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Tag: Culture

6 Steps Proven To Boost Your Employer Brand

Posted on by Rachel Heller

Great compensation alone no longer tops the list of must-haves for job seekers. So what is driving competitive talent your way? Today, it’s all about how candidates perceive your company’s culture, aka your employer brand – and whether or not they can visualize themselves being part of it. 

In fact, with 25% of candidates willing to accept a pay cut to work for a company with an engaging employee experience, it’s becoming increasingly evident that the employer brand is just as important as the consumer brand. All things considered, focusing on your brand is undoubtedly good for business: organizations that invest in their employer brand are three times more likely to hire quality candidates.

In a world where your reputation as an employer can be discovered in just a few clicks, leveling up is mission-critical. Here are six proven strategies to help you do just that.

1. Audit, Both Inside and Out

It’s one thing to create a flashy careers page – it’s another to live out those promises. To foster a healthy company culture full of happy employees, start by listening. 

Commit to asking your team for honest feedback through regular employee pulse surveys so you can measure and track how they feel about their work experience. Then – and most importantly – let the feedback inform your business strategy.

Don’t stop there. Take an external look at your employer brand by “listening” to what people are saying about your company across social media platforms and job review sites. Gathering this data will help you not only identify your strengths and play to them in the future, but also identify your weaknesses and prioritize next steps for mitigating them.

2. Employer Brand Starts With Employee Value Proposition

Next, get clear on why competitive talent would want to work for you. What do you offer in exchange for their valuable time and skills?

Today’s candidates want to work for a place that not only shares their values, but also provides a sense of belonging. Use the data gathered during your audit to write compelling job descriptions that make it clear why a talented individual should join your team.

To further reel in star candidates, ensure that these same value propositions are intelligently conveyed in the hiring process, leaving no doubt in the minds of candidates that your company is the place for them.

3. Demonstrate a Commitment To DEI  

It’s not enough to show off your diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts after a candidate is hired; 85% of job seekers want to know where employers stand on DEI before making a final decision about a job.

A great place to start? Your careers page. If DEI is truly a clear focus for your organization, demonstrate it by including images of people from diverse backgrounds, inclusive language, and employee testimonials that speak to your efforts.

Committing to DEI is one of the most consequential factors in creating a workplace where employees feel comfortable to be their authentic selves. But practicing DEI is a continuous journey. Make a habit out of regularly evaluating your DEI efforts and identifying areas needing improvement. 

4. Broadcast Growth Opportunities

Employees want and need a challenge — especially high performers. In fact, 33% of employees cite boredom as the main reason for leaving a job (Korn Ferry’s Breaking Boredom survey).

So if growth isn’t part of your employer brand, it needs to be. Employees who are offered growth and development opportunities learn new skills, making them more valuable and more engaged.

Don’t forget to emphasize these opportunities everywhere you talk about open roles: on your careers page, in job descriptions, and on social media. Showing that you invest in the well-being of your employees will quickly capture a job candidate’s attention.

5. Give Current Team Members a Voice

One of the most significant assets that will reinforce your employer brand is sitting right in front of you: your employees. In fact, candidates trust what current employees say about working for a company three times more than they trust the employer.

To leverage your team, ask them to leave reviews on job sites, request testimonials to share on your website or social media, or record videos of employee stories you can use in recruiting activities.

Your employees’ stories will breathe personality into your employer brand, showcasing real-life examples of people who love being part of your team. Take it from Microsoft, a company that took this idea to another level by creating a Twitter profile, @MicrosoftLife, which is exclusively centered around their company culture and the lives of their employees.

6. Remember: The Candidate Relationship Is Your Employer Brand

Amidst auditing and improving your employer brand, never lose sight of the connection built between candidates and your organization during the interview process – because at the end of the day, the candidate relationship is your employer brand. How you treat and interact with candidates in their hiring journey directly reflects the type of employer you are. To position yourself as a great place to work, ensure that candidates feel respected.

Here’s where your tech stack comes in: implementing features that allow candidates to self-schedule their interviews for a time that works best for them, and leveraging automation for a quick and easy recruitment process, sends a message to candidates that their time is valued.

Don’t let a negative candidate relationship weigh down your employer brand. Give candidates a seamless experience by leveling up your tech stack today.

5 Key Takeaways: Building an Employer Brand Strategy at Postmates

Posted on by Rachel Heller

How’s your employer brand strategy? 

Amid The Great Resignation, compensation and role alignment aren’t enough to snag top talent. 

Creating a smart employer branding strategy attracts more ideal candidates by providing a clear, specific, and unique point of view as to what life is like within your organization. Employer branding also demonstrates company values in a way that helps candidates see themselves with a given company. 

And now more than ever before, company values matter deeply to job seekers. This is why taking the time to build a solid employer brand strategy is the secret sauce in capturing top talent. 

Every TA leader understands the importance of company culture as it’s seen through the eyes of current employees. By leveraging that knowledge, hiring teams can develop an authentic employer brand strategy to appeal to their ideal candidates.

