Thanks for everyone that tuned into the webinar last Friday – Steve and Kris had a great time presenting and we’d like to give a shout out to TweetMyJobs for sponsoring the event. We would also like to say thanks to those who tuned into the back channel, as promised here are the answers to your questions:
1. Do you think that employment brand needs to match corporate/product brand?
KD – I think it can’t conflict to a large degree with the corporate brand, but it doesn’t have to exactly match. If you’re selling pipe and part of your EVP is the ability to grow in the company, those messages are going to be different. Don’t let the ole’ “it may conflict with our product marketing” stop you from hitting the EVP and really digging into “what’s in it for people to work for you”…
SB – I think they are two sides of the same coin to some degree. Use the external brand strengths were it makes sense, but don’t be in thrall to the way the product is marketed or sold. But I do think the brands tend to be similar or at least more similar than distinct.
2. How long should a week’s blog post be?
KD – Short my friend. Never (ever!) go past 500 words. You really want to be 300-400 words max. It’s a topic for another webinar, but you’ve got to carve up topics into micro-topics so you don’t feel compelled to write War and Peace with a blog post.
SB – Long enough to make a point, short enough to make it quickly. I’m not too caught up on word count. Let 5 people read it before you run the post and ask for their take.
3. What are some best practices when creating and editorial calendar?
KD – Mix up the topics, the departments and people you’re talking about, make some serious and some funny and mix posts based on photos, video and text into that calendar as well. Don’t think it has to be perfect, just ship!
SB – Look to the company calendar of events, product launches, historical milestones – ‘Acme Turns 50 years old today’, community events the company might be participating in, that sort of thing. If you are targeting a specific location/region, think about what is going on locally, and look for ways to connect that with the EVP message you are communicating.
4. Can you share some more examples of best in class EVP videos?
KD – Try this – the Zappos Culture YouTube channel – 33 videos that will help you get your head around what we’re talking about….
SB – Apple, the gold standard, has a EVP, meet some Apple folks one I just saw this week as well – you can check that here.
5. What is your opinion of promoting your EVP on LinkedIn?
KD – Yes! The simplest way to do that is to make sure that every post you do from your EVP gets shared to any groups related to your company, but also to the general update stream in LinkedIn multiple times across a week-long period, and that you also encourage employees to share the same posts from their individual accounts. DEFINITELY promote and share your EVP on LinkedIn. Prospective candidates are going to love the content if you do it right.
SB – LinkedIn targeted company updates are another good option here. Let’s you send out a more tailored message to a subset of your company followers.
6. What are your predictions surrounding the announcement of the new Facebook Jobs board?
KD – It will be good, but not great. Just having access to the Facebook ecosystem is going to make them successful, but to truly capture the potential, Facebook is going to have to infringe on how many of their users want to think about Facebook – a site for their personal, not professional endeavors.
SB – Agree for the most part. The way to crack Facebook for recruiting, really to solve how to make FB a great recruiting tool is still proving kind of elusive. But you definitely want to stay on top of it, especially if you are in the college grad, hourly, or retail spaces.
7. How do you overcome the position that “leadership” considers blog content as dangerous because it’s unrestricted?
KD – Start by profiling them. Seriously, do a video interview series with the leadership team and tell them the most important thing to getting started on it is their views. Play to their vanity and win. #winning #cloudsinyourcoffee
SB – Agree except for drop the #winning tag. That was fresh 9 months ago maybe and now it’s #notwinning. My other take on this is to look at your competition or the companies your leaders aspire to be and see what they are doing. Chances are you can find some great and motivational examples out there that can help convince your leadership to get in the game.
8. If the employer targets a number of different audiences, should they have different EVP for each? Eg Company recruits a lot of uneducated handworkers to the factory AND another lot of university graduates for marketing and sales positions in the office at the same time. The hand workers want just a fair regular pay, some health benefits and a stability of employment, period; while students want challenges, development and advancement opportunities, diverse tasks, work-life balance etc. Different groups, different needs, different offers as well [because handworkers actually don't get much development opportunities], but still ONE employer – and how to communicate to the labor market in such situation?
KD – So – this one is more detailed than it was positioned on the webinar in the interest of time. You’ve got to be careful mixing these audiences – what’s your biggest recruiting challenge and who uses the social channel to research jobs and figure out which offer they want to accept? You can do both if you do a good job, but you’ll have to be careful. I’d start white-collar, establish that and then see if you can stream the more entry level stuff from an EVP perspective.
SB – I agree on this, the likelihood you can see some faster ROI is probably on the professional side, but I would not discount the hourly or entry level market entirely. There are some great retail/food service examples in this area that prove it can work, (Marriott, Sodexho, and Hard Rock).
9. You’ve laid out a plan to build an EVP for next gen but haven’t included any interviews on of long term [successful] employees to learn and possibly protect the EVP that they have. Was that on purpose? i.e. screw the old folks…
KD – Wasn’t on purpose. But, I’d only profile the old folks who have passion for what they do and aren’t mailing it in. You know the difference, and so do they. So, you don’t profile someone just to do it, whether they’re next gen or old-timers. You only profile people who fit the EVP themes that you’re trying to focus on.
SB – Right, I think if you do this right, the ‘right’ people to showcase will seem pretty clear. They will reflect the best aspects of the EVP and that might mean 20-year plus employees, it might mean new hires, or more likely, it will be some of both.
10. Can you share some examples of questions to ask terminate employees to uncover EVP?
KD – Same questions that we shared on the slides. You might have to modify the tense a bit, like “what did you like most about FOT when you where there”, but all the questions hold up pretty well.
SB – Would you consider coming back to work at FOT someday? That one might be applicable in some contexts.
Craving more on the subject? Hit us in the comments section or reach out to Kris or Steve directly.
