Is Employer Brand Important in Candidate Selection?

As a job seeker, one of the best things you can do is to get in the heads of recruiters, hiring managers and company leaders. If you understand why, how, and who they hire, you’re already steps ahead. This includes understanding an organization’s tools, processes and resources—everything from what happens after you submit your resume to the candidate selection and evaluation process.

However, it’s not just about the process—every company has some sort of strategy around hiring including their brand in the talent market.  Just like companies such as Apple or Coca-Cola spend millions of dollars to sell their products every, they also pour money into selling their jobs.

Definition of Employment Brand

The concept of an employment brand is an important one for companies in this competitive job market with 51% of employers saying they have an employment branding strategy in 2012 according to a recent study by Bernard Hodes.  Nineteen percent of companies surveyed admitted to re-working their current plan and another 24% are working towards one.

What does this mean for you? Employer brand. A company’s employer brand is the perception you, the job seeker, have of what it’s like to work there and the reality of that experience. It’s like walking into a big retail store. You have expectations about the products you’ll find there and the service you’ll receive. If those expectations fall short, it hurt’s that store’s consumer brand, their reputation in the marketplace. You’ll take your spending money elsewhere.

The same can be said for an organization’s employer brand. If you take a job based on the promise of challenging work, certain benefits and growth opportunities, and once you start, that promise isn’t met, it tarnishes the reputation of what it’s like to work for a company.

As a job seeker, understanding a company’s employer brand is essential to both determining if the company is the best fit for you and your success in the application and selection process. An employer brand can provide exceptional insight into an organization and the opportunity.

When companies define and communicate their employer brand, they’re focusing on what matters most to their employees and what they do well.  They connect that to their culture and to employees’ success: who performs the best in the organization and how do they think act and behave.

As a result, good employer brands clearly define the most important returns you’ll get from working there.  This includes specific benefits and perks but more importantly, the workplace lifestyle or flexible workplace.  An employer brand can help provide insight into the people, the culture

Big Brand Employment Like Zappos

For some organizations like Southwest and Zappos, this means employees like to have fun at work and embed their personalities into everything they do. For companies like Google or 3M, it’s all about innovation—employees have to have a passion for trying, creating and believing in new things.  Southwest flight attendants often tell jokes or sing songs at the beginning of a flight—this isn’t a fit for everyone. If you take a job and the fit’s not there, you’ll be asked to perform and behave in a way that’s not comfortable to you and ultimately, you won’t be happy. Really understanding a company’s employer brand helps you as a job seeker ensure you’ll fit.

Understanding employer brand also means you have a sense of what the company is looking for. What are the qualities (outside of the skills required for the job) that are an embedded part of the company’s culture? What behaviors are common in successful employees?

Take Marriott International’s employer brand line “Find Your World™.” Marriott’s not looking for passive employees that just want a paycheck.  Find Your World™ sends the message that growth and movement are encouraged among their many locations and brands. If you’re looking for upward mobility and the chance for varied challenges throughout your career, you can share that as part of the process.

Knowing how a company brand’s it’s employment experience can give you an edge up as you look for a job. You can better position yourself as a fit if you understand what matters to a company. The important point here is to make sure you don’t force it. If you have to stretch the truth about yourself or your experiences to sell yourself based on a company’s employer brand, it won’t work for you or the employer.

Job Seeker Education Key in Company Recruiting Process

As you’re learning about a company’s employer brand, keep in mind that not every organization understands the concept or does a good job of defining their own employer brand. Less sophisticated companies focus only on advertising their jobs and the associated tangible benefits that come with them (medical benefits or a flexible work schedule).

These things are important, but as a job seeker you’ll be much more successful in the long term if you think about the entirety of the opportunity—the employer brand. Consider the promise the company is making and ask yourself if that promise really matters to you. Use the brand to evaluate fit—are you the kind of person who wants to act and behave that way on the job?  If you’re in a job and not sure whether to stay, ask yourself if the organization’s employer brand resonates with you? Are they delivering on what they promised? And if so, is that the promise you want?

Understanding employer brand doesn’t have to be complicated. There’s a simple way to think about it. Take a look around your home or your workplace. As a consumer, what products can you really get behind? Where do your loyalties lie? The same goes for your next job. Choose an employer you can really get behind, believe in and support. Their employer brand holds the key to understanding just that.

