/BBC-E3-Global-Insight-Magazine-issue01

Global Insights Magazine Issue 1 - Edited by BBC Creativity June 2012

e3 insights Making recruitment work

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Effective HR & employer branding strategies, tools and cases

2 3 4 7 Uncovering companies as employers

Keep your promises

Home sweet ‘career website’ home

Hello, it’s you we’re looking for

The dynamics of an employer brand

Finding and defining a company’s true personality

Travel all you want to find people, you always want to be able to go home

Successful employer branding and recruitment - E3 cases

Uncovering companies as employers Amazon, Apple, Redbull, Google - who would not want to work for them?

But only rarely is a company's brand strong enough to make people start their careers there because of its famous product or service. Most companies need a carefully and truthfully crafted employer brand to attract, recruit and retain the right people. That's why an employer brand needs its very own approach and has its very own dynamics.

06. Advocate 05. Perform Your candidate is an employee. How does he or she experience the employer brand from the inside? Retention is the name of the game. Employer branding has become internal communication.

You're both enthusiastic. The employee is living the brand. His stories help create a buzz. Word of mouth works its magic and - like a dream come true - great applications start coming in.

04. Sign You have come to an agreement. A very special moment.

The start of a highly important engagement.

employer brand dynamics

01. Aware

03. Apply You receive applications. How do you deal with them? How’s the first contact going? Digitally and face-toface. First impressions matter more than ever now.

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02. Consider You’re on the candidates’ shortlist of great employers. Make sure they instantly find all info about you.

You’re on the candidates’ radar. Thanks to welltargeted campaigns, they know what you do and what you offer as an employer.

Keep your promises The only way to recruit and retain the right people is by aligning your external and internal communication efforts. A successful employer brand is truthful: it realistically conveys the way employers and candidates experience the company, but does so in a creative way that speaks to the imagination. It's all about making the right promises - and keeping them.

Not just a matter of HR That is why an employer brand involves management, marketing and HR. Here lies your first challenge: all three players have to agree on the company's one and only true image as an employer. If not, you risk communicating an image that does not correspond with how employees experience you as an employer, and you risk losing good new employees.

3 rules: intake, intake and intake So start by getting to know them: HR, marketing and management. Get to know the company through them by making the time for a decent intake. Workshops are ideally suited for this.

Spend one day with the right people at the table to get to know the company's culture, its history, its playing ground, its ambition, its heart - clearly define its strengths and weaknesses as an employer.

This intake is pure gold for your new employer brand - and your project. Because a workshop also helps align different views at the table at an early stage of your project. It's hard work, but the right kind of exercises guarantee the right information. The output of your workshop is the perfect input for strategy and creation.

Workshop intake exercises These exercises challenge companies to truly define themselves as employers: fact finding: gather statistical data about the company's employees: age, gender, degree, turnover... // semiometrics: pick 10 words out of a word cloud that define your company as an employer // chinese portrait: imagine your company as a person: describe his or her life, personality, qualities, ambition... // candidate personas: describe your ideal candidate's personality and life based on real employer profiles // your company makes the news in 2060: Define your ambition by writing a newspaper headline about your company in 2060.

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Home sweet ‘career website’ home

Travel all you want to find people, you always want to be able to go home

Whether your ideal candidates search for info online, offline or both, you can't start recruiting without a decent career website. Because when you get people so far as to Google you, your sector or the kinds of jobs you offer, you want to be in the top 5 results with your side of the story.

Get your basics right

Paid, owned, earned

Whenever a company asks us for a social media strategy, an

Your career site is where you play by your

Adwords campaign or, basically, any recruitment action in any

own rules, where you define how people

other medium, our reply is always: do you have a career site and is

experience your company as an employer.

it any good?

Whatever data you gather, it will be yours and yours only. It's the medium you own.

Let's define 'good'. In short: it's the online translation of your

Plus: it's the ideal welcome for people who

employer brand. It's a user-friendly website, creating easy access

come to visit you when they respond to

to answers to all your candidates' questions. It makes applying

your actions in your paid offline and online

easy. It collects info about candidates for your recruiters, including

media: job events, banners, magazines,

visitor's usage data through Analytics. It's SEO-ready. It contains

radio and tv commercials, AdWords,

landing pages for specific profiles and offline ads. It is kept alive

Youtube ads... Needless to say, those ads

and up-to-date with a smart content strategy. And it seamlessly

should reflect your employer brand as well.

integrates all your other marketing efforts like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter pages - just to name a few.

Embassies with ambassadors If you got those basics right, you can start travelling to meet candidates abroad in the realm of owned media. Or rather: social media. Taking this step is not as obvious in recruitment as it has become in B2C. We can think of several good reasons not to start recruiting on e.g. Facebook (see p.6). But if you do, make sure it is aligned with your employer brand in imagery, tone of voice and content. Think of your Facebook, Twitter... accounts as outposts, embassies that generate traffic to your site and - primarily - has people engage with your company.

The ideal people to man your embassies are ambassadors: enthusiastic and loyal employees who live your brand, share their experiences, answer questions... - all within your company social media guidelines.

