10. Recruiting

“We Want Only the Best and Brightest”

Firms that want to acquire talented people typically say they want to hire “the best and brightest.” Let’s step back for a moment and ask what that really means.

The best person to fill the bill in your company may not rank anywhere near the “brightest” in my company. For every organization looking for creative people, even more firms are seeking methodical, detail-oriented workers. Many companies have talent needs in between the left-brain/right-brain spectrum. Our point is that there’s no right or wrong here—only the appropriate hire for your organization.

In fact, if your organization is large, many “right answers” might describe candidates; the same qualities and work ethic that lead to success in one business might not translate well into another.

Given the high cost of failure when an employee doesn’t work out, your company needs to invest the time and energy up front to find people with the knowledge, experience, and expertise to succeed. And these people need to fit the culture of your company. Through both the recruiting and onboarding processes (see Chapter 11, “Orientation”), talented people need to know what it’s like to work at your company before they start. After they join, they need coaching, mentoring, information, and feedback to ensure that they’ll succeed.

Keys to Successful Recruiting Communications

Here are five steps you can take to make sure your communication helps your firm acquire the talent you need:

1. Present a clear portrait of your company and its culture.

2. Feature employees describing their jobs and “what it’s like to work here.”

3. Create job descriptions that accurately describe what the candidate will do every day.

4. Give candidates a thorough overview of company benefits.

5. Use the right tool for the job in recruiting communication.

Let’s take a more detailed look at how you can accomplish these goals.

Present a Clear Portrait of Your Company

Let’s start with a “don’t”: As tempting as it might be, don’t oversell what your company represents or offers. Presenting your organization in a warmer glow than it deserves does not serve you well. It means people might be attracted to your firm and then become unhappy once they start work.

We find it helpful to think about the recruiting process as providing information to potential candidates so that they can opt in or opt out. Either way, that’s good for your company. If there’s something about your company that really excites a candidate, that person will apply. Conversely, if there’s something that prevents someone from even wanting to meet with you to know more, you probably don’t want to waste time and talent trying to persuade that person to join you.

Define Your Culture

Allan A. Kennedy and Terrence E. Deal coauthored Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. A former McKinsey consultant, Kennedy likes to define “company culture” as a fancy way of saying, “That’s how we do things around here.”¹

Deal and Kennedy point out that a strong culture is a powerful lever for guiding behavior and helps employees do their jobs better in a couple ways. Specifically, a strong culture

• Serves as a system of informal rules that spells out how people should behave most of the time

• Helps people feel better about the work they do, so they are more likely to work harder

The authors point out that there’s no “one size fits all” corporate culture. Indeed, they note that the corporate cultures at GE and Xerox were so different in the 1980s that even though both companies were highly successful, the chances that a rising star at GE would or could replicate that success at Xerox were slim to none.

Articulate Who You Are

After you’ve thought about what your company truly stands for, articulate this in a straightforward and descriptive way. To demonstrate, here are excerpts from two “who we are” descriptions from two very different companies:

• FedEx. “The core philosophy that governs every activity at FedEx is People-Service-Profit (PSP): Take care of our people; they in turn will deliver impeccable service demanded by our customers, who will reward us with the profitability necessary to secure our future. People-Service-Profit: These three words are the very foundation of FedEx. FedEx is dedicated to the principle that our people are our most important asset—a belief that motivated and conscientious people provide necessary professional service to ensure profits and continued growth.”

• Procter & Gamble. “At P&G, it’s about integrity and character. It’s about building trust by being open, honest, straightforward, and candid with each other, our customers, consumers, and business partners. We do what we say, and we say what we mean. This is what sets P&G and P&G people apart. As a ‘build from within’ organization, we see 95% of our people start at entry level and then progress and prosper throughout the organization. This not only creates many wonderful opportunities to grow and advance, it creates a special camaraderie among fellow P&Gers, many of whom came up through the ranks together.”

Feature Your Employees Describing Their Jobs

To describe your company and “what it’s like to work here” accurately and positively, we’ve found what works best are photos and video clips of, and quotes from, real employees.

You’ll want to feature people with backgrounds (education, experiences) you want to replicate. If you want former Peace Corps members in your organization, always feature one in your recruiting communications. People like to see “Here’s someone just like me,” because it gives them confidence that this is an organization where their degrees, experience, or education will be valued. And they can see this is a place where they potentially will fit in.

How do you get employees to tell you in their own words what they like about being at your company? Ask them. Here are the types of questions that will give you great information to use in recruiting communications:

• What attracted you to this job? Does the reality of the job live up to your expectations?

• What do you like best about your job, and why?

• What do you like least about your job, and why?

• Tell me about your typical day at work—and pretend you’re talking to a 12-year-old. (Adding the part about the 12-year-old helps the employee describe his or her day without using a lot of jargon.)

• What are you learning on the job?

• What skills and abilities do you need to succeed in this job?

• What is the next step you’d like to take in your career? How is your current job preparing you for your next career move?

• What advice would you offer a friend about joining this organization?

• What advice would you offer a friend about how to succeed here?

• What makes you proud of your company?

We’ve found that we can ask this set of questions of selected employees throughout the world and get lots of useable quotes in return. In one global financial institution, Jane posed these questions to 25 employees. Most agreed that “the work we do and the people we work with” were what employees liked best about the job.

In fact, as we’ve worked on recruiting communications through the years, we’ve realized that describing “the work you’ll do and the people you’ll work with” should constitute the core of every organization’s recruiting communications.

How Quotes from Employees Add Value

As you interview employees for your recruiting communications, you’ll hear wonderful examples and expressions of your company’s culture, job content, and more. Here are examples from some of Jane’s recruiting communication efforts:

• “Each new job I’ve accepted didn’t exist before I took it” (from the then-Chairman).

