunities from the competition?

About the author: Jane Jaxon is the HR Director of a high-growth tech company in Boston where she gets to focus on building a great workplace and scaling people operations. Jane's favorite buzzwords of the trade are eNPS, talent density and (of course) people operations. She likes neither pina colada's nor getting caught in the rain, but sure loves marathoning critically-acclaimed tv series, reading in the sun, plotting her fantasy football world domination and, lastly, keeping a stealthy social media presence. Find her on LinkedIn.

Show Me the Money: What CMOs can Teach CHROs

I got a pitch the other day for some new research from the CMO Council. At first glance I started to trash it (I’m into marketing, but I’m willing to bet most of you aren’t!).

Then I took another look. I think the principles in the summary can shed some light on how HR pros can improve their position, make more money, and be seen as more competent overall. Got your attention? Read on!

CMO compensation is directly related to reporting structure. Those making more… are more likely to report directly to the CEO.

driving results

You have to be more innovative if you want more reward.

This one makes sense, but it’s a good reminder. Want to earn more? Work your way up until you’re reporting to the CEO. Or be good enough to become the CEO, but that’s another post for another day.

The highest paid CMOs have developed strong alliances with CIOs and CFOs.

Success in business is driven in part by the key relationships you develop. This applies to the HR function as well. Learn to connect with CFOs and other executives. Speak their language, earn some credibility, and put that network to use.

CMOs earning the highest levels of base compensation tend to be focused on driving business performance (e.g., top-line growth, market share, efficiencies, etc.).

Want to be successful long term in your role? Focus on driving business performance. The rest will take care of itself.

CMO base compensation is correlated with firm size. The larger the company, the more likely that the CMO will make more in base compensation and the more likely they will have bonus compensation.

Want to earn more money? Work for a larger company (and referring back to the first example, work for a larger company in the top tiers of management).

Digital marketing skills are important. CMO salary tends to increase as their firm's digital marketing performance improves.

This is an easy one. The more value you can prove your function is bringing to the organization, the more you can command in terms of compensation. Have an HR mission statement that describes your aims and then make them happen.

Marketing titles (i.e., CMO, VP of Marketing, SVP of Marketing, etc.) don't significantly correlate with base compensation.

Titles matter less than what you do. Your value is not in a title–it’s in your performance and the performance of your team.

Key accomplishments of the top earners… are centered on restructuring marketing to drive results, improving the yield/accountability of marketing, and building digital capabilities.

The top earners focus on results, not “the way things have always been done.” Improving capabilities, driving results in areas that are traditionally not seen as value add, and making tough choices are the activities that are rewarded. Keeping up the status quo not only isn’t rewarded–in many of these types of organizations I’d say it is probably weeded out.

So, what are your thoughts? Anything here that particularly rang true for you? Any action items that stepped on your toes to drive you to action? 

Source: http://www.cmocouncil.org/press-detail.php?id=4882

Conference Booths, The Hard Sell, and What We Want

A few weeks back I attended the first day of the HR Technology Conference in Chicago. I had an expo only pass to go in and see the vendors, and I was reminded yet again of the awkwardness of the current setup. At one point my friend and I were walking down the aisle and someone asked us a question, my friend answered, and the person started trying to steer him over to their booth. It was very strange and uncomfortable, and I am not a fan of that approach.

I completely understand that it’s their job to hit up prospects and get people into the marketing funnel, but we both walked away with a bad taste in our mouths due to that person’s “hard sell” mentality.

If I have no experience with your company, there’s a low likelihood that I will just randomly decide to stop at your booth. That’s why many vendors bring swag, but then they get annoyed if you stop and take some just to walk away again. There needs to be a time of building a relationship before the sales pitch, and that’s where some of these suggestions come in.

Who I visited Continue reading →

Treating your Candidates Like Customers

Can HR learn something from marketing about treating candidates like customers?

When I was at the Hire Minds event this past fall (more Hire Minds Summit coverage), the moderator asked me if I thought the Marketing department should work closely with the HR/Recruiting department at any time. My response was one I’d considered before, and I think it still applies now:

Of course HR/Recruiting should work with the Marketing department if they can. HR is trying to sell ideas internally. Recruiters are trying to “sell” open positions to candidates. Marketing is trying to sell products/services to the public. Why not work together when the opportunity arises?

Since then I’ve started thinking of candidates as customers. Most HR and recruiting pros don’t have a chance to meet customers of the business on a daily basis. They don’t get a chance to make a good impression for the company, provide great service, and do it all with a smile on their face. But they do interact with people looking to get a job with the organization.

What if they started treating those candidates like customers? There would be a little difference in that these customers are not always “right.” They can’t get whatever they want.

But you can offer them a sympathetic ear. You can treat them with respect. You can give them a clear, concise picture of what the hiring process looks like so they are not stuck wondering if their resume disappeared into a black hole.

I’ve learned that even if they are not chosen, candidates sincerely appreciate knowing the disposition of their application. It’s just a small touch that means so much to someone who has been out of work or looking for a meaningful job.

If you’d like to learn more about my philosophy on “high touch” recruiting and what it’s like being the solo recruiter for a small business, click here to hear about small business hiring on my DriveThruHR appearance from HR Florida.