Talking #Talent with @DriveThruHR

Today I had the distinct privilege of being a guest on DriveThruHR (1) and we talked about Talent Marketing/Recruitment & the Candidate Experience.  As I expected, the discussion was thought-provoking and fun.. even for me (especially for me?); and I chose the topic! Ha!  The show is based around the premise, “What in HR keeps you up at night?”  For 30 minutes, the guest chew the fat on the answer to that question with Bryan & William.  For us, it really revolved around a few key points, I think – all with an underlying theme of engaged, personalized experiences:

1)  We do what is a priority for us.  This is a universal truth, I truly believe.  We all share the same 24 hours a day in which to get things done and I believe that, more or less, we all desire the same basic consideration.  Treat us humanely, demonstrate compassion/empathy, be fair, and don’t keep us in the dark unnecessarily.    Don’t feed people excuses if you choose not to do something – whether that’s sectioning time in your day to create/maintain a social presence or providing feedback/communicating with candidates… own your choices.  Be authentic with who you are and what you choose to do – people respect that, I think.

The social site I mentioned, by the way, is magnt – mine is theonecrystal.info   READ NOEXCUSESHR  for more on this (per Bryan – and me!)!!

2)  Candidate Feedback –  This is worth making a priority.  William posed the question, “If you had to choose between giving every candidate surface level, generic feedback that’s less actionable; or 100 candidates really thorough feedback… which would you choose?”  If that were the only two choices; I’d likely choose the latter.  Fortunately, that doesn’t have to be the only choice.  Simply by switching when you do your applicant behavioral-based testing, for example if you use PeopleClues; (1) every candidate will be provided personable, actionable items in a feedback report they can utilize to aid them in their job search.  Talk about a score… that takes no additional time from the Recruiting/HR professional.

3) It isn’t ALL or NOTHING when it comes to creating personalized, engaging candidate experiences.  START SOMEWHERE.  While you should define a strategy – no one likes a hodge-podged campaign & very little else spells disengagement louder than a ‘willy-nilly’ candidate experience (2)  - don’t wait for the golden goose to start hunting.  Starting small is absolutely okay.  And one of the best places I can recommend any group start is with their job description.  This is likely the first piece of marketing collateral that your candidate will “touch.”  And yes, it IS marketing collateral when you’re doing it right.  Three actionable items to look at when redesigning your job description:

• Remember the “Rule of 3″ in Talent/Recruitment Marketing:  1) What 3 Things are cool about your Company, Job, Location/Department/Team.  This is your SELL.  Take advantage of it & ask yourself before posting:  ”Would I buy this product if I were the target candidate?”  If no? You’re not done yet.
• Are there 7- to 9- sentences that would make someone want to apply to your job? 
• Is the job description visually appealing, flows well verbally, and not redundant?   Skills & Requirements sections, for example, should not be mirror images of each other.  Remember to think about soft skills, don’t add items just to add them.  Whatever you say should aid in building an overall picture that leads candidates to understand clearly what you want & lead to a call-to-action.

4)  As you move on down along the road of Talent Marketing, here’s some different tools and tricks to consider using:

• Trumpia - really good experience w/ this program.  It can grow with you, best utilized w/ small- to mid-sized businesses or Recruiting groups just getting into very targeted Talent Marketing.  Bonus! They offer a Free Trial for the first 30-days that includes 100 contacts, 1000 monthly emails, 50 monthly IMs, 25 mobile text credits, and one mobile keyword… so, try it out on that very specialized, hard-to-fill search and see what you think!
• Mojo Marketing – Video Marketing Program for social/mobile/email/etc… while designed originally for “traditional” (4) Marketing departments; it works beautifully for Talent Marketing/Recruiting Campaigns.  Love the ease of putting together/executing viral video campaigns.  Check out this fun, informative video on how you can use the Mojo Matrix.  What I like about Mojo, specifically, is that it levels the playing field.  You don’t have to know how to code; you CAN do some fun, gritty iPhone/guerrilla-feeling video campaigns that include various sections of your Employee-Base & keep up with the campaigns via their reporting features.  It’s not just one look or feel as it can be with some Video Marketing programs; but whatever you create it to be.  They can also host your video.  One thing I don’t really recommend?  Their “video training classes.”  Seriously, just google some of the stuff put out by Michael Marlett, TalentMinded, Chris Hoyt, Joel Cheesman, Kane Cochran, Michael Long, or some of the other Digital Strategists & Talent Marketing/Mobile Marketing pros.. See what they’ve been doing or ask us!  Pretty sure we’ll help you out with how tips on how to get started.
• JSTN – Another Video Marketing Company that I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention.  They can create branded campaigns & they’ve got an interesting platform for it that looks like a newsroom video.  While I initially had my concerns with buy-in from candidates; their stats spoke for themselves.  There’s a nice example on the TalentNetLive page from our Chicago conference held at their site last month. Check it out - #TNL Chicago 2011 tab!
• Layar - There is little doubt that AR is the “next level” to the fun that was started w/ the QR code.  If QR code made a ‘dual dimension’ for Recruitment Campaigns by taking things ‘Social’ & connecting web2mobile; Augmented Reality has the ability to take Candidate experience to 3-Dimensional.  LOVE Layar’s ability to .. well.. ‘layer’ the candidate experience. Imagine this:  You’re holding interviews and you have the candidates check in & scan your logo.  When they do, they receive preset information about the Company, Department, or Employees… like your stellar tenure rates, internal mobility stats, or how your Employee Group works w/ the homeless, Habitat for Humanity and have a 100% participation in your Green Program.  Whatever you’re wanting to showcase?   Have another check-in at the conference room or take them by their new workspace & let them check-in to learn about departmental goals, that 1st project they’re going to dive into, the team they’d be joining, etc… You get the point… Layar can do this and SO much more when it comes to personalizing the candidate experience.

