HelpMarketing. What’s being useful got to do with building your employer reputation?

One of the consistent themes that we often find ourselves discussing with our clients is the way in which consumer expectation has changed and the impact that this has had on the expectations of the people we need to hire or retain. In short we all expect more. More information, more detail and more personal service – and that’s true whether we’re buying a car, a hotel room, a book or even a job. So, if we know that the people we need to make our businesses work harder want us to treat them in the same way that we would if they were buying something from us, we need to look to the way that we talk to them too. And perhaps take some guidance from the trends and developments in the broader marketing environment.

The team at Tonic – as you might expect – is excited by the change in candidate expectations and the opportunities this brings in terms of building deeper and longer lasting relationships with them, as well as with existing employees. We each read, listen to and watch as many sources of new intelligence as we can, looking for competitive advantage for our clients. That’s what helped us to come up with the award winning #MarsTweetShop and it inspires the innovations we’re building right now for a wide range of employers.

One of the podcasts that I find most insightful is Michael Stelzner’s ‘Social Media Marketing’. It gives great insight into the way marketeers the world over are building communities with their customers. And of course, for every weird and wonderful concept I hear, the question I ask myself is ‘how could employers use this idea to build better talent communities around their business?’

Listening to SMM a few weeks ago, the discussion turned to the idea of marketing by providing help. This concept (and I’m paraphrasing here), relates to building engagement and awareness with customers by simply aiming to help. Sounds counter-intuitive right? No message about product and service (or job vacancies). Just help.

The case study they gave focused on @HiltonSuggests. This Twitter account set up by Hilton Hotels in the US simply aims to suggest things that might help the people in their cities, customers or not. It doesn’t sell hotel rooms, doesn’t talk about their business. Just helps. A bit like a virtual concierge for everyone. Hilton recently helped a new resident in Chicago: the newbie had moved to the city, didn’t know his way around and had a sick pet dog. He tweeted – not asking for help, just stating a fact. @HiltonSuggests noticed and recommended a vet nearby, the guy took his dog to the vet, the dog got better and the guy tweeted his thanks for the recommendation. Which hotel chain do you think he’ll choose the next time he needs a room? And more importantly, how do you think his Twitter followers now feel about Hilton? Social proof – and if you need to know what that is take a look at our earlier blog – derived from (what I’m going to call), HelpMarketing. Total genius.

So what could that mean for employers and what can we take out of it? I think quite a lot. But who are the people that HR could look to help?

Chief Execs focused on building business reputation
Undergraduates that need advice on the right courses to choose
Engineers that need guidance on the project they’re working on
Sales Assistants wanting to be more productive
Other HR people needing to find a way to change company culture

And the list could go on, and on, and on.

If you think about it, we all have the opportunity to build a community around our businesses. That’s true whether we’re big or small, public or privately owned. These are the people who could be our next best employee, but to begin with they’re just human beings in need of a bit of support from time to time. How we offer that support might mean helping them out to start with but could easily turn into a conversation about helping them to grow their career. And after all, you get what you give.

Tom Chesterton [Aug 2013]

PS. If we can help you – and we haven’t already offered – let us know. Email us at talktous@tonic-agency.com

The experiences and opinions of those within our communities has a far greater impact than anything you could possibly tell them

So what is Social proof?

Well, it’s widely been studied in the field of social psychology, and is tied to the human condition that results in the Fundamental Attribution Error. Yes, I know what you’re thinking!

In laymen’s terms it simply means that given limited time and motivation, people will often evaluate people, products, companies, jobs (and most other things) based on how those around behave toward them. It’s caused by a ‘fear of missing out’. Ask yourself this. If you were walking past a coffee shop, and you saw that there was a queue stretching right down the street, naturally you’d begin to wonder what’s so special that it’s got all these people waiting to get a slice of the action? How intrigued would you be? Would you let yourself miss out? I guess in this case it largely depends whether you like coffee, but you get my point.