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Susan Strayer is the founder of Exaqueo, a talent and brand consulting firm specializing in strategies for start-up and high-growth companies. She’s spent years recruiting and creating talent and employer brand strategies for companies like Marriott International. The Ritz-Carlton, The Home Depot and Corporate Executive Board. She’s the author of two books including The Right Job, Right Now: The Complete Tool-Kit to Finding Your Perfect Career (St. Martin’s Press). Connect with Susan via @SusanStrayer or at www.exaqueo.com. 

ignorance is not bliss

Just because you can quote statistics or cite a website, article, book, or post about a particular topic doesn’t make you smart or well-versed. It makes you well-read.  I prefer to learn by experience or by listening to really great teachers who have been there, done that, or who have watched very carefully as an industry has grown and changed over the last fifteen to twenty years, either following and/or writing about trends and the trendsetters. I have bruised my bum sitting in endless conferences, blistered my feet trudging the aisles of some of the largest conferences/exhibit halls, and have cramped my hands while frantically taking notes or tweeting tweets.

All for the sake of learning.

We know about preventative medicine or dentistry; it’s too bad that we don’t do more for preventative ignorance.  I, like most of you, work really hard to stay abreast of what is new and what has the potential to change an industry or how we do business.  That doesn’t mean I think I am the smartest or most well- equipped individual (for I know I am not) but it does mean that I understand that we need to be constantly evolving and learning.

Ignorance is not bliss. I do not care what any old adage states. Ignorance is ignorance. Being unaware, staying in the dark, or closing your eyes to potential other truths retards the growth necessary for active brain activity and regeneration.  And sometimes, you just need to speak up, even though you may not be in tune with the message, just to hear your thoughts out loud and recognize that maybe you were a little off course, re-think and re-direct.

“It’s all good.”

It is often taught that when you are trying to learn a song, you must either sing or play out loud and strong, so that you know when you miss the mark.  If you can’t hear the mistake, then you can’t correct it.  I think it was Mark Twain who said, “It is better to be silent and thought a fool, then to speak out and remove all doubt.”  I don’t necessarily agree, for open dialogue is healthy but only if it is open, with rational willingness to hear the other side or in some cases, all sides.

It’s like when the cord of an appliance gets wrapped up and twisted so tightly that you cannot untangle it and the appliance is no longer useful because the cord has actually choked it.  Beating into submission, into compliance doesn’t breed followers, it creates contempt and rebellion.  Watch Star Wars or read Atlas Shrugged.  Squashing creativity and openness will only deepen the desire to create and be willful.

“That which you call your soul or spirit is your consciousness, and that which you call ‘free will’ is your mind’s freedom to think or not, the only will you have, your only freedom, the choice that controls all the choices you make and determines your life and your character.” ~Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Rayanne Thorn, @ray_anne is the Marketing Director for online recruiting software company, Broadbean Technology.  She is also a proud mother of four, happily engaged to Tom, residing in Laguna Beach, California, and a daily contributor for Blogging4Jobs.  Connect with her on LinkedIn.  

Can You Be Fired for Being Gay?

I usually am proud to live in the state of Oklahoma.  It’s a friendly place filled with great football and wonderful towns and history.  It’s a place I’ve called my home for the last seven years.  It’s a state that I feel safe outside of severe weather and tornados, but today I am ashamed.  Ashamed to be an Oklahoman.  Ashamed because Oklahoma Representative James Lankford said in an interview (video shown above) that being gay shouldn’t be protected against workplace discrimination because being gay is a choice.

This choice Lankford describes is like deciding on your favorite flavor of ice cream, your decision to be religious, or the decision you might make as an adult to have sex and with whom.  These all are all choices that we, as individuals make in this great country and are free to.  They are our right, and these choices are protected.  These are choices that are protected as part of workplace discrimination.

A bi-partisan effort is taken place in the Senate for what they are calling the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would make discrimination against gays in the workplace as well as restriction from clubs and activities illegal.  48% of employees who are gay, aren’t out in the workplace likely out of fear of being fired, reprimanded, or retaliated against.

We All Make Choices but Being Gay is Not One of Them

• Your choice to eat ice cream.  It is a choice and this choice is sometimes reflected in a medical diagnosis for those who are diagnosed as Type II Diabetic.  As an employer, the law keeps me from terminating you as a result of this diagnosis which sometimes starts with a choice, but sometimes genetics wins over your choice to eat healthy, exercise each day, or avoid sugary foods.  It’s still a choice with far reaching consequences and effects.

