01.03 – Recruitment and Your Recruitment Brand

Now we’re going to talk about recruitment and your recruitment brand. In order to attract people to your company, you have to have what we call a recruitment brand. Our pipeline diagram shows the strategy. It then shows the supply and demand or the HR planning portion. Then there is define the positions in the structure. And now creating an employer brand. In executing that brand into the recruiting plan. And then we’ll get to all the other stuff. But let’s first talk about the hiring gold standard. There really isn’t one. The hiring process is very complex as well, people are very complex. People want to know, what’s the best way to hire? But there are many critical things to consider.

There’s not just one model. There are many ways to do it, and the way you do it has to be consistent with your culture.

But, before you hire anyone, you have to have a recruitment brand. This is not a, if I build it, they will come, kind of process. This is a two-way decision. In today’s world, people decide about you and you decide about them. It is more a key and lock kind of thing. You may want someone and you need them badly, but if you fail to attract them in a way that helps them see themselves in your environment with your values, and your own goals, it’s just an empty model. Just like a person needs to be able to tell others who they are and what they stand for, you have to be able to articulate your employer value proposition.

Who are you as a team? Who are you as part of the company or a department in that company? Who are you as a company? What is the company, the department, the team? Who are you known for? It may boil down to, we’re just a fun place to work with great people, but what makes you different from the team across the way? Why would anyone wanna work with you or for you? Why would anyone want to work with me, you might ask. And I would answer that my brand is one of coaching and helping people live their dreams. I’m at my best when I’m teaching. Just last week I got an email from one of my student.

She was in a panic about a job that she’s going to be starting just next week in fact. I gave her some options, and she took one of them.

The option that she chose was to reach out to the recruiter who had recruited her and ask some clarifying questions.

The recruiter wrote back immediately. That recruiter really knew their company and knew the answer to this young woman’s question. My student wrote back to say that it all worked out. She felt better. She even said that her mother had suggested that it was appropriate that she reach out to me, because my student knew my brand. And she had talked to her mom about it. Today’s generation talks to their moms a lot.

But my brand had been known to the student and my brand was important because I played a role in the lives of others, as a coach. Now, that made my week. Little things like this make our lives well lived. Know what you want to bring to the world. Know your brand. And give the world your best. It will surprise you in many ways. But, this also goes for your company. If you are going to attract people to your team, your department, your company, you have to be able to articulate what you bring to the world.

Companies have brands, you know that. And you can see some of the brand logos on this slide. There’s the creation brand, GE. It’s known as a CEO maker. There’s Google. It has an environmental brand. It’s a cool place to work. And then UNICEF. It makes the world a better place. What I call the legacy brand.

And then Coach K at Duke. He has a leadership brand. He is a person who attracts great players to his basketball team. And he cares about them as if he were their father. Apple has an innovation brand. Walmart, it has a price brand. And Tiffany’s, a prestige brand. My university also has a brand and it’s depicted here in our leadership brand statement. It highlights many things. It highlights our values. Its values are consistent with my values, thus I can work there because my values link to the values of my university. The heart of this model is making a positive difference in the world. I can buy into that. I can buy into all of it and relate to it.

But what about you? Can others relate to your team or to your company? If you’re recruiting someone for a position, are you exemplifying the brand that they will select to be a part of? If you select them. What about your recruiters? Do they support the brand image that you want to have? I recently was teaching a case study in an executive education class. And it was about Quicken Loans, the number one mortgage lender in the US for quality, as rated by JD Powers and Associates.

Now, this woman in my class spoke up immediately to tell everyone in the class about her recent experience with Quicken Loans, and as many of you might know it’s the customers who really sell this company to others. They don’t really need marketing and sales very much because this customer went on an on about the quality of service that she received.

Her Quicken Loans mortgage seller even showed up on the day that she moved into her new house and she showed up with flowers. What does this tell you about the brand?

So, tell me about you.

What is the company, or department, or team brand? I’d like you to describe it in a paragraph of about 50 words or less. Pretend you are the recruiter. Are you ready to attract talent to your company, your department or your team? Prepare this document about why you are able to recruit for your company, or why not, using the brand that you wrote about. In preparation for our next lesson, what are the characteristics of a great recruiter? We heard some of them in the video we saw on Quicken Loans. I can’t wait to see what you here come up with.

Be creative, use expressive and emotional words, paint a picture in my mind of who you are as a team or a company. Attract me, bring me in, tell me why I’d like to be part of it.