Abstract from 20/20 Employment Branding

Abstract from 20/20 Employment Branding:

Employment Brand Defined
In this session, we'll talk about creating and leveraging a "brand" to increase your recruiting success. We'll identify the strategies that are used in marketing and advertising to attract customers, and apply them to the goals of attracting the best possible candidates. So, instead of building a consumer brand focused on selling your products to customers, your goal is to develop an effective employment brand focused on promoting your business to attract the best possible candidates for your culture.

Effective Brands

WHAT Does a Body Good?
You're in Good Hands with WHICH COMPANY?
Like a Good Neighbor WHICH COMPANY is There?
WHAT are Forever?

Each of the examples above speaks to a simple and effective consumer brand. They have a distinct message that can be conveyed in very short statements, and through marketing, they have impacted the way we feel about their products. Milk is good for you. Allstate has great coverage. State Farm is your local insurance provider who is there when you need them. Want a gift that will last a lifetime... you guessed it- De Beers diamonds ARE forever.

When an employer can establish, communicate, and reinforce an effective employment brand, they will realize an increased stream of applicants better suited to their work environment, which in turn leads to an increase in employee retention. Many key factors that influence an employee's decision to stay with an employer.

A brand can generally be defined as the sum of all characteristics and distinguishable features associated with a good or service – its unique personality. Brands are comprised of logos, images, slogans, and features of the good or service, along with all the supporting communication and promotion of these items. Simply put, a consumer brand should be built around the customer experience; therefore, an employment brand needs to be built around your employee's experience.

Identifying Your Unique Employment Brand

Establishing an effective brand in the consumer market requires a company to understand what drives consumer behavior. Likewise, in order to establish an effective employment brand, a company must understand what drives employee behavior.

One essential and oft-ignored necessity of branding is identifying the current reality of your situation, not what you wish your situation was. If the branding is not absolutely true and consistent with your business today, it will not be effective and will not last. In fact, a false brand will have negative effects, and cause resentment among your current employees. For example, you can't promote excellent opportunities for advancement if you don't make a regular practice of promoting from within...

I will be presenting a full workshop on developing an employment brand at the 2009 Human Capital Summit- from creating the brand identity to measuring brand penetration. You can register for this workshop at the official website, here.

Resume 411 From Guest Blogger Debra Wheatman

Thanks to Debra Wheatman for sharing this excellent article on the truly important issues to consider when creating your resume. Whether or not you're currently looking for work, this is definitely worth the read!

Drafting an effective résumé is key to contributing to a successful job search. Oftentimes, the résumé is the first thing a hiring manager reviews to determine your suitability for a potential opening. This first (and lasting) impression is critical; putting your best foot forward in creating a highly accomplishment-driven document will go a long way in ensuring that you are contacted. There are a number of things that should be considered to ensure your résumé works to your advantage:

Results - Everyone has responsibilities as part of their job. That does not engage or capture the reader though. It’s fairly boring to read ‘Responsible for…’ and whatever it is that you do on a daily basis. The key component is to provide the reader with an example of something you did that generated RESULTS for your employer. Consider the following acronym: SAR. This stands for Situation, Action, Result, and can help you define on paper what the situation was, the action you took, and the result that will demonstrate your ability to deliver. If you do this throughout your résumé, you will set a positive and proactive tone that you are a committed and productive individual who is able to serve as a change agent for a company.

It’s all in the Words - Using compelling verbs will serve to engage your reader. Try to come up with different verbs to lead the bullets or sections of your document. Avoid using the same words over and over again. The résumé is a marketing document. You need to take a step back and think “What would I think of this if I saw it for the first time?” Try to get inside the mind of the hiring manager. You want to impress and engage someone. Actionable word choices will help you do this. Some good résumé verbs: Spearheaded; championed; aligned; delivered; implemented. You get the idea – these words present a call to action.

Presentation -While ‘content is king,’ presentation plays a part in the recipe. People like to look at things that look nice – résumés are no exception to this rule. Your résumé should be presented in a consistent manner on the page. Ensure that the margins are aligned properly. Choose an appealing font like Book Antiqua in 10 pts. or something a bit stronger like Tahoma in 9.5 points. There are many fonts out there that hold more appeal than the totally boring Times New Roman. Once your résumé is complete, print it. Don’t just look at it on the screen. Printing it will give you a better sense of how you are presented overall.

