This week we welcome James Ellis to the podcast. A self-proclaimed employer branding "nerd", James is a leading voice in the world of talent branding, having led EB initiatives at GroupOn and Universum before assuming his latest role at Roku. He's also the author of several books, including "Talent Chooses You" and "The Employer Brand Handbook Volume 1: The Real World Guide to Working With Recruiters."

Topics include: 

The relative lack of formal education programs for employer branding in the US, what the COVID pandemic and George Floyd situation has (and hasn't) changed about the nature of employer branding, how the rise of remote work has challenged the traditional notion of company culture, why employee testimonial videos often fail to be differentiating, the ways in which employer branding is (and isn't) about people, how formal and informal rewards reveal an organization's values, the similarities between understanding an employer brand and psychotherapy, why there's no such thing as a "great" company to work for, why recruiters tend to be resistant to process changes, the difference between backward- and forward-looking recruiting metrics, why measuring quality of hire is difficult at scale, how to use the lens of "rewards" to attract candidates most likely to thrive in your organization, the importance of understanding your employer brand's competitive set, understanding recruiter bias as a kind of workflow shortcut, how generic job descriptions undermine recruiting, and the importance of salary transparency in job descriptions.

This week we welcome Ed Pedini to the podcast. Ed has worn numerous hats in the HR space, from practice director at an RPO helping start-ups scale their workforces, to Co-Founder of All2.io, an employee experience solution, to his current role as Director of Customer Success at Seekout, an AI-powered sourcing tool for recruiters. 

Topics include: how establishing recruiting processes is different for start-ups than for established organizations, the "oil tanker effect" larger companies face, the value of data and analytics, why candidate experience remains low priority for many organizations, the importance of seeing the emotional dimension of job applications from the candidate's POV, how to provide great candidate experiences even for applicants who are not offered a job, how to move past the "cost-center" mindset surrounding recruiting, the ways in which job boards have become victims of their own successes, the distinction between EVP's that "repel" talent vs. encourage talent to "self-select" into an organization, how legacy ATS's have failed to adapt to modern recruiting practices, and why pre-hire technology often fails to understand the workflows of its core users.

This week we welcome Adam Gordon to the podcast. Adam's career in talent acquisition spans more than twenty years, from his early days sourcing accountants as a frontline recruiter, to a stint at PWC as a consultant in the organisation's HR practice, to his current role as Co-Founder and CEO of Candidate.ID. 

Topics include: the meaning of candidate nurturing, how to apply the marketing concept of "total addressable market" to recruitment, why cold sourcing talent is generally inefficient, the similarities and differences between consumer purchases with long purchase cycles and job searches, considerations when balancing the "long-tail" of candidate nurturing against the immediate needs of filling open roles, how to find bandwidth on TA teams to reallocate to candidate nurturing activities, why toddlers are prone to interrupting podcasts, how to set realistic expectations for ROI on nurturing tools and campaigns, why recruitment CRM's often fail to deliver value for candidates and TA teams alike, and the redundancies that exist between ATS's and CRM's.

This week we discuss Google’s announcement of its plans to disrupt the higher education market by offering skill-focused certifications for as little as $49/month. We also announce our new initiative, EqualOpportunityHires.com, for bringing equal opportunity jobs to underrepresented talent where they already “live” online.

Topics include: the fundamental issues facing American higher ed, the stigma attached to online education, how traditional degrees may (or may not) retain their value in the job marketplace, the inherent recruiter bias against non-degree candidates, the current state and limitations of diversity job boards, the gaps left by creating job boards as destinations, the meaning of “candidate-centric” when it comes to diversity hiring, how to bridge the gap between equal opportunity employers and community organizations, the connection between “inclusion” and employee upskilling, and how providing career paths that lead outside your organization can help create a compelling EVP.

This week we welcome Bas van de Haterd to the podcast. Bas proudly identifies as a “professional snoop” — a title that captures his more than 15 years of experience as an HR consultant, candidate assessment and experience expert, and frequent conference speaker. 

Topics include: the myriad dimensions of candidate experience, how optimized career sites boost candidate conversion rates, the disconnect between organizational D&I goals and the employee experience portrayed on career sites, the issues raised by having marketing or IT “own” your corporate career site, why career sites are “multipliers” for candidate flow, the distinction between having analytic skills and an analytic mindset, why résumés make poor predictors of employee success, alternative approaches to cognitive and personality assessments, and strategies for removing unwanted bias from candidate screening and assessments. 

This week we welcome Jody Ordioni to the podcast. Jody is Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, founder of Achieve Engagement, and author of The Talent Brand, and award-winning book on structured approaches to brand building.

