There’s been a lot of discussion lately over how employers can navigate the growing skills gap in the American workforce. In addition to adjusting compensation levels, retraining workers and refocusing recruiting efforts, one of the most effective ways employers can help ensure they bring in the qualified candidates they need is one they should already be doing: strengthening their employer brand.

Companies like Pepsico and AT&T have recently begun their own employer branding campaigns with the aim to build awareness about what it means to work for them and attract more relevant candidates to their open positions. Already known for their strong consumer brands, these companies realize having a strong employment brand as well will give them an edge in recruiting the most in-demand workers by positioning them as an “employer of choice” in the eyes of quality job candidates.

So then what, exactly, constitutes a “strong” employer brand? Generally, there are five ways to tell if an employer has an employer brand that effectively communicates the right message to the right audiences, according to Keith Hadley, Senior Director of Employment Branding Services at CareerBuilder. Below is a checklist you can apply as you evaluate your own employment brand.

Five Tests of a Strong Employment Brand

1.  Is it attractive? Are the benefits and opportunities you offer attractive to potential job seekers? In order to answer this question, you first need to consider your audience. Keep in mind that workers’ wants and needs vary depending on age and situation. For example, while younger workers might seek employers who offer ample advancement opportunities, older workers might be more focused on flexible schedules and retirement benefits. Rather than having a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy, tailor your message to speak to and attract different audiences.
2. Is it authentic? Do you practice what you preach? Your brand should reflect the authentic work experience at your company; otherwise, I guarantee you people will find out: Thanks to sites like Yelp and Glassdoor, where employees discuss and rate their employers anonymously, it’s virtually impossible for companies to hide their true employer brands today. Not convinced? Search your company on one of these sites to see what people are saying about you. If you don’t like what you see, go straight to the source to see where you can make changes. Host an open forum to generate honest discussion and feedback or utilize employee surveys to find out your organizations of strength as well as opportunities for improvement.
3. Is it embraced? Does everyone – from the top down – believe in the brand and live it each day? A brand is an extension of the vision your leaders have for you as an employer. A well-defined employment brand aligns employee and management expectations so that promises made during the hiring process are delivered. Therefore it is critical your leaders work each and every day to deliver on these promises and reinforce the brand.
4. Is it unique? “Employment branding is about knowing who you are as an employer, but just as importantly, it’s about knowing who you aren’t,” employment branding expert Mary Delaney has said. Building a strong employment brand isn’t about trying to be Google or Apple; it’s about focusing on what makes your company unlike any other place to work. The best way to stand out is to find out which companies you might be competing with for workers, and then focus on what differentiates you from them.
5. Is it consistent? In order for any branding to be effective, it must be consistent. Would job seekers get the same impression about your employer brand from your company’s career site as they would when visiting your Facebook page? What about if they saw a job ad online or read it in a newspaper? What about if they talked to one of your employees? If you want to make a lasting impression on job seekers, you must ensure the message you send out is consistent across every possible employee touch point.

Easy, right? Okay, yes, it’s a lot to take in, and taking on such an all-encompassing initiative can be overwhelming. Fortunately, however, there are third party service providers available to help you evaluate your current employment brand and look at ways to enhance your efforts. CareerBuilder, for instance, offers Employment Branding services – including candidate and employee research, brand message development and creative – to help companies of all sizes build a foundation for a strong employment brand.

And if there’s any doubt as to whether building your employer brand is worth the investment, consider the words of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a recent interview in Wired:

“If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you’re willing to invest on a seven-year time horizon, you’re now competing against a fraction of those people, because very few companies are willing to do that. Just by lengthening the time horizon, you can engage in endeavors that you could never otherwise pursue.”

Bezos’ statement is just as true of employment branding. The efforts you make today to recruit and retain quality employees will help your business stay competitive in the long run.

You don’t know what you’re doing wrong: You’ve spent hours writing a lovely, heartfelt job description, you’ve painstakingly posted it on CareerBuilder and taken advantage of all our free job posting tools, and you’ve even managed to pop thank-yous in the mail to everyone who’s applied — but you’re still not getting the right candidates.

Wait, that’s not usually how it happens? Oh, right. You’ve been given the task to post a job on top of your million other tasks, and you were supposed to do it yesterday, there’s no way you have time to personally respond to every candidate, and that job description is turning out to be more “heartache” than “heartfelt.” But that last “not getting the right candidates” part? Yeah, that’s pretty accurate — particularly during the holidays and 2012 recruitment preparations. So, what can you do?