Rules about Grammar and Spelling - If there are two things that will send your résumé straight to the circular file it is grammar and spelling mistakes. I recognize that we are not perfect – but, and there is always a but, your résumé must be perfect. If you know that this area is not your strong suit have someone else review it. It is also a good idea to have someone else look at it because the more you study it the less likely you are to catch small things that a fresh pair of eyes will capture. The Little Blue Book is a great resource to help with myriad grammar issues. Not sure how to spell something? Dictionary.com is there to help. Need another word for managed? No problem – check out Thesauras.com for synonyms. There are countless resources right at your fingertips. Gone are the days of heavy books; the online world allows access to the most inconceivable information, which you should use to your advantage.

The Downlow on Hobbies - Leave hobbies off the résumé unless a hobby for you is completing an Ironman Triathlon or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Simply stating that reading or running is a hobby is not very compelling. The hiring manager will learn about you in time. However, the aforementioned triathlon and climb is certainly of greater interest than reading books. In addition to being an icebreaker, which can set a personal tone to the meeting, those things also demonstrate a unique spirit and other traits that set you apart from your peers. The perseverance, commitment, and dedication needed for those things warrants referencing on the résumé. If not something really unique, leave it off.

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Debra Wheatman, CPRW, CPCC is the founder and Chief Career Strategist of http://ResumesDoneWrite.com, a premier career services provider focused on developing highly personalized career roadmaps for senior leaders and executives across all verticals and industries. Debra is also the CareerDoctor (www.ResumesDoneWrite.blogspot.com)

Debra can be reached at DWheatman@ResumesDoneWrite.com

Simple, Memorable, and Thought Provoking

Simple, memorable, and thought provoking. Those should be the three keys to creating a tagline specific to your employment brand. Also, keep in mind that your employment brand will be viewed internally as well as externally. To this end, slogans will serve to remind your employees what they like about working for your company and therefore, will be effective and lasting. Work with a group within your organization to develop your logo and slogan or tagline. Remember, "good enough" truly isn't good enough. You'll want to take enough time that you are absolutely positive that you have the best copy, that it conveys the message you want, and that it is memorable. Once you make a decision to launch an employment brand, you'll have to be dedicated to sticking with it for a significant length of time without making any changes.

Changing Your Appreciation Progams? Be Careful!

Over the years, I've worked for many companies who put on great employee appreciation events, and many more who offered referral bonuses when they were hiring.

Few, however tied these programs together to clearly communicate and reinforce their Employment Brand. If you're going to put in place an incentive for your employees to speak with their friends and family about working for your company, you should ensure that your core values and unique programs are top of mind, and clearly understood by all. Again, as I have written several times, your values must be in line with the reality of your environment to ensure brand integrity, and ultimately brand loyalty.

When we consider changing recognition or appreciation programs in our company, we always closely examine how it will affect our ability to hire great people. As an extension of that, we explore how it will affect the retention of our current staff, and what potential word of mouth "advertising" they will bring to their communities.

Aside from offering the highest compensation in the land, a company's REPUTATION is the most important element to attracting applicants. Our company has built a reputation for fast growth, casual atmosphere, engaged employees at every level, and flexibility to generate, develop, and execute new initiatives. Our perks are very much in line with this reputation, and serve to reinforce our employer brand. Some of our special perks include Bring A Dog to Work Fridays, employee driven All Star Awards with photos on the wall, and company outings the local Triple-A baseball game, or a harbor cruise.

Even when times are tight, as they certainly are now for most companies, we understand that any changes we would make to these unique and special perks would impact our ability to retain and attract great employees in the future.

What special perks does your company offer, and how well do you connect them to your Employment Brand both internally and externally?

My Blog Elevator Pitch (for a tall building)

First, a word of thanks to the MaineHR Cafe for giving me this great idea. You can see the MaineHR Cafe elevator pitch by clicking here. As I read that recently, I was reminded that it's important to routinely share the motivation, purpose, and hopes associated with a blog to let help new visitors and subscribers understand the intended perspective.