Here are five key takeaways from the webinar with Pete Lawson, former VP of Talent at Postmates, on building an authentic employer brand strategy at Postmates. 

1. Turn on the Discovery Channel

Discovery interviews are the first step toward building an authentic employer brand strategy. They provide the opportunity to see the company through the eyes of the employees. Lawson’s team asked employees questions such as:

What’s it like to be a part of the Postmates team?
What’s their background?
What are their goals?
What’s compelling about their organization?
What do you feel is working?
What do you feel is not working?
Where do you feel undervalued?

Determining the company’s strengths and weaknesses from an employee’s perspective was valuable feedback that allows them to continuously improve as an organization.

Talent competitor analysis was important for Lawson’s team to pinpoint who Postmates was competing against for talent, and how they are currently showing up in the market. The team focused on key areas including:

How’s their employee value proposition (EVP)?
What’s their voice or tone?
What’s their brand reach?
What does their community engagement look like?
What do their mobile apps look like?
How can they gain a competitive edge as an organization?

A digital audit was deployed and combed through their primary mediums including:

  • Career site
  • Job description pages
  • Corporate blog
  • Social media
  • Glassdoor page
  • Github

The team used this method to identify some of their biggest gaps, to gather opportunities for improvement, and to determine where they needed to build more infrastructure. 

2. Communication Is Key During Development

The second phase was to utilize all of the insights collected during phase one to develop a brand narrative, finalize a digital recruitment strategy, and iron out the EVP narrative.

Lawson and his team developed a methodology as to what makes the experience of working at Postmates so unique. They accomplished this through a series of workshops where employees from different departments across the organization provided a wide range and variety of experiences and opinions. 

Using this valuable employee insight, they delivered recommendations for the tagline, the brand’s voice and tone, and the EVP framework. Hearing directly from Postmate employees about what makes the company culture strong, unique, and conversely the areas in which they could improve, was one of the driving forces behind how they arrived at this EVP. 

At this stage, it was crucial to align with the marketing team to get buy-in from them early on in the process. Having meetings early on helps all members understand the end goal, and can provide a roadmap toward the final destination. Getting that buy-in at this stage ensured that they had the opportunity to collect critical information, and understand who on the team they should expect to meet with on a regular basis.

These early stage meetings also allowed them to gain a greater understanding of their concerns regarding this project, what they are most comfortable with, and even some aspects that they’d prefer to avoid during this development phase.

During these meetings, they created project milestones to hit along the way, and gave access to the branding toolkit, and any other materials they had from a branding standpoint. This helped them stay on brand as they developed their strategy and finalized the EVP. 

Having in-depth communication with the team from the start allowed them to build their treatment, and establish themselves as the experts. They were then able to communicate that they understood the objective, company mission, and the desired outcome.

3. The Execution

After all of the hard work that was put in during phases one and two, the execution phase is where they really started to have fun with it. During the execution, they:

  • Rolled everything out
  • Activated the EVP
  • Built out the content creation and analytics dashboard
  • Created the job posting guide
  • Implemented the technology for candidate experience

At this stage, they leveraged the EVP and brand narrative to establish their target audience. They asked themselves what kind of personae and personalities they hoped to attract.

At Postmates, one of the key targets was to highlight female engineers and employees wherever and whenever possible. By including testimonials and photos on their microsites, they increased female representation, which encouraged more women to apply.

This is a much more effective method than simply saying, “we are hiring female engineers.” It was important to them that they really represent the female population, and share their first-hand experiences working at Postmates. This was a great way for candidates to connect with and relate to actual employees, rather than simply hearing the information from a recruiter.

4. Recruiting Ideal Candidates

A job posting guide was built to help make job posts more candidate-centric and on-brand, outlining key sections, examples, templates, and messaging resources as they related to the targeted personae. These would ultimately empower hiring managers to write better job descriptions with the narrative they created. The team wanted the job descriptions to paint a picture of the impact the candidate would make within the organization, and provide more detailed descriptions of the role.

As they interviewed prospective engineers, the hiring team heard a variety of stories concerning the impact they’re making during the COVID-19 pandemic. They wanted to ensure that they’re intentionally highlighting what it was like being an engineer at Postmates during COVID-19, and how their employees were treated during this time.

Video content was key. The team created employee-generated video content during the pandemic, and highlighted some of the shared experiences of employees throughout the organization. They made it a point to highlight their female talent, and how they are empowered to make an impact by building technology to support at-home workers during the pandemic.

This powerful campaign allowed Postmates to give candidates an intimate look at the impact their engineers have in their organization, using raw experiences to generate a narrative to help articulate the company-wide impact engineers have at Postmates. 

The employee-generated video content provided a rare opportunity for potential candidates to build a virtual connection with the employees they’re seeing, who they could easily look up on LinkedIn to verify identity. They prioritized authenticity, and gave candidates an opportunity to envision themselves working at their company.