• “This business takes aggressiveness, because we often have to try 10 different strategies in order to succeed at one.”

• “You have to love numbers and be very detail-oriented. You can’t breeze through financial reports.”

• “Creativity is important in anticipating problems before they occur and resolving them when they crop up unexpectedly.”

• “To succeed here, you have to be aggressive, to spot opportunities and take advantage of them. Then, you work with a team of people to get the job done.”

• “We’re driven to be much more innovative here, and I like that pressure.”

Create Accurate Job Descriptions

How does a candidate know if he or she really wants the job? From the job description, which paints a picture of what the candidate will be doing every day at work.

The key is to put the legal, technical description back in your personnel files and instead create a description that speaks to the candidate.

As an example of what not to do, here’s an excerpt from a description that has been slightly altered to protect the guilty:

We’re looking for a business/marketing expert who is a strategic and creative thinker with a natural ability to translate complex technical concepts into business results-oriented narratives that resonate with the organization, business, and industry. You will develop and drive a group-wide communication plan that ensures message clarity and consistency through every level of the organization. The communication plan will clearly establish the communication rhythm of the business (ROB) for your senior leaders and will align with the overall Company ROB calendar. You will work closely with senior leaders to ensure that their communications (i.e., executive newsletters, e-mails, presentations, etc.) to the organization, business, and industry have powerful impact and are carried out flawlessly. You will be on point to ensure that content, deliverables, demos, and supporting materials are compelling, consistent with other executives’ communications, and reinforce the Company story and value proposition to the organization, business, and industry.

Can’t you just picture a Dilbert-like person returning home from this job, opening the door, and saying: “Honey, I’m home. Today I drove process improvement. Tomorrow, I hope to display my natural ability to translate complex technical concepts into business results-oriented narratives that resonate with . . . Honey?”

This job description contains more jargon than information and doesn’t convey what expertise is needed to do the job. It doesn’t answer these questions: What’s the level of responsibility: strategic or tactical? What will the person in this job learn? What could this job lead to?

Give Candidates a Thorough Overview of Company Benefits

Your company has a full set of benefits and policies meant to retain your most valuable employees. But you may forget that any one of those benefits may create a compelling reason for a potential hire to submit his application. We’ve found that different benefits matter more to different candidates, based on their situation. That’s why you should make sure that your full spectrum of benefits and policies is easily accessible in your recruiting communication.

For example, Monsanto’s recruiting website contains a section called “Helping busy people living busy lives.” It includes a “high-level overview of the benefit plans Monsanto offers to eligible employees.” It contains links to sections on medical, vision, and life insurance benefits; pension and stock purchase plans; and time off and other key policies.

Although the information is certainly not as comprehensive as a Summary Plan Description, it provides enough details to give you a sense of what Monsanto offers. For example, here is an excerpt from the Dental Plan section:

Two Levels of Benefits

The Dental Plan is designed to help pay the expenses of dental care. Two levels of dental benefits are offered: high and low.

Under the high option, a covered individual can receive benefits up to $2,000 each year. The low option provides up to $1,500 each year. There is a separate orthodontia lifetime maximum of $1,650 per covered individual under the high option—$1,250 per covered individual under the low option.

If you use an out-of-network provider, you will be responsible for any amounts that exceed the maximum amount allowed in the area as well as your out-of-network deductible and co-pays.

Use the Right Tool in Recruiting Communication

No doubt you’re aware that the hottest trend in recruitment communication can be summed up in two words: social media. More companies every day are getting involved in such social networks as LinkedIn and Facebook, are posting videos on YouTube, or are sharing job openings or other information (very briefly) through the microblog Twitter.

We believe that these new communication channels offer valuable ways to connect with job candidates. But social media is not the answer to everything. As mentioned in Chapter 7, “Use the Right Tool for the Job,” you still need a mix of tools—and an understanding of which works best for which purpose—to reach your future employees.

Here are a few things to remember when using social media tools in recruitment communication:

• Be short and sweet. Twitter posts, or “tweets,” are limited to 140 characters, and there’s an expectation that all content will be quick and timely. For example, here are some tweets that were posted on the Raytheon job site:

“Program Manager position opening at Raytheon in Arlington, VA.”

“Data Center Network Specialist job opening at Raytheon in Rosslyn, VA.”

“Pre-register for Raytheon’s HW/SW Invitational in Denver (July 14 and 15).”

• Coordinate your efforts. Some candidates may love the update experience of Twitter, others may be Facebook fanatics, and still others may limit their job search to surfing the web. Make sure that the most important information you want to convey is accessible in all channels, including more traditional venues such as job websites.

• Get employees involved. As we mentioned early in this chapter, employee faces and voices are more convincing than any message that “the company” conveys. And this is especially true in social media, which is, after all, a social communication channel. Recruiting teams at companies such as Deloitte, Hewlett Packard, and even the U.S. Army have learned to stay in the background while shining the spotlight on employees. Candidates can direct questions to employees, creating confidence that they’re getting the straight story. That’s powerful stuff.

Checklist for Recruiting Talent

If you’re serious about attracting the best people for your company, here are some suggestions to help you communicate effectively:

Check out the employment sections of the websites of companies you admire. Compare what they offer and how they present their employment proposition with how your company does it. What can you do differently to improve your talent acquisition communications?

Let real employees do the talking—and feature people you want to replicate in your new recruits. Don’t limit yourself to a “one of each” approach to diversity (one white, one black, one . . .)—it’s really dated.

If your company takes months to make a decision, let new hires know that; don’t sugarcoat parts of your company culture you think may not appeal to potential employees. When a new employee leaves after a short time, it’s a lose-lose situation that costs your company time and money.