Here's a go at why I write the Recruiting Front Lines, and why you might care to read it or subscribe:

For than a decade I have have worked in marketing, sales, and advertising for media companies. In January of 2004, I joined JobsInTheUS.com, the umbrella of state-specific recruitment resources which now includes the leading resources (most job postings, events, and in-state traffic) in ME, NH, VT, and RI, along with growing presence in AL, CT, LA, MA, MS, NY, and PA.

Starting in 2005, I was charged with building and managing a field marketing program that was focused on reinforcing our local focus by engaging job seekers and employers in the community. Through this activity, we have presented workshops at career centers and colleges, developed HRCI-accredited seminars and webinars for employers, promoted our brand at festivals, trade shows, and job fairs across our markets. Last year alone, we exhibited at more than 250 events in New England and the Gulf Coast.

While I captured a significant amount of market data for use in our sales and marketing, I had no outlet to share the qualitative information I was getting from front line managers, HR admins, job seekers, career counselors, and business owners. I started the Recruiting Front Lines as a way to record and share the stories, news, and trends that I was hearing first hand from both seekers and employers.

Over the past year, I have become much more involved in the HR community, and have found myself building a focus on employment branding, social media for HR, staffing management, and other recruiting/hr focused issues. I still attend many events, and continue to broaden my awareness and knowledge of the labor market from those most closely and directly affected by it every day.

Okay, so I've never been one to be pithy or short on words. I hope this provides a good view of why I write and why I do what I do. Please feel free to visit often or subscribe to my feeds. If you know of someone who would be interested in following along, please share the link.

Best Regards,

Jason

Mobile Thoughts on Employment Branding

It crossed my mind recently that employers should pay very close attention to which companies are hiring employees away from them. These companies represent your market competition. Two things you should be asking yourself:

1. If you are losing top talent to one specific competitor, why and what can you do about it?

2. Are you also hiring away top talent from you competitor, or is this a one way street?

There's really no way around this simple truth: Great companies are built by great employees.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

RFL: Building Your Bench from Unused Parts

(Continued from an article posted on April 8, 2009. Click here to see Part 1.)

Through careful and thoughtful analysis of the skills that are required to carry out your business functions, and the ancillary or unused skills present in your workforce, you can begin to build engagement while operating more efficiently.

During staffing reductions, either by layoffs or attrition, there is often a work gap left behind by the departed employees. That is, when a company lays off one person, it is common that some portion of the work that person performed must still be completed. Customarily, this work is picked up by the remaining employees (see scenario below), adding a sense of increased burden to the insecurity they are already feeling.

Consider this theoretical scenario, and please share your thoughts on how common, or uncommon, this practice is within your company.

10 people can do 100% of the work for a department.

• On average, each person is responsible for 10% of the work.

Staff is reduced by 20%, while production is rolled back by only 10%.

80% of the original staff must now complete 90% of the original work.

• Each person is now responsible for 11.25% of the work- a 12.5% increase.

Normally, there is no bump in pay provided to the remaining workforce.

There is an alternative to this process, however, which can have a splendidly opposite- increasing our employee engagement and sense of security. It's what we call the Auxiliary Workforce Plan (AWP).

Essentially, the AWP provides the roadmap to identify, develop, and utilize untapped skills and talents present within our current workforce. Through this mechanism, we can provide interdepartmental and cross-functional opportunities to our employees, which lead to stronger engagement, and better overall understanding of our business. For the employees, it manifests as professional development, resume building, and increased variety in their day-to-day job activities. This is truly a win/win practice that will provide the greatest benefits when the economy is at its worst.








To be Contnued...

RFL: Developing Your Bench

We are all on the same path...finding ways to do more with less. It is widely known that workforces are becoming leaner and leaner, while most are still faced with maintaining and even growing market share and productivity. It seems like an impossible task: reduce the number of people working for you, and increase your revenue. Unfortunately, as markets have become more crowded and competitive over time, most businesses have routinely been increasing expectations and output of their workforces to drive profits. Because of this well-established culture, economic belt-tightening has proven to be even more difficult than in times past. We ALL ran lean operations BEFORE the economy started its decline.
So where exactly do we go from here?

The first step on the path toward success is to look within. That doesn't mean we need to set up meditation schedules and personal reflection time, though those aren't bad ideas, but rather that we need to figure out just what our companies are made of. Specifically, what skills our workforce is made of. I am willing to stake my reputation on the fact that there are employees working in all our organizations today who have valuable skills that we are completely unaware of. That is, our current employees may present us with the skills we need to operate lean and thrive while other businesses merely survive.