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Use webcams to see more candidates

We have recently launched "Apply live at BBC Creativity" -- a video application that allows you to meet a candidate live through video chat. You either meet live for an interview via your webcams or prepare questions which the candidate can record on video at a later time.

This helps both the employer and

with

"Apply Live"

the candidate save time. It's a useful addition to the first scanning of CV's and motivational letters and it allows recruiters to see more candidates.

The "Apply live" smart backoffice offers recruiters plenty of possibilities like inviting other people to watch the interviews.

It guarantees absolute privacy.

Interviews are only recorded with permission by the candidate and cannot be shared with third parties.

Get to know your target group in Focus Groups How do you know what media your target group prefers when looking for a job? How do they want to be addressed? Invite them for a panel discussion on jobs and recruitment. We call this "Focus Groups" at BBC. Take hard to find profiles like engineers. We invited around ten representative young engineers and discussed media usage with them. We learned, for example, that they use Facebook primarily for private reasons. Recruiting them through social media was unprofessional to them; it's simply not a place where they would share and look for job-related information. They prefer a dedicated website that contains all info about how it is to work at a company.

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Hello, it’s you we’re looking for

E3 cases of successful employer branding and recruitment

Spadel www.spadeljobs.com

Arval www.arvaljobs.be

Two careersites made by BBC Creativity

To Facebook or not to Facebook Should you recruit in social media?

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5 pros

5 cons

1. Monitoring, listening to what people say about you, your sector, jobs...

2. Engagement through social media works, for employer brands as well 3. Great career site traffic driver, sharing jobs with all your connections 4. Authentic positioning as open, transparent employer 5. Reinforces SEM efforts

1. Data also owned by Facebook 2. No control over what people may post, say...

3. How will you measure success?

4. A good page takes a lot of time and effort 5. Does every candidate want everybody to know they're interested in a new job?

01. customer

Quality begins with people

A quality Siemens VAI internal communication campaign by SPS Austria

• Siemens VAI is a key partner for the iron- and steelmaking industries, with more than 10,500 employees worldwide, 7 competence centres and numerous workshops and service centres in close proximity to customers throughout the world

02. brief • Innovation and quality are the cornerstones to succeed in these rapidly changing markets.

Well-trained and motivated employees who think and act together in team are the driving force to achieve these goals.

03. objectives • Create a unique calendar to be used globally within the company.

Have it convey company values and strengthen team spirit among employees worldwide.

04. approach • 12 male and female employees talk about their work, their daily challenges and moments of happiness. With their talents, their commitment, their wishes and dreams, they represent thousands of Siemens VAI employees.

Transparency films reflect their working environments and their private lives and merge through association into a whole.

05. head • Quality begins with people

06. artwork • 12 artful image compositions • 12 personal stories told by the employees • A unique tactile experience through the use of a high-quality printing and foil technique

06. results • The Siemens VAI 2012 calendar is the next step within the scope of the existing “We are quality” communication concept which is being implemented in successful collaboration between Siemens VAI and SPS MARKETING.

E3 HR workshop E3 members from seven different countries exchanged their HR expertise and experience during a 3-day workshop at BBC Creativity Belgium.

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Charting the employee journey Every touch point with a candidate and, later, an employee is an opportunity to create a powerful and consistent employer brand experience that reinforces recruitment and retention.Have you thought of a consistent message for each of these touch points?

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01 exit

Start here

edu cat io

n e int

01. Education

h rns

• job events on campus • hand-outs, posters, screens • company presentations, guest lectures • company visits • careersite • news & media • social media

erna t n

l

career

job search

• careersite • apply for internship • social media

ernal xt

internship

Employer brand

ip

e

02

i

ap pl y in

g

02. Job search ing

from trial to em ploy e

e

05

n joi

• careersite • job fairs, job days at the company • social media • news & media • offline and online advertising • job boards, job sites

03

applying • career site • e-mails yes / no • reception, offices • first interview • telephone: yes / no

03. Joining

E3 NETWORK

• reception • interviews, assessment • contract talks • e-mails • social media • news & media

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04.

From trial to employee

• reception, first day • welcome brochure • introducing colleagues, team, management • HR communication • infrastructure, tools, working environment • hardware, software, intranet • follow-up, evaluation, career path • social media • news & media • employer events

05. Career

06. Exit

• career mobility, career path possibilities • evaluation, surveys • news & media • social media • training • HR management, HR admin • people management • cross-medial internal communication • employer events • intranet • pay check envelope, meal vouchers

• negotiations • thank you moments • e-mails, legal paper correspondence • exit conversation • news & media

E3 network

HR Communication

BBC Creativity

The E3 Agency Network is a closely integrated

Within E3 exists a vast expertise in all aspects

This issue of E3 Global Insight

coalition of independent brand strategy and

of HR communication:

Magazine is edited by BBC

marketing communications firms from around the

from recruitment till internal communication

Creativity. More info, contact:

world. With access to this wide pool of talent,

and the use of social media.

loos@bbc.be or audenaert@bbc.be

impact nationally and internationally.

Please contact us if you want to find out

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