It’s the little things

You know the cliché that little things can really make a big difference? Well, with job postings, that’s actually true. While you may think you have a perfectly fine job posting, you may actually be missing key information, using terms candidates aren’t searching for, or leaving candidates clueless about your company culture or benefits — or something else entirely. It may be something very fixable, but just out of your reach.

The majority of job seekers spend less than three minutes viewing a job posting–so you can’t take chances with your first impressions. We’ve already talked about the cost of a bad hire, and tips for attracting better hires, but beyond that, sometimes you just want an expert to step in and do the work for you. If so, Job Enhancement may be smart for you to consider.

More searches, clicks and applications? Yes please

Job Enhancement is like a facelift for your job postings. How it works is simple: CareerBuilder’s search technology experts analyze your job posting and add in the most relevant keywords, reprioritize the information you present to job seekers, and create compelling, clear, and competitive content (read: do all the work for you because your time is limited — and valuable. And hey, this is their actual job). The result? More relevant job searches, views, and quality applications. You can watch this short video to learn more, or ask any questions you might have about how it works in the comments below.

Clients who use Job Enhancement for their job postings have seen a 73 percent increases in search results, 45 percent increases in clicks on their job postings, and 40 percent more applications. Not too shabby!

Are you the recruiter or hiring manager who needs more time in your day and better candidates, fast?Job Enhancement is one way to see a rapid improvement in your job posting performance while taking some weight off your workload.  Get it here. If you prefer the DIY approach, check out our many job posting tips.

Either way, if you’ve got 10,000 spoons when all you need is a knife (thanks Alanis), remember that sometimes it’s the small changes that really do make a big difference in your job postings’ performance.

“We believe in a concept called ‘shadow of the leader.’ We have huge amounts of transparency and communication with employees, and it starts at the top of the organization. ” – LeighAnne Baker

In the following interview, The Hertz Corporation Senior Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer LeighAnne Baker discusses the Hertz concept of transparent communication and how the organization reinforces its employment brand to attract ‘best in class’ talent.

What is your philosophy as it relates to people and their impact on your daily business?
At Hertz we believe that the only long-term, sustainable, competitive advantage that a company can have is its people. This also includes the processes of how you get the work done in organizations. Competitive advantages like technology and supply can all be copied; you can’t copy the people side. At a company like Hertz that has 75,000 transactions a day, that equals 75,000 touch points to customers. That’s where the brand promise is delivered.

How do you engage and relate to your employees, and how do you spread that culture throughout the organization?
We believe in a concept called “shadow of the leader.” We have huge amounts of transparency and communication with employees, and it starts at the top of the organization. Site visits are also very much a part of the culture, where we do skip level meetings to understand what the issues are, what’s going well and what’s not going well. They’re actually part of the CEO’s personal objectives with the board, so there is close follow-up to understand exactly what the employees are telling us. We also have a communication tool kit that all managers receive in order to get a consistent message out to all employees. Finally, we use a third party to facilitate an internal survey to better understand our employees. The survey focuses on three platforms (asset management, customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction), and helps us keep a pulse on where employees are on the satisfaction scale.

How would you define the Hertz culture and personally communicate that within your group?
Loyalty, integrity and service are what made Hertz a “best in class” company. When you’re at Hertz, you feel that sense of being a family, and we want to make sure that we continue to build on that. We also want to make sure we reward performance properly by encouraging continuous improvement through transparent communication. We constantly look at ways to improve our operations, especially through the eyes of the customer. Finally, personal accountability is important to Hertz, going back to linking pay and performance and holding people accountable for what they say they’re going to do.

What do you do to reinforce your employment brand? How do you drive that through the organization and make sure it’s consistent?
Every quarter we have a company wide employee webcast with the CEO. It’s not just about what’s going on from the financial viewpoint for the last quarter; there is also a lot of time spent talking about customers and employees. We’re continuing to show people we are serious about all three of those building blocks: assets, customers and employees.

If you had to pick one, what’s the most fundamental skill or attribute in hiring someone to be a good fit at Hertz?
I can’t pick one word, but certainly self-awareness to understand Hertz’s mission and your role in trying to push the company forward. All of us – the 23,000 full-time employees and the 8,000 part-time – own the Hertz brand and the image that we have. We can never lose sight of it, and our employees need to be willing to step up and take accountability for whatever’s going on and whatever is in their part of the business.