Another thing I really like is that I don’t have to figure out who already knows how to develop in it.  Find Resources Here.

• Scvngr –  One of the things I love about this is that it’s FUNDAMENTALLY FUN.  Anyone who knows me knows I’m all about fun candidate experiences.  They’re memorable. That’s good.  Another thing I love is that you can do small things on a FREE level. That’s also good.  What is it??  Scvngr is an event-based app.  You can create “challenges” for your users to complete that will allow them to learn about your business.  I think this is phenomenal engagement tool for open-houses, recruiting fairs, and onboarding programs.  It’s easy to use, it will definitely set you apart from your competition & again… it’s fun!
• FourSquare – not quite ready to throw out challenges but want to do something a little different?? Okay, I’ve got a tool for you that you likely already know.  FOURSQUARE.   It’s a smart-phone based app & you can create “locations” at your company for use in onboarding or at your booth in recruitment fairs/events.   Completely free; this is a) a different way of getting info to your new hires/candidates and b) something they can go back and reference again (nice for when they lose the code to the copier; you can point them to where you have it written down, for example!).   Word of caution:  it IS a publicly accessible. Whatever info you put into that location can be accessed by others – so, keep that in mind.
• There’s so much more when it comes to platforms, technology, and cool tools for Talent Marketing.  But, there’s a start.

5)  This doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s there in Talent Marketing, Tools, creating cool experiences for candidates & I’m way over the 1000 character “limit” they share in blogging best practices.  So, quickly, here are some other groups/places you can check out to find ‘like-minded’ professionals:

• #TNL – Talent Net Live Social Recruiting Community.  Twitter | Facebook | The Original Social Recruiting & Talent Twitter Chat is Now a Weekly Twitter/Focus-Powered Radio Show  – and we’re talking Talent Marketing 12/21 at 7:15-8:15pm CT with Jessica Miller-Merrell of Blogging4Jobs.com & Carrie Corbin of AT&T!  #TNL is all about Talent Marketing, Social Recruiting, Social Media, HR Technology, and Social HR.  It’s who we are, what we do, and I think it’s done very well.  We also have several live events throughout the year, across the United States.
• #TChat - Twitter Community w/ weekly chat (I hear they’re joining us & moving to a weekly Focus-Powered radio show in 2012 rather than 2 Twitter Chats & Two Focus-Powered Radio Shows/Twitter Chats! Fun!! Love that crew & hearing their voices weekly will be a blast!).  They talk about  a wide variety”World of Work” issues…  including Social, Talent & Talent Communities.
• LinkedIn – Talent, Brand & Communications.  273 members, Global & only 12% are in a Sales capacity.
• DriveThruHR – #DTHR
• HRevolution - some exciting news will be shared in January 2012 about this event & I’m excited!
• ERE – google “Talent Marketing” and/or “Talent Management” & ERE. They’ve got some great content surrounding this topic.. one of which was done earlier this year & has a fab example of personalized Talent marketing done by a University that I think has some cool, specialized applications to targeted Recruiting searches.

(1) If you listen closely, you can hear me kinda, half-way singing in the intro & maybe exit music!! LOL

(2) Which I highly recommend after utilizing several applicant testing services with both my own hiring needs and for candidates

(3)  yes, I’m being slightly tongue-in-cheek & no “Willy Nilly” is NOT a technical term… but the point is candidates can see straight through a poorly organized, orchestrated campaign & that does not speak well for your brand/company.

(4) TRADITIONAL was the word I was wanting to say when I kept saying “True” on the radio show today.  This is reason #1,548,000 why I will never be a professional broadcaster.  :)