Topics include: the value of viewing consumer and talent brands holistically, the limitations of content-first approaches to talent branding, the distinction between “employer” brand and “talent” brand, how strong talent brands build equity for their consumer counterparts, the importance of getting beyond internal “hunches” when defining an talent brand, why employee surveys are foundational to structured talent brand initiatives, how good surveys support employee engagement, the key characteristics of a strong talent brand, why HR (and talent brand) has historically been viewed as a cost center, how to measure ROI of talent brand with “business” metrics, the connection between recruiter performance metrics and talent brand health, and the connection between diversity and inclusion efforts and talent branding.

Connect with Jody Ordioni

LinkedIn
Website: Brandemix
Book: The Talent Brand
Achieve Engagement

This week we welcome Todd Davis to the podcast. Todd’s career spans more than 25 years in talent acquisition, from his current role as a Global Talent Executive at IBM, to leadership roles at Ancestry, Amazon, and WarnerMedia.

Topics include: why HR lags behind other departments in analytic prowess, the limitations of focusing recruiting efforts on the top of the funnel (“we need more candidates”), approaches to up-skilling recruiters and hiring managers, how data analysis can reveal surprising opportunities in candidate sourcing and selection, the ways in which good data “tells its own story,” the good/fast/cheap triangle of project management, differing approaches to measuring candidate quality, how implementing consistent metrics across recruiters can lead to better insights, how to think about the apparent tension between analytics and the “human” side of talent acquisition, the role of intuition in making hire decisions, the value of conducting regular interviewer process audits, how flashy new pre-hire technology can distract from talent acquisition goals, why analytic dashboards have risen in prominence, and how dashboards focus our attention in good ways and bad.

This week we share our thoughts on the recent announcement regarding the Glassdoor/Indeed partnership, and discuss the results of a recent poll we conducted regarding LinkedIn’s Workforce Diversity Report.

Topics include: what we know about the new Glassdoor/Indeed partnership, the migration of Glassdoor sponsored jobs to Indeed, what is likely to happen to existing Glassdoor sponsored jobs packages, the implications of the partnership for job aggregators and the candidate experience, the future of Glassdoor (and Indeed) ratings, likely scenarios for the merging of reviews from both sites, the potential impact on staffing companies and RPO’s, unanswered questions about quick/easy apply and ATS integration, LinkedIn’s lack of minority representation in its leadership teams, how labor market statistics can provide a benchmark against which to measure D&I efforts, the connection between under-represented employee groups and educational attainment, the value of publicly sharing an organization’s D&I statistics, the difficulty of connecting minorities with forward-thinking employers, and how employer can meet under-represented “where they live.” 

Links

Press release: Glassdoor and Indeed Partner to Help Employers Hire More Efficiently

Article: 2019 LinkedIn Workforce Diversity Report

This week we start the show with a continuation of our ongoing discussion of candidate experience, and end with a deep-dive into our recent blog post, "Diversity and Inclusion Is Not an Employer Brand Strategy."

Topics include: how job aggregators negatively impact the candidate experience, why Glassdoor has paused its job board partnership program, why quantity has historically trumped quality with regard to job board traffic, alternate job board revenue models that prioritize candidate experience, the four key qualities of a strong EVP, why diversity and inclusion is not a basis for a differentiated employer brand, how strong EVP's are inherently exclusionary, the apparent tension between a strong EVP and D&I efforts, and the question of whether D&I is a "table stakes" dimension of employer brands.

Links

Blog post: Diversity and Inclusion Is Not an Employer Brand Strategy
Book: Give & Get Employer Branding: Repel the Many and Compel the Few with Impact, Purpose and Belonging

This week we welcome John Ambrosino to the podcast. John is Chief Employment Officer at Employing.us, and brings more than fifteen years of HR expertise to the table, ranging from payroll, to candidate experience, to reputation management.

Topics include: why the “black hole” of candidate experience remains a persistent challenge, how candidate experience expectations and challenges vary by organization and role, the importance of establishing recruiter performance metrics specific to candidate experience, how poor HR tech can undermine even the best recruiters’ efforts, the challenges posed by having too many candidates, how strong employer brands can improve candidate experience (and vice versa), how to define a compelling mission statement for high volume recruitment, the blessing and curse of employee review sites, how average ratings obscure crucial differences that exist between (and within) departments, and how diverse employee personalities (via testimonial videos) interact with an organization's overarching employer brand.

Connect with John Ambrosino:
LinkedIn
The 4 Minute Podcast