Brandemix Bonus Reel: A Sneak Peek at Employer Branding Boot Camp

Jason Ginsburg, Director of Interactive Branding at Brandemix, reveals some of the lessons and insights from the upcoming free webinar, "Employer Branding Boot Camp." 

The presentation will be Wednesday, September 25, at 2 pm Eastern/11 am Pacific.

Space is still available for this fun, educational event! 

Register for free here.

Employer Branding Boot Camp: A Sneak Peek

As many of you know, I'm presenting the free webinar Employing Branding Boot Camp on September 25. It's a fun, insightful look at the power and value of a strong employer brand, filled with fun facts, case studies, and useful tips.

But I just can't wait until the 25th! I want to share a few sections from the webinar right now.

What is a brand?
A brand is a promise. Think of one of the greats: McDonald's. Their brand promises not only quick, inexpensive food, but also that their French fries will taste the same at every one of their locations in the world.

A brand is also an emotional connection that goes beyond the product itself. Consider the "cult" of Apple users, or clubs for Ford Mustang owners, or lovers of Nutella. Even if there are better products out there, these fans have a personal relationship with everything the brand symbolizes.

Interbrand ranks the value of global brands every year. For 2012, the #1 brand is once again Coca-Cola, with a value of $77.8 billion. That means that if you took away all the brand's assets -- from the factories to the bottles to the actual soda itself -- just the name and logo of Coke would be worth almost $80 billion. 

Compare that to Pepsi, #22 on Interbrand's list, with a brand value of $16.6 billion. I think we can agree that Coke and Pepsi, as soft drinks, are pretty much the same thing. And yet there's a $60 billion difference in the way people respond to their brands. 

What is a employer brand?
An employer brand is the promise you make to employees, from first-time applicants to retirees, and from entry-level positions to the CEO. In the same way that emotion persuades consumers to choose Coke over Pepsi, your employer brand persuades job-seekers to join your company over all the others -- even companies that might pay better or have "fun" reputations, like Google.

An employer brand differentiates your organization in the job market. It encompasses your vision, values, culture, and mission statement. It informs new hires so that they know what to expect when they join your team and increases the odds that they're a good fit. It gets reinforced by the HR and internal communications departments, which reflect the brand in all their messaging.

Image from NAS Recruitment Communications

And this isn't just to create a happy workplace, though that's one of the results; there are real business reasons for a strong employer brand. It leads to more, and higher quality, applications. It decreases time to hire and cost per hire. It produces referrals and unsolicited resumes. And it ensures that the people you hire stay with your company and perform well.

Ready to learn more? Sign up for Employer Branding Boot Camp while space is still available. If you can't make it on September 25, download our free Employer Branding Strategy Guide to start improving your recruitment communications and attracting top talent.

Brandemix Bonus Reel: Decoding Social Recruiting

Jason Ginsburg, Director of Interactive Branding at Brandemix, reveals surprising insights from the 2013 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survey.

Download our free Social Media Strategy Guide for Talent Acquisition here.

Register for our free webinar, Employer Branding Boot Camp.

Decoding the 2013 Jobvite Social Recruiting Survery

Jobvite has just released its sixth annual Social Recruiting Survey, polling 1600 recruiters and HR professionals on their social media efforts.

The results continue a trend that I've been following for years: Social is a major part of any organization's hiring efforts. In 2008, 78% of recruiters were using social media. In 2011, it was 89%. This year, it's 94%. Even more telling, 73% of respondents planned to increase their social recruiting spend in 2013 - compared to the 39% who planned to increase their spend on job boards.

LinkedIn was the most popular social network in many categories, from searching for candidates (96% of companies), contacting candidates (94%), and posting jobs (91%). Only about half of respondents posted jobs on Facebook, and a little less than that posted jobs on Twitter.
Just what you'd expect, right? But there's more to these numbers than meets the eye.

Jobvite 2013 Social Recruiting Survey, page 12

First, the cracks in job boards' dominance, already mentioned above, become more apparent deeper in the survey. Respondents said that 42% of their applicants are sourced through job boards...but only 14% of hires come that way.Compare that to applications through referrals and company career sites, which make up 39% of submissions, but 61% of hires. This is a much better ratio, especially since 43% of these employees stay for at least three years, while only 14% of job-board hires do. It looks like job boards are generating lots of applicants who don't get hired - or don't stay if they do.