What advice would you give to your executive peers – whether it relates to leadership or life in general?
If I were going to use two words, they would be “lead boldly.” Especially where the global economy is at this time, leaders have to be bold. From an HR perspective, you have to understand the business talk, have the financial acumen and understand the business strategy. Together, these concepts make you truly understand the people side of the business. I spent a lot of time my first few years on leadership issues, but now I’m focused more on the first-line manager. My goal is that, two years down road, we’ll have this reputation of being a management powerhouse.

ABOUT LEIGHANN BAKER: As Senior Vice President, Chief Human Resources Officer for The Hertz Corporation, LeighAnne Baker is responsible for the development and administration of personnel programs affecting Hertz employees worldwide. She also oversees the development and implementation of talent identification and management programs as well as employee development and satisfaction initiatives. Before joining Hertz, Ms. Baker served as Senior Vice President – Global Human Resources, and a Member of the Executive Committee of The Reynolds & Reynolds Company, a leading provider of information technology, software solutions and professional services to the automotive retailing market. Ms. Baker earned a master’s degree in management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, a master’s in business administration from Ashlan University and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Capital University.

ABOUT HERTZ.: Hertz is the world’s largest general use airport car rental brand, operating from approximately 8,500 locations in 146 countries worldwide. Hertz is the number one airport car rental brand in the U.S. and at 83 major airports in Europe, operating both corporate and licensee locations in cities and airports in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Africa and the Middle East. Hertz also operates Connect by Hertz global car sharing club, Advantage Rent A Car in the U.S., and Hertz Equipment Rental Corporation, one of the world’s largest equipment rental businesses.

Editor’s Note: This concludes our five week series on the Five Ps of Recruitment Marketing (product, price, people, placement, and promotion). Special thanks to Mike Dwyer  for an afternoon conversation that inspired this series of blog posts. For a look at assessments on product, price, people and placement, view my previous posts.

Promotion involves the means by which a product is communicated to, or sold, to customers. Traditionally, these aspects of marketing could include direct mail pieces, television and radio advertisements, press and demonstration events, sponsorships and celebrity endorsements, coupons and rebates, brochures, packaging, and free samples. Today, promotions involve other tactics like websites, guerilla marketing, search engine and display advertising, email, and SMS communications.

There is an unending list of ways product benefits and features can be communicated to a highly defined audience. And what’s better is that recruitment marketers can use all these same tactics to market their product: jobs and culture. Promotions are not free however, so marketers factor cost of promotions into the product’s profitability the same way you factor cost per hire.

How do you decide which are right for your target talent?

Start with the basics – the job posting and title. Is it attention-getting and appealing? Does it excite the reader and prominently feature the attributes you know motivate your target audience? Are the images thoughtfully chosen to resonate with the type of people you seek? Some companies are taking a radical new approach to conveying their employment brand or the details of a hard-to-fill position: infographics. Like a microsite or video, infographics are a popular way to convey complex ideas visually. Since each one is unique to a job, event or brand, they are simple, quick to read, and easy to share.

Beyond your careers site and job boards, where do you distribute your message?  Hiring fairs, trade publications, and employment guides are great places to find active job seekers. Reach passive candidates as well on social networks by asking employees to share the job with their friends and families. Recruiters can form one-to-one connections with passive candidate on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Run display ads on social networks and popular websites or send targeted email by defining your ideal candidate in terms of years of experience, fields of study, and current location. Even if an individual isn’t actively looking to make a career change, an aptly placed ad on Facebook where he or she socializes could spark interest.

Try this exercise: Create a mini marketing plan for a new vacancy or a tough to fill position. Profile the attributes of the talent you wish to attract and the logic behind how your plan will deliver your message effectively. Aside from a job posting, be sure to include four additional tactics you can use to reach the candidate – including how it will tie to at least one key characteristic or motivator you listed.

Bottom line: Like marketers, talent strategists must also use a diverse mix of techniques to distribute their hiring message. In a market where top talent will flock to companies with the hottest brand, a creative message sent through the right channels can make a big difference.