The way we all make buying decisions had changed drastically. We’re all far better equipped at seeing through traditional marketing hyperbole. Instead, the views and opinions of those around us play a much bigger role in influencing how we feel about a particular ‘thing’. Those people could be your friends, family, colleagues or peers. Perhaps those we’ve never met before. And here’s the tenuous link to TripAdvisor – it’s essentially the Glassdoor equivalent of recruitment, but for holidays. But the principals are what matter here. It’s a thriving community full of those who are looking, and those looking to be influenced.

Social Proof has been used for a long time in selling us all products and services – celebrity endorsement is a simple example of this, as is the current KIA ad which majors on the opinions of ‘people like you’ rather than what the company thinks you need to know (obviously the good things have been picked out here). But rarely is it a topic that’s talked about in the world of recruitment. And it’s an interesting one.

We all know that we we live in a more social, mobile and connected world (I think!), as we see many employers ramping up their activity on various social platforms. Some do it well, others not so well. Heineken have a great example of crowd-sourced recruitment, which I thoroughly recommend watching here. We’ve also created a twitter activated vending machine for Mars which toured UK campuses to help recruit graduates. You can see a video for that here.

Yet when the large majority or employers and recruiters talk about social recruitment the focus tends to be on the same things. Channels and self-promotion. Let’s push out yet more messages and job posts to people through different channels. That’s bound to get us some applications.

This is largely missing the point and replacing like for like. What you should be asking is what value could we add to the talent communities we want to be invited into? How are we going to tell them what they need to know, where they want it and how they want it? And, how are we going to get people talking about us, become advocates of us and encourage more of the right people to join?

If we go back to thinking about the way we make buying decisions the use of advocates to do your selling for you is the most powerful tool in your armoury. Yet it seems many organisations have an inherent fear of letting their staff actively talk abut their company and their work with their own communities. But why is that?

By having a point of difference and engaging with talent communities (internal and external) in an authentic and human way and by ensuring that you live up to the promises you make, social proof should be nothing more than ratification of your efforts. It’s impossible to keep everyone happy all of the time. But, by acknowledging that these conversations are taking place and more importantly, being present when they happen, will give you a much better hope of influencing them as opposed to sticking your fingers in your ears and pretending they didn’t happen.

Visit tonic-agency.com for more insights and get in touch!

“Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.”

Napoleon Hill

Everyone’s talking about big data

In a rather marvellous article (Recruitment 5.0: The Future of Recruiting — the Final Chapter ), published recently, Matthew Jeffrey and Amy McKee of Autodesk lay out their vision of the future (see here if you’re interested). It’s a good read, but you may want to get a cup of tea before you begin.

Their article is the latest in a series that charts the evolutionary journey of recruitment as it’s moved from a process primarily about building relationships (1.0), through a developing over-reliance on technology (2.0), which pushed the candidate away and then back again (3.0 & 4.0). The future, they argue,will see employers able to re-forge their relationships with the people they need by understanding their needs in detail, tailoring the way they interact with them accordingly.

One of the main points here is that there’s now the technology and data available to do this – data that’s derived from the information about our preferences, motivations and behaviours, the data that we all leave behind us as we go about our social media led lives. Of course there are those people who’ll argue that not everyone has a social footprint – but then you’re reading our blog, and we know you are, so there! But don’t worry; this is not as ‘big brother’ as it sounds. The fact that we leave this data trail behind us is good news.

Good news for the employers that embrace this changing environment. They’ll build communities of engaged, talented people that they can approach when the right role becomes vacant, reducing the time and cost of each hire to their business. They’ll be able to communicate the human nature of their brand through the relationships they build – hiring more of the right people based on fact and understanding. In effect they’ll become talent spotters and talent managers rather than advertisers or recruiters.

Good news for us all as job seekers too. Our world is more social and more mobile; we want and demand information when and where we want it, and if employers can cut through the clutter because they understand us better, we’ll be getting what we want too. It’ll be easier to spot the employers that suit us and make informed decisions about our careers. A real win-win situation.

We’re big fans of Matthew and his work, and hope that you have a chance to read his article. It ties in with our thinking and the way we work to uncover our client’s unique human brand, building conversations and relationships that benefit us all.