Another interesting discovery is that recruiters use LinkedIn differently from other social networks. LinkedIn was good for assessing a candidate's professional experience and "specific hard skills." But Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and others were better at determining a candidate's cultural fit. Which is more important? How would Southwest Airlines respond, whose co-founder Herb Kelleher coined the phrase, "Hire for attitude, train for skill"?

What I found most revealing were the questions that related to the financial value of social recruiting. 43% of companies spend less than $12,000 a year on social recruiting. But 65% believe that its value is greater than $20,000 a year. And 20% place its value at more than $90,000 a year!

Jobvite 2013 Social Recruiting Survey, page 10

I understand the budgetary restraints placed on HR departments, but these numbers show that even a small investment can generate tremendous savings, especially combined with higher quality of candidates (according to 49% of recruiters) and less time to hire (33%) that social recruiting produces.

Are you one of the 6% of companies not yet using social in your talent acquisition strategy? Or one of the 73% that plans to increase their social recruiting budget? Brandemix can help. Download our free Social Media Strategy Guide for Talent Acquisition. If you're ready for the next step, you can contact me directly. 

Brandemix Bonus Reel: Improving Customer Service

Jason Ginsburg, Director of Interactive Branding at Brandemix, shows how smaller retailers and independent boutiques can create personal connections with customers -- increasing both loyalty and sales.

Thanks again to Software Advice for sharing this research with us.

When Employees Create Personal Connections, Both Customers and Retailers Win

Recently, I demonstrated how small retailers can improve and emphasize their competitive advantages over national chain stores. This week, I came across an interesting research project that took this philosophy to the next level.

Ashley Verrill, a CRM analyst and managing editor of Software Advice's Customer Service Investigator, launched a research exercise in Austin that she called "The Great Retail Experience Race: Local vs. National."

20 secret shoppers conducted 200 site visits of at least 15 minutes each to five national chain stores and their local equivalents. The breakdown:

Starbucks vs. Jo's Coffee

Nordstrom vs. Maya Star

Panera Bread vs. ThunderCloud Subs

Barnes & Noble vs. South Congress Books

The Apple Store vs. Austin MacWorks

Verrill looked at three metrics: 

• Did employees up-sell, cross-sell, or tell customers about a deal?
• Did employees create an emotional or personal connection with the customer?
• How long did it take for an employee to create an emotional or personal connection?

The results were surprising. Four of the five national chains performed better in the up-sell category than the local shops, while all five smaller stores did better in creating a personal connection. The time for the connection was split 3-2 in favor of the boutiques.

So even though employees at smaller shops were interacting more (and more quickly) than at the national chains, "the small businesses simply didn't take advantage of these opportunities to up-sell at the same rate as the national stores," Verill writes.

Verrill drew some conclusions from this research and also brought in customer service expert Shep Hyken for his take. They both agreed that great customer service starts with employee training and a culture of service.

"Let's operationalize customer service. You train it, you reinforce it, you recognize people when they're doing it right," says Hyken in his video interview with Verrill. "You try to get them to recognize themselves when they're doing it."

I absolutely agree. Independent stores may not have the selection or low prices of a national chain, but they have the intimacy to create personal connections. While such "people skills" can be found in many retail workers, it's much more effective to train them to "ask really specific questions," as Verrill advises, and to "be consistent with deals at the register," where a lot of up-selling occurs. 

And that may be why national chains outscored the smaller stores in the up-sell category: their scale requires training manuals and consistent procedures, ensuring all employees are trained the same way. At smaller stores, customer service training can be much less formal -- if it occurs at all.

 

Of course, customer service goes beyond training. Hyken says that once an owner or manager sees an employee providing great service, "you recognize that and you celebrate the success with them. That might mean having a meeting with all the employees and...everybody applauds everybody for doing a great job."

I've often said that employee recognition is a great way to engage employees, which itself leads to higher productivity and profits. It can also create better customer service as well.

Customer service gives a smaller store a competitive advantage, offers a path to a more engaged and productive workforce, and leads to loyal and higher-spending customers. I thank Ashley Verrill and Shep Hyken for providing such valuable insights. 

Want to learn more about employee training, recognition, or engagement? Write to me.

Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Two Years Later

The Backstory 

2 years ago I wrote a polarizing blog about why I believed that within 2 years, Facebook would destroy LinkedIn as the best place for recruiting talent into an organization. Today, I concede my timing may have been off. But was I wrong?

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

The Backlash

Hear Brandemix Director of Interactive Branding face off against The Recruiting Animal. 

August 21 at 12pm EDT

Show your support by tuning in, calling in, and weighing in.

 Jody