Editor’s Note: This five-week series is dedicated to examining the five most common Ps of a typical marketing mix and assessing how they relate to recruitment. Today’s post focuses on people; the remaining concepts – placement and promotion – will run in sequential order every Tuesday over the next couple weeks. For a look at assessments on product and price, view my previous posts.

Regardless of the business, the people involved with producing a product or a service inevitably shape the final outcome. While the nature of a particular business certainly renders some attributes more influential than others, the appearance, attitudes, experience, and beliefs of staff impact the sale of a product. In service-based businesses, like restaurants and retail, the appearance of staff reinforces commitments the company makes to health, safety, and brand position. Uniforms and service standards are just two ways businesses seek to deliver on their brand promise through their agents. These define the claims made by the company – whether it is to be the number one luxury retailer or safest car manufacturer.

A company’s people are often called upon to respond to crisis and serve as a testament to a brand promise. Toyota, who issued recalls of roughly 2.3 million vehicles in January 2010, created a series of videos featuring employees stating their commitment to safety. A number of technicians, engineers, plant employees, and dealers discussed the recall and how they planned to move forward. In another example, Domino’s created “The Pizza Turnaround” documentary featuring actual employees and their reactions to consumer opinions. The project featured people from all departments – from chefs and senior leaders to marketing and product management – who openly addressed criticism uncovered online and in focus groups.

So how do people impact recruitment? The individuals within your organization can be your biggest advocates, or the most compelling deterrent in your pursuit of top talent. Employers tell us that employee referrals are often the number one source of hire, even when the awareness of an employee referral incentive is low. What this tells us is that people are passionate about where they work. So much time is spent at work and whether the experience is good or bad – people talk.

Creating opportunities for your passionate brand stewards to publicly endorse your company as a place to work is the cornerstone of social recruitment. The content you share on social media channels should be a combination of company-created messages and unsolicited testimony from real staff. Encourage employees to join your communities, interact with potential applicants, and take a vested interest in the conversation. Not only does this substantiate your claims as a desirable place to work, but it can serve as a research mechanism to see which messages are most effective with potential candidates.

Try this exercise: Ask functional area leaders within your business to identify key individuals who demonstrate company values and could serve as a mentor to potential applicants. You can also look to staff members who have been recognized for awards, participate in corporate volunteerism, or are active in affinity groups. Pull these individuals together and create short videos documenting why they believe your company is a great place to work or what they like best about their job. The videos don’t have to be extravagant (here are a few simple examples: SCA and CR Bard), but the faces of staff will serve as an interactive influence to outsiders. Use these videos to start conversations in social media and post them on your careers site.

Bottom line: Don’t make the mistake of excluding people from your recruitment marketing presence. Physical evidence is a fundamental part of effective persuasion, so encourage employee participation in official corporate-created social media communities – their credibility on working at your company will give potential applicants plenty of authentic proof to support your claims. Discuss important topics – like culture, growth potential, and benefits. Tap recently hired staff to talk about their experiences with your recruitment and on-boarding processes – two areas most companies fail to address, yet one of the topics four out of five job seekers want more transparency on. Promote referral bonus programs and invest in a job sharing application that integrates with Facebook or LinkedIn to give your staff easy ways to share job opportunities in their networks. Lastly, create internal channels for staff to feel heard in case negative issues arise. Without support internally, your authorities won’t defend you publicly.

Editor’s Note: This five-week series is dedicated to examining the five most common Ps of a typical marketing mix and assessing how they relate to recruitment. Today’s post focuses on product; the others – on price, people, placement and promotion – will run in sequential order every Tuesday over the next five weeks.

Raise your hand if you remember Marketing 101! If you’re like most talent acquisition professionals, the principles of marketing are hazy. A few Ps here, a DMA or two there. Most recruiters know enough to be dangerous, and it doesn’t matter much for day-to-day talent attraction anyway, right?

Think again.

Follow the typical marketing mix and apply it to recruitment – you’ll find there are an astounding number of similarities. The techniques used to effectively sell a product or service work just as well in selling a career opportunity. As such, the most successful social recruiters view talent acquisition through a marketing lens.

For my next handful of posts, I’d like to focus on the five most common Ps of marketing and tie to them into recruitment. And since each concept holds significant value, it’s only fair to give them the appropriate coverage, breaking tips and exercises into a series that will run over the next five weeks.  