• Your choice to practice religion.  Title VII provides employees with the opportunity to be free from religious discrimination at work while also having the opportunity to take time off work to practice our religion.  This choice is a decision not genetic but a right for employees throughout the US.

• Your choice to have sex.    As a law abiding citizen you have this right to make this decision.  A decision that for me and my husband led to the birth of our daughter.  While pregnant, I am protected against workplace discrimination and entitled to time off work as a new mother according to the FMLA.  It is against the law for me to be fired or disciplined because of that simple fact.

Being Gay at Work Should Be a Protected Class

Recently, the EEOC announced that transgender employees are protected from discrimination at work.  But according to Representative Lankford, a choice like this should not be protected.  Because it is in fact a choice.  I don’t often sit on my soapbox much here on Blogging4Jobs, but if you have followed the blog over the last several years you would know my family’s story.  Everyone deserves to feel comfortable, safe, and happy at work free from worry about being judged or treated different when all they want is to earn a living and do their work which is why I believe that employees who are gay should be protected from idiots like Lankford if only at work.

I whole-heartedly support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.  Don’t employees deserve a workplace free of distraction, discrimination, and retaliation regardless of their sexual preferences just like religion?  I’m making a choice to support making discrimination against gays illegal in the workplace.  What’s your stance?

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Sex Sells But Should It Happen at Work?

Sex, sex, sex and at work no less.  Early on in my professional career, I walked in on a male manager who was transitioning out of the store I was transferring to and one of his female employees.  Half clothed and in a compromising position, I was extremely uncomfortable.  I’m pretty sure they were too or at least once I opened that stock room door.  I was new at the company and was not yet ready to make waves so the manager and his mistress quietly transferred while I kept my mouth shut.  A couple years later I heard that they were engaged, and my wedding invitation seemed to have gotten lost in the mail.

Last week Crystal Miller wrote a provocative post on Sex at Work where sex was used as a candidate recruitment and employee retention tool.  In case you missed it, it’s an interesting read and I thought it only fair to share my own thoughts on sex in the workplace (read Crystal’s article here).  Michael Vandervort wrote an equally intriguing post on the mommy porn series “50 Shades of Grey.”  His post prompted me to purchase and download the series to my iPad, but I haven’t yet dived in.  I’m pretty sure there’s a beach and a vacation in my future that calls for such reading.

Sex sells.  It’s a part of our human nature which is why it inevitably trickles into our place of work.  Like most good HR pros and school marms, we push these topics under the rug mostly because we’ve seen some pretty racy things.  Things we can’t talk about.  Things we could fill 50,000 books of 50 Shades of Grey with.  In my career as an HR manager, I’ve been privy to all types of sexual harassment investigations and love triangles seeing enough photos of private parts to make even Howard Stern blush.  Let me just say that I love mobile technology but the addition of the camera to the phone was nothing but trouble.

Worker’s Compensation Injury Claim

One story I had not run across in my HR experience involved a case out of Australia.  A woman was injured during sex.  She claimed she was injured on the job as her and her co-worker were enjoying a bedtime brawl when a light fixture fell from the wall of her hotel room injuring the woman.  She was hurt and claimed because the trip was work related; she was eligible for worker’s compensation.  The 2007 claim was denied for obvious reasons, but earlier this year was finally settled with the judge ruling in her favor.

This is what I mean when I say sex at the workplace pays.

This case intrigued me as I could in some respect understand her point of view but the visual is what had me laughing.  The amount of shame and embarrassment this women and her colleague must have felt.  Their argument for the case that ultimately won was the activity of sex was irrelevant.  Do you agree?  And if you are able, what’s a workplace story you can share involving sex or sexual harassment at work?  (You’ve been warned.  Comments must be suitable for work.)

Photo Credit examiner.com. 

Protecting Employee Facebook & Social Network Privacy

The American public went gaga in March of this year after the media reported a growing trend by employers who are requesting Facebook password and user ID access during their hiring and interview process.  These requests for special access to social networks not only are an invasion of privacy for the potential employee but leave the employer vulnerable as they now have access to protected information as per Title VII.  These protected classes and their information are illegal when used as part of a hiring, promotion, or disciplinary process.  For those that do when it comes to social networks, I call this social media discrimination.