There are numerous studies available that provide statistics on the dollar-value of engaged employees, and the damages caused by bored ones. For access to a number of these reports, visit SHRM, and type "engaged employees" or "bored employees" in their search engine. You'll find volumes of surveys and articles to this point.

The Life Cycle of an Employee, Used With Permission from SHRM

To be continued....

RFL Question of the Moment: Recruitment Advertising When You're Not Hiring

With so many people hopping on the optimism bandwagon that we all hope is taking us to the river of economic recovery later this year, I'm hearing more and more staffing and personnel professionals wanting to develop candidate pools before there are any jobs available. It got me thinking about the ethics and best practices around this issue.

What do you think?

Does your company advertise job openings even when they're not available? If so, why?


What do you think of this practice?

Press Release: Indicators Show Positive Employment Numbers

Just getting out ahead of the curve a bit on this one. My firm will be releasing the following press release shortly. Amazingly, while job seeker traffic is at record highs, there has also been growth in online job postings for two consecutive months

New England’s #1 Recruitment Resource shows record growth in monthly traffic and job postings.

Westbrook, ME. April, 3 2009— For 10 years the JobsinTheUS.com (JiUS) network of state specific, online recruitment resources has helped hundreds of thousands of local jobseekers find the best local jobs. With its latest trend numbers just released, New England’s recruiting experts are beginning to see some very positive signs.

With the largest applicant pool in years, and jobseekers aggressively looking for the best local employment opportunities, the JiUS network recorded nearly 1.8 million visits in March. This represents a 13% growth over February 2009 and, is one of the single largest months in the company’s history.

Job losses may still be on the rise but local employers posted nearly 8,000 open positions on the JiUS network in March. This marks a 10% increase over February and is the second consecutive month of growth in this very important statistic.

“We only allow job postings from legitimate, in-state employers, so the increase in postings is truly reflective of the increase in actual employment opportunities.” said Jason C. Blais, Director of Business Development.

He added, “What this tells us is that the confidence among employers is growing. For the past few months, many businesses were holding their breath. Two consecutive months of growth in online postings indicates that employers are beginning to collectively exhale and get back to the business of doing business”

Blais advises businesses regularly on the importance of staying out in front of jobseekers.

“During this transition, businesses that have operated conscientiously and have remained focused on their brand will have a significant advantage in attracting top talent. In fact, from the job seekers perspective, companies that are hiring during this transition period must be doing something right.” He said.

JiUS has been operating state specific job internet sites since 1999 and remains at the forefront of the industry through innovation, solid sales, distinguished marketing techniques and there-when-you-need-us customer service.

The JiUS network of state specific resources includes JobsinME.com, JobsinNH.com, JobsinVT.com and JobsinRI.com

Contact:

Steve Dodge,

Director of Marketing and Sales

JobsintheUS.com

207-591-6259

sdodge@jobsintheus.com

RFL: JobsInTheUS and JobAngels on Fox News

The segment I participated in on Fox News this past weekend is now available on their website. My thanks goes out to Julie Banderas for facilitating such a comfortable interview and to Eldad Yaron for setting this up and getting the video link to me.

As a result of my participation in the JobAngels movement, and the subsequent Wall Street Journal article, I was fortunate to get a little air time on the America's News HQ program on Fox News Sunday. While I was a bit disappointed by the lack of discussion regarding JobAngels, I was pleasantly surprised by the plug for JobsInTheUS that Julie gave us.

Here's the video from this past Sunday:

RFL: Off topic and On the Twitter Mosaic

Okay... I've officially become a TwitterGeek! While I originally found this app to be a complete waste of time and silly creation, I've certainly come to admire it. There really are many ways in which Twitter can be of value, both personally and professionally. Yes, it can seem a bit odd. But if you give it a try, and be thoughtful about why you're in this space, I think you'll find it to be more than you expected. Sorry, enough of the plug...

Check out this app that I just learned about called Twitter Mosaic. It's not all that exciting, but it does give a visual of your individual Twitter network. Here's mine:

Get your twitter mosaic here.