Today’s focus: Product

In traditional marketing, a product is the physical good or service offered to a consumer. The attributes of the product are the accompanying benefits the product boasts. These attributes – function, design, packaging, ease of use, and warranty – are weighed against costs to determine if it is desirable for the purchaser. The purchase is influenced by the seller’s overall brand identity and word-of-mouth reputation as well as the influence of other consumers on the customer (e.g. a child may influence a parent’s toy purchase).

In recruitment marketing, your product is a job. The attributes of that job – pay, working hours, essential job functions, supervising staff, full time vs. part-time or contract – are all considered by a candidate. The decision to apply for the opportunity is impacted positively or negatively by the company’s employment brand and word-of-mouth opinions of current and former staff. And, like a product, there are influencers in an applicant’s life that factor into the decision to apply for or accept a job offer. For example, the impact on family is considered when a lengthy commute disturbs work-life balance.

Just like any product, your jobs compete for mindshare among qualified talent. Before going to market with a product or service, companies work to thoroughly understand the competitive landscape and develop a defendable position that differentiates them from alternatives. You must do the same for your job and workplace. The things that make you different from other employers will be the cornerstone of your employment value proposition and social media messages.

Try this exercise: Visualize the last advertisement you saw for a food product. What are the three things you remember the most?  It could be the taste, packaging or health benefits. These memorable images or qualities are what make the snack appealing. Apply this to recruitment by defining two or three things you want candidates to remember about your job opportunity or company. It could be philanthropy, continuing education, or commitment to innovation. Once you have two or three solid attributes, emphasize these in your social media messaging so candidates remember what you have to offer.

Bottom line:  Present job opportunities and culture in terms of the benefits. Be honest about the limitations of your company and stay true to its employment brand promise. Your product’s features, core benefits, and differentiators from those you compete with for talent should be the basis for social media messages and inspire former and current employees to validate the claims with their own testimonials. Individual social proof is the closest you can get to a satisfaction guarantee.

How else will you effectively utilize the concept of product for your business?

Chances are high that any salesperson you have met since 1992 can recite lines, if not the entire script, from Glengarry Glen Ross.  David Mamet’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play was adapted to film in 1992 with the likes of Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin giving way to memorable quotes, and providing fodder for film buffs and sales trainers alike.

Despite the origin of the term – whether or not it was Mamet – Baldwin’s character brings the concept of the “ABCs of sales” to new life and gives entrance to modern sales vocabulary in one of the film’s most memorable scenes: Always Be Closing.  

As personal online networks like Facebook grow to more than 500 million users and professional online networks like LinkedIn hit audience levels of more than 100 million, it’s evident that when fueled by technology, connectivity is easier and more accessible than ever.  The agents in Glengarry Glen Ross may not have been concerned with the relationships they were building (or not building) in always-be-closing deals; however, as the economy and job market recover today, solidifying relationships between individuals and organizations is crucial for pipelining future talent.  

Whether your organization consists of five people or you’re part of the Fortune 500, social platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, have opened up opportunities to target and attract new candidate streams that are otherwise inaccessible. Despite your industry, user-generated outlets like YouTube and WordPress have given your audiences the ability to sing your praises or sink your battleship with their reviews of your product, process, staff, and service. 

As recruitment evolves via emerging technologies, how do you make the most of opportunities to push your brand forward? Put on spin on Baldwin’s insightful speech, making your goal to “Always Be Connecting.”

Because everyone has their 2 cents
Just as the adage goes – without being crude – opinions are like certain body parts, and everyone has them.  No matter who you are or where you come from, you will think a specific way about a place, interest, topic, etc. Opinions can be formed through first- or secondhand experiences, education, and –although we might not like to admit it – even stereotypes and biases. 

Sites like Glassdoor.com, Jobitorial.com, and Careerbliss.com provide platforms for past and present employees as well as interviewees to provide reviews of your organization.  If a candidate has a bad experience and feels as though your interviewing process was unprofessional, warranted or not, the candidate has highly popular websites on which to post that opinion.  And with 64 percent of candidates researching companies before even applying to a position, overwhelming amounts of negative 2 cents can add up to serious recruitment challenges, whereas glowing employment reviews can propel recruitment efforts.