Outside of accessing to a job seeker’s Facebook, companies can find a great deal of protected information online.  Information about a person’s sexual preference as the EEOC considers transgender as a protected class.  Companies have access to health information like a female job seeker’s sonogram photos or if an employee likes a Facebook Page for cancer survivors.

SNOPA: Social Networking Online Protection Act

The public outcry and controversy surrounding online privacy especially when it comes to social networks has led to legislation in many states who are proposing bills that would make employers requesting social networking passwords and ID’s in violation of the law.  States like California, Maryland, and New York have began crafting state legislation protecting job seeker and employee privacy.  Last week, Representative, Elliot Engel introduced  a federal bill called the Social Networking Online Protection Act.  SNOPA, H.R. 5050 would make it illegal for employers to request passwords and other private information from employees and job seekers on social networks.  Employers would not be able to discipline, terminate, or deny employment for those who do not provide such information.  If they did, they would be subject to civil penalties $10,000.

Once SNOPA or a SNOPA-like bill passes, employees and job seekers need to educate themselves on what is protected.  Just like being asked an illegal interview question, you need to be prepped and prepared with your answer.  And in my opinion that answer should be, “I’m sorry Hiring Manager.  I don’t feel comfortable answering that question or providing access to my private social network information.”

Read more about the practice of employers requesting access to job seekers and employee’s social networks like Facebook.

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Employee Succession Plan Impacts Engagement

As someone who has participated in succession planning for my direct reports and employee populations I was responsible for, I never had the opportunity to hear from my senior leaders their succession plan or planning for me.  You’d think that working inside an organization as an employee, you may be privy to the discussion, however, I’ve found that this discussion is often reserved solely for those employees they designate as high potential or just senior leaders themselves.  And so I give you my story and my memoirs from a non-high potential employee.

Early into my professional career, I received an email from my corporate HR team, inviting me to participate in interviews and development for a high potential human resources position.  I was beyond excited sharing the news with my peers, friends, and my family.  I spent hours re-working my resume, prepping for possible interview questions, and even purchased a new khaki suit with red camisole.  I was a woman on a mission, an overly engaged employee who was eager to prove her worth, but I was mistaken.  That high potential invitation was not meant for me.

My store manager called me into his office to deliver the bad news.  The email sent to me was in error, and so I was uninvited.  I was mortified, defeated, and embarrassed, and in that moment I went from an engaged to a disengaged employee.  Disengaged HR is the worst.  The Regional HR Director called me trying to calm the waters, justify her actions, and defend her point of view.  The damage was done.  It was at that moment and for the first time in my nearly 2 years at that organization that I learned she had a different career path for me.

But What About the Non-High Potential Employee?

This week I heard Jim Quigley, the outgoing CEO for Deloitte talk about Leadership and how senior leaders consider leadership and the development of talent a key strategy in retaining your workforce as well as growing and retaining the current and future employee population.  He talked candidly about how CEO’s at top organizations are using purposeful leadership to build and grow talent starting with senior leaders and high potentials with no mention of the non hi-po employee.

“Passion,” Quigley  says “Plays a role in engagement, happiness, development, and productivity of an employee.”  And yet, 50% of employees are not happy at work while a growing number of independent consultants, contractors, and entrepreneurs like me are throwing caution to the wind and pursuing their passion and dictating their own career path and not the direction or point of view of another especially that Regional HR Director.  My point of view is that senior leaders especially CEO’s are more disconnected from the average employee than ever before, and their management team is filled with politicians not change makers who look past individuals, focus on overarching leadership theories maybe like I was who are different or stand out.

Leadership Theories & Embracing the Practical Genius

Gina Rodan, the autor of Practical Genius calls these younger twenty-something employees who are often round pegs in square organizations, “Fat Brains.”  This leadership theory describes the fat head as creative, risk takers, and offer an unconventional point of view that is often times labeled as trouble, restless, or contrary.  But these fat brains are creative, unique, and they get the job done, but only on their terms.  Which leads me to my problem with defining high-potentials because these individuals are in my experience risk-averse.

Are you meeting with your non-high potential employees?  How are you talking about them with their career pathing, professional goals and aspirations within their organization?  Because solely focusing your efforts on a small group of corporate employees deemed high potential seems a little short sited in any succession plan and leadership strategy.

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