So, have a read, and if you’d like to begin a conversation you’ll know where to come.

Tonic-agency.com

Where is recruitment’s Higgs Boson?

You may have seen that CERN held a press conference on Wednesday (4th July’12), to announce that as near as is ‘absolutely’ certain (at the 5-sigma point), they’ve identified that the Higgs Boson does exist. This is important because it means that all the things we thought we knew about how the universe works are still, as far as we can tell, true. There’s no need to rip up the physics rulebook and begin again. This is a good thing.

So, what’s that got to do with recruitment – an inexact science at the best of times – and what can we draw from it? How are the two linked? Well, perhaps more than you might think.

Link number one: At the end of 2011 I visited CERN for the first time. What an amazing place. Aside from meeting Robert Cailliau, who co-developed the www with Tim Berners-Lee (Robert’s now a bit of a hero of mine and no fan of Facebook let me tell you because at its heart it’s not open source), it was a great opportunity to rub shoulders with other people from around Europe, all interested in the future of recruitment and prepared to share their thinking. You see, that’s the great thing about CERN. Collaboration and sharing are in their DNA – their basic tenet is that we can achieve more together, and they’re absolutely right.

The people attending the conference were there at their own expense to talk about the challenges of recruiting, and to outline their approaches to solving the problems they’d encountered. I think it’s fair to say that we all walked away inspired and informed about how to tackle the new recruitment world.

The presentation I gave (with Marcus Body from Optimal), had four main messages: that there’s more information available to help make the right careers decisions; that employers control very little of this detail; that candidate behaviour is changing because of the availability of information; and, that this new recruitment paradigm has more in common with the way in which recruitment worked before the advent of push messaging. Which only really began as print media came into being in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The future, we suggested, was based on conversation and community, rather than telling (or selling to), an unexpecting audience about a role that we have vacant, and then expecting the most talented people to believe our every word.

Link number two: This one is a bit more tenuous re: the Higgs, I’d grant you, but it’s had recruiters scratching their heads for just as long. What is the one thing that holds the recruitment universe together, but has until recently been just as difficult to measure, see and prove that it exists? Your answer may be different to mine but to my mind it’s candidate sentiment. We’ve spent so many years working out what it is that we (as employers) want, and what we (as employers) want to offer, that we’ve forgotten to ask what it is that the people we need to attract, engage and excite are interested in.

Conversation is as much about listening as it is talking, and if we begin our employment communications by listening to the voices of the people we need to hire or retain, the output of our efforts will be better quality a lower cost and ultimately better ROI from those people.

Social media is of course the route to holding the conversation, but if we carry on just putting out messages that we hope are right, we’re really just creating another monologue. We now have the opportunity as employers to begin to listen, to understand what people think about us now, and what we need to talk about to change opinion or to interest the right people in our offer. This also has the benefit of dissuading those without the right value, competency or skillsets. We can be much more targeted in our talent attraction strategies – less like a random particle collision.

Link number three: Physics is an inter-linked discipline and so is your employer brand, or more specifically, your brand in general. The way I feel about your organisation is based on a combination of factors. If I visit your careers site I’ll also see your main site, reading information about what you do, and how well you do it – so there’s an easy link there to your corporate positioning and your products or services. If I’m still open-minded and engaged, I may well get the opinion of other people – and importantly that’s not just my peer group or those people who advise me about my career. I’m equally likely to go to a place where I can get independent views about you and your business. What will I find there?

Link number four: Knowing that the Higgs exists allows scientists to proceed with greater certainty toward the future. An environment where the ‘dead-ends’ and inaccurate results that might have be reached are less likely. It takes away any doubt. The same applies to your brand and the conversations you may have using it.

By better understanding the community you need to engage with, their needs and preferences, you will be better informed about what your employer brand should be achieving for you – and this will allow you to be much more precise in measuring its effects, and its impact.