Because it’s human nature
In just seven short years, Facebook has grown to be the world’s largest online social network, with more than 700 billion minutes spent on the site each month and a 50 percent daily log-in rate. Despite your 2 cents about Facebook, not many can argue that the phenomenon is akin to who we are as human beings – creatures with a disposition to connect to others, validate our thoughts and perhaps self-worth through those that we know, and possibly even play out our innate voyeuristic and narcissistic tendencies. (OK, so this might be a stretch. But keep in mind that photo sharing and photo viewing are top activities on the site en-masse, and the average Facebook user changes their profile picture more than 18 times a year – three times the amount they did only a couple of years ago.)

Because everyone is a passive job seeker
In the last six months, I have consulted a handful of Fortune 500 organizations that are launching social media strategies aimed at employment branding for the first time.  These organizations have been active in the social space for years, but they are just now beginning to use the platforms for recruitment and employment branding campaigns.  Just a few weeks ago, The Wall Street Journal reported a similar trend in which some boutique firms have conducted almost twice the amount of employer branding analyses than in years prior. 

Regardless of whether people will actually label themselves “active” or “passive” job seekers, it’s safe to assume that at almost any given point in time, everyone, no matter how happy they are with their position and organization, is a passive jobseeker. People are typically taught and encouraged to pursue greater opportunities and not accept complacency. Managers don’t accept mediocre performance, and people shouldn’t accept mediocrity in their careers. No matter how sufficed one might be in their career, opportunities for advancement, increases in pay or benefits, better work-life balances, shorter commuting times, and more flexible hours can all be motivating factors for a happy and high-performing individual to move to another organization. As most recruiters and hiring managers know, talent is hard to find and equally hard to keep. 

As the job market recovers, expect to see more and more companies marketing their organization almost as a product to candidates – a product that is desired, offers value beyond a paycheck and has many other happy customers (in the form of current employees). 

The future of recruitment truly does transform Mamet and Baldwin’s “Always Be Closing” concept to “Always Be Connecting.”  Social media and employment branding are now part of the strategies for pipelining talent post-recession. Note that social media is not going to take the place of email marketing, targeted advertising, out of home advertising, print, TV, radio or any other platform on which your company currently sees recruitment success.  Instead, it’s a supplement – an ongoing effort. Social media takes strategy and helps forms the right path for conversations.  And while it – like people – may not be 100 percent controllable – social media gives your organization and the individuals at your organization the opportunity to create connections. Through it, you can actually show your company’s value proposition as well as give your employees – real people with unique stories – the opportunity to share how they contribute to your company’s success. It’s these stories from these brand advocates that will give life, reason and passion to why they’re working for your organization and why others should, too.  

As a company with a growing employment brand, you’ll be able to participate in online conversations where appropriate, engage current and future employees and enthusiasts, provide a platform of information and education for your targeted audience to discuss topics of interest, and truly begin a long-term and evolving strategy for your employment value proposition.   

How do you plan to enhance your recruitment efforts through the “Always Be Connecting” principle? Share your thoughts below!

The concept of social media is a simple one: people and content. There is nothing new about this.  People have been connecting with each other and content since the beginning of time. With the advent of technology, namely the Internet, it should be of no surprise that human beings have taken their desire for interaction to new heights as they connect with friends and family on Facebook, and with professional colleagues on LinkedIn; share and follow others with the same content interest on Twitter; watch stories unfold via video and photography on YouTube and Flickr; and produce and connect with others via the written word on WordPress and Blogger. 

People will connect to brands on social media, too. No other medium has afforded brands the opportunity to build this intimate and innate connection with desired audiences. eMarketer reports that the number one reason consumers connect with brands on Facebook is to let their social network know which brands they support.

Realistically though, how can one define the ROI of “support”?  Will it be in the form of short-term or long-term sales? Will it be in the form of traffic to a website, in which more robust content is delivered?  Is it measured on increased brand equity or sentiment for employment branding? And how does one even quantify brand equity or employment branding?    

Building Support
All too often, our team sees that organizations tend to measure the success of social media via likes, followers and subscribers. Unfortunately, “If you build it, he will come,” is quite possibly the biggest social media myth that I encounter and consult against on a daily, if not hourly, basis. (For more insight on how to resist this Field of Dreams whisper, check out Melissa Murray Balsan’s post, How to Launch in the Social Space.) Just because you are there doesn’t mean that people know or have a reason to care.  And just because you invest in content doesn’t mean people will automatically know how to find it.  

To begin growing your presence, go to the people that know and love you in the “real world.”  You already have an audience with individuals that comprise your organization as well as those who help keep the lights on by buying your products and/or services.  