Candidate experience was next level with GoodTime. Postmates’ team hosted the material that was created during the first couple of phases to create content for their site. Each touchpoint that the candidates had throughout their interview experience was imbued with this new branding and messaging. GoodTime freed up time on the employee side, allowing more time to create content and take care of bespoke, personal details to further elevate the candidate experience. The goal here was to provide candidates with the same feeling that a customer would get from interacting with their brand. It was also important that their mobile app would make it quick and easy for candidates to schedule their interview.

5. Preparation Equals Payoff

After all of this planning and execution, the Postmates hiring team was excited to see the fruits of their labor. Theming the strategies described in the above sections, they saw:

  • 80% increase in applications between September 2019 and September 2020
  • 91% increase in female applicants, an essential part of their mission
  • 30% increase of minority applicants and a significant increase in candidate quality
  • 50% of their applicant pool either “met” or “exceeded” the job requirements, and 
  • 46% of applicants were considered a “strong match” compared to September of 2019

They saw a huge increase in engagement on LinkedIn, and were  honored with a number of awards, including:

  • Best Place to Work in the Bay Area
  • Company With Best Benefits – New York
  • Company With Best Benefits – Seattle
  • Company With Best Benefits – Bay Area
  • Best Paying Company – Bay Area

If you want to watch the full session, check it out here. 

Redemption: Hiring Returning Citizens with Next Chapter

Posted on by Rachel Heller

As part of our fireside chat series, GoodTime CEO Ahryun Moon sat down with Kenyatta Leal, Director of Reentry for Next Chapter, to learn about the challenges of hiring returning citizens. They talked about the program’s beginnings, as well as the fears and stereotypes that returning citizens are forced to contend with upon release, and how talent leaders, executives, and entire companies can actively participate in this system-breaking initiative. 

“Regardless of our past, none of us are beyond redemption. And if we try hard enough, we can build a new way for our lives.”

— Kenyatta Leal, Director of Reentry at Next Chapter

Founded by Slack in 2018, Next Chapter is a nonprofit organization that creates pathways for returning citizens to obtain gainful employment in the technology sector. To date, Next Chapter has placed 11 returning citizens across four companies, including Dropbox, Square, and Zoom. 

The Last Mile

The Last Mile was originally launched in 2010 as an entrepreneurial program that connected participants with volunteer business leaders to develop business plans and pitches. Through this program, Kenyatta met Duncan Logan, Founder and CEO of RocketSpace. The two developed a connection, and Kenyatta asked Duncan if he would hire him upon release. Ultimately, Duncan said yes, and kept his word. 

Slack and Next Chapter

Kenyatta was released from San Quentin on July 3, 2013. A week later, he began working at RocketSpace, determined to add value in any and every way possible. Then, The Last Mile pivoted away from entrepreneurship and focused on a robust coding curriculum. This included full stack development, Javascript, CSS, and other languages.

In 2016, Slack CEO Stuart Butterfield visited the program and became inspired. He gave a Last Mile student a scholarship to the coding bootcamp, Hack Reactor, and offered him job candidacy at Slack. The candidate graduated Hack Reactor, but failed the Slack technical assessment. When post-mortem was conducted, Slack found that the failed assessment was not due to lack of skill on the candidate’s part, but rather the lack of bandwidth of the hiring engineer to bring the candidate up to speed.

This started Next Chapter. Today, Next Chapter provides support to both the incoming candidate as well as the engineering team of the partner company so that the team can maintain speed and trajectory while onboarding a Next Chapter graduate. 

Next Chapter Grows

Kenyatta left Rocketspace in 2018 to work with The Last Mile fulltime to develop Next Chapter, and create a transition plan for returning citizens to enter the tech sector workforce successfully. The following year, Next Chapter became an independent organization. They now recruit candidates nationwide. 

Excerpt of Q&A

AM: What are the biggest stereotypes returning citizens must face when transitioning to employment in the tech space?

KL: There are many, but the biggest one is once a criminal, always a criminal. That people coming out of prison are just going to commit more crimes. It’s reinforced by TV and movies. It’s the worst thing we see on the 6 o’clock news—this is what people believe about people in prison. Most people have never gone to a prison; they don’t know some of the challenges these folks have to deal with to reenter society. 

People who are leaving incarcerated settings are often underestimated. People think they don’t have skill or they don’t have talent or they don’t have anything valuable to contribute to society, or even a company. 

KL: When I think of these stereotypes, what it all comes back to is fear. When people are coming out of prison, remember: they’re people. There are fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers.

They’ve made bad choices, obviously. But once they pay their debt to society, they should be able to come home and be able to build a life for themselves. We—out in the world, the taxpayers—we have an opportunity to decide what kind of world they come back to. Every single one of us has a role to play in this. 

AM: How do HR leaders prepare for questions and concerns from their employees surrounding recruiting returning citizens?

KL: Get proximate to the issue of justice reform. Life is a process of growth and development and part of that growth is educating ourselves about people and issues, and the challenges people face coming home. 

AM: What are key moves companies can take to insure successful implementation of this program? 

KL: Find a champion who can work across teams and get buy in. Understand the issue, and create a space where people can share concerns. Our program focuses on support, and wraparound services so that they can be successful. 

Learn more about partnering with Next Chapter by reaching out at info@nextchapter.org.