Link number five: The absolutely almost certain discovery of the Higgs has been a collaborative process that’s taken many years to achieve. By working together the scientists at CERN and other installations around the world have created a working environment that allows for the long-term benefit of all concerned.

If we begin by looking at the way in which people make career decisions – again starting with the audience rather than we want to get from them – recruitment actually works in the same way.

Logically, people, especially those at the beginning of their career, cannot possibly have a preferred employer. Career decisions begin by deciding that they like the look of an industry or sector or job type – and then they begin looking at the biggest or best employers that match their criteria. Some employers – like those in the Power sector – are beginning to group together to build sector value propositions to address this, a trend we see growing over time. The have committed to a longer-term approach to solve some big demographic challenges. But, by acting collaboratively they are increasing the visibility of an industry, allowing greater engagement with the people they all need. This has the potential to grab the attention of difficult to reach groups, converting opinion toward the sector and increasing the attractiveness of them all. By working together, sharing budgets and effort, they will all benefit.

So what has the Higgs Boson got to do with recruitment? What can we learn? Arguably more than you might think.

TC2012

Find out more about Tonic – at www.tonic-agency.com or call for a conversation on 020 3651 2337

One month to go

Where do you begin your first ever blog? And, how and why do you begin your first business? Two big questions that we’ve had to answer in the last few months in preparing to launch Tonic – our new business that works with employers to build brand engagement with their people – past, present or future.

Firstly the why? Why move away from the safety net of big, stable businesses at a time when economically it might make more sense to hunker down and look for safe harbour in what looks likely to be a repeat of the financial storm of the credit crunch?

The simple answer is that in a changing world it’s those businesses that are more agile, more responsive to client need and more reflective of the communications environment of today (rather than being built on traditional models), that will succeed. There’s a better, more effective way to work, and no time like now to really impact on the way that employers interact with their people. A better place to be.

Simply doing more of the same push based employer marketing that typified marketing in the 20th century no longer benefits employers or the way that their people feel about the opportunities they offer – and neither does it reflect the way that decisions are made in a world that’s more social, more open to sharing experiences and therefore richer in readily available information.

Think about how you purchase goods or services now and how that compares to how you may have made the same decision between the available alternatives a few years ago. Even relatively small decisions about buying an album or a app for your phone for example might now mean looking at independent reviews from previous buyers or users rather than relying on what the seller wants you to think. Larger purchases might require even more research – how do you decide on which holiday, house or car is the right one for you?

Of course the career that you choose is perhaps the biggest buying decision you can make. After all it’ll largely determine the house you live in, the car you buy and the holidays you can go on. So how do you make a decision about which employer is likely to offer you the best career opportunities – and how would you make that decision now in comparison to a decade ago?

Tweets, blogs, and reviews on sites like Glassdoor or Roll on Friday are all potential sources of information that will help make informed career decisions – as are careers sites and advisors. Of course it would be plain blinkered to assume that company websites and corporate releases no longer play a part, but it’s not just that of course. It’s equally true that the experience you have of the products your potential new employer makes or the services they deliver will affect your decision to join that business rather than stay where you are – or to consider the alternatives.

So, we live in a content convergent world; there’s more information that’s more intertwined and more readily available about employers, what they do – and whether they are any good at it. Unfortunately the hard truth is that the majority of this content does not sit within the control of the business that’s under discussion. Some people will say nice things about you, some people won’t. So, how can we hope to influence the decisions of the people that we need to hire or retain?

The first step seems logically to accept this new scenario and the fact that you are no longer fully in control of how you’re perceived as a business and therefore as an employer. But having done so, there is an opportunity to build better relationships with the people who consume your brand identity – by treating them as rational consumers of the product that you offer, which is presumably a great career, with great opportunities to fulfil personal aspiration and development potential.

And that’s where Tonic will work. We join up brand conversations to help employers talk to, engage and excite the people they need. Identifying what’s special about your ‘people product’ and then using your uniqueness to persuade your community to buy you and your product by taking into account your whole story; people, product and business performance.

We think that’s exciting. That’s why we’re going into business. And I guess that’s how you begin your first blog.