• Employees: Assuming you treat them well, with the appropriate message and reason, your employees should be your first selections for brand advocates. Without them, your organization wouldn’t exist. How can their stories be framed to push your corporate initiatives forward?
• Customers: Assuming you have a good product or service, your current clients and customers are another audience base that you can preliminarily leverage to push your message forward. Again, without them, your organization wouldn’t exist. How can their voices help you with your overarching business goals? 

If you are not planning to fund the growth of your social media presence via advertising, how are you integrating and messaging your two core audiences of employees and customers to join you online? If you are not messaging your audiences and giving them a reason to participate, you are missing out on your first brand advocates. How else can you integrate your current marketing and communication materials to make audiences aware of your presence?

Realistically Define Success Metrics
Not everyone will be able to achieve nearly 26M fans on Facebook that consistently sing the praises of the organization, like Coca-Cola has done. Meanwhile, Starbucks has more than 21M fans that not only defend the business against competition but also upload user-generated content and publicly profess their taste preference for the brand.  

While 20M to 25M fans might be out of the question for most, every organization can still utilize social media to tell its corporate story. More importantly, social media affords the best platforms to leverage audiences to push that same story forward, like the trend seen on the Starbucks and Coca-Cola pages – everyday consumers publicly “loving” a product. It’s not the simple act of clicking like on a page; it’s the story that each individual shares with his/her 130 friends about your brand. 

Get Them Talking
So how do you provide a platform on which those audiences can actively participate with you? Social Media is a visual platform through which people will connect and share content. As mentioned earlier, the heart of this content should tell your corporate story. Understanding that not everyone can be the behemoths of Starbucks and Coca-Cola in size and marketing dollars, Epic MedStaff Services Inc., shares the success it has seen by empowering audiences via social media.

As an organization that recruits only the best nurses in Texas and provides top of the line care for children in their Epic Pediatric Services Division, the relationship that Epic MedStaff has with its employees is essential for its business. By providing a platform for and cultivating these relationships with employees, Epic MedStaff’s Facebook page is a great example of social storytelling. Key tactics include inviting and fostering dialogue with employees. “Social Media has allowed us to cultivate new relationships with our employees,” says Kristian Stevens, corporate recruiter for Epic MedStaff. “By utilizing Facebook, we have created an online platform where we can communicate to our employees and clients without boundaries.”

These new types of dialogues with employees have publicly garnered such commentary:

• Hello Epic, you guys are doing a great job. Keep it up… You rock!
• Day 2 of my new employment with Epic. So far so GREAT
• Today was my first day orienting at [Epic MedStaff]… I love this job!

 So what do these dialogues and public testimonials do for Epic MedStaff? Understanding that what was found through eMarketer’s report, “support” isn’t as quantifiable as traditional marketing campaigns in terms of ROI. However, Stevens tells us that these conversations have helped brand Epic MedStaff in “the online world” in a way that traditional media and marketing hasn’t been able to. Along with corporate and employment branding, these conversations “have created more awareness about who we are and the patients we serve.”

Determine Your Wins
Once you have built your preliminary audience, I challenge you to ask yourself and your colleagues how you can increase your organization’s audience base. When doing so, be sure to concentrate on what current and future audiences will give back to you via engagement and how those stories can be pushed through your current audiences to new ones.

In an ever-evolving business landscape, how can you create success out of a corporate story that you already have? The hardest part sometimes will be determining what that story is, but once you have honed in on it, create the emotional connection with your supporters so they push the story forward within their respective networks. Soon you will be on the path to creating a platform created of brand advocates – individuals willing and ready to publish testimonials to your current and future audiences.   

People and content. Social media wins are that simple. What objectives can you meet if you empower your audiences to tell your story?

Your Employment Brand is Your Competitive Edge (You Just Don’t Know It Yet.)
When you have a strong employment brand, you don’t have to tell people you’re a great place to work. Your brand says it all for you.

Register for our free webinar, hosted by an award-winning employment brand expert:

“Real World” Employment Branding: A Blueprint for Success with Jim Welch
Date: March 1, 2011 | 2-3 p.m. CST

“Real World” Employment Branding will address the following crucial topics:

• Why employment branding matters to small businesses
• Finding your employment brand Critical Points of Difference
• Building your employment brand essence
• Activating your small business employment brand message
• Creating your employment brand ambassadors
• Integrating your small business employment brand delivery strategy

Spots are filling up fast, so register today!

About Jim Welch:
Jim Welch is the former Chief Marketing Officer of Hallmark and founder of The Growth Leader, where his work as a speaker and leadership consultant has been recognized by colleagues and industry thought leaders alike. His book, Grow Now – 8 Essential Steps to Flex Your Leadership Muscles, has been hailed as a “high-powered and entertaining business growth leadership book.” Learn more about Jim Welch at www.thegrowthleader.com

In the following excerpt from CareerBuilder’s recent interview with Joseph Phelan, chief executive officer of Sunbelt Rentals, Inc., he discusses the importance of empowering employees and turning every manager into a talent manager.

What is your philosophy as it relates to people and their impact on your daily business?

Our people at Sunbelt Rentals are core to our business.  The more than 2,200 different types of construction, industrial and do it yourself equipment along with 350 locations across the country by themselves will not make us unique.  Our customers are looking for not just a national network with a wide breadth of equipment; they need these products to be supported by helpful, caring and knowledgeable employees who are motivated to provide good service with each and every transaction.  The hardest thing to duplicate in this equation is having talented people who really care about our customers and are trained sufficiently to provide the best service in the industry – this is the real differentiator for us at Sunbelt Rentals.

How do you engage with and relate to your employees?
As a management team we engage with our employees by ensuring we create lots of opportunities for open and honest communications.  Our people strategy is centered around hiring highly motivated/energetic people, providing the training needed to excel, setting performance expectations, measuring performance and providing ongoing performance feedback and recognition.  With more than 350 stores across the U.S. it is critical that we rely on multiple channels for communication.  To do this our employees are measured at the store level, provided monthly performance/dashboard information.  We start each day talking about safety by engaging in flex and stretch with our field employees.  This sends an important message to them about how we feel and how important it is to us that they return home in the same good condition them came to us in.  In addition to the daily flex and stretch, we hold monthly performance meetings at each store, quarterly town hall meetings, and bi-annual senior leadership meetings.  Our senior team spends the majority of their time in the field with customers and employees – this is the best way for us to stay close to our business and to quickly react to the needs of our customers.

How do you define Sunbelt Rental’s culture? As a leader what role do you play and what is your impact on the culture?
Our culture is entrepreneurial and our employees are empowered to do what makes the most sense for our customers and the business.  It is my belief that if provided good communications regarding our vision and strategy and we provide the necessary tools and support, our employees will make the right decisions.  We are very agile for a large company and make it easy for our employees to access management at every level.

Some people believe HR to be the only department with a responsibility for the organization’s people. Can you tell me how you make your overall talent strategy a priority and the role you play in driving it?
Let’s start with driving talent strategy.  At Sunbelt Rentals, we believe that every manager should be a talent manager.  We are constantly working to make this belief a reality by building programs that focus on the right metrics across all levels of the organization.  We also hold our managers accountable through regular performance evaluations and dashboards that update key performance indicators every month.  Using the right metrics to put our customer’s front and center provides a consistent rallying cry throughout the organization.  It is hard to argue with doing the right thing – we call it “making it happen for our customers”.

How have you leveraged your brand to grow your business?
Our employment brand and our “brand” are one and the same.  We are focused on making it happen for our customers. What is critical for us is to make sure we continue to hire professionals with the right attitude, drive and enthusiasm.  Then we must educate them on our culture, mission, vision, values and brand.  These steps followed by setting expectations, providing regular performance feedback and rewarding employees for good performance have helped us rally our employees.  Most or our employees are interested in growth and you can hear of many success stories throughout the organization of employees rising up in the organization to new challenges and opportunities.  If these steps are followed, we’ll continue to have dedicated employees.

Can you give me one or two examples of how one person had a major impact at Sunbelt Rentals?
One of the great things about Sunbelt Rentals is that our employees truly work together to make it happen for our customers.  This collaborative effort is what sets us apart from our competitors and creates the team atmosphere needed to deliver the high service levels we set.  Every day we have examples of employees in a host of positions who go above and beyond the call of duty.  This includes mechanics, counter personnel, branch managers, Vice Presidents and support office employees.  Every level of the Company is represented.  To give you examples of how our team members pull together, we have had people working around the clock to help our customers and the communities in which they live in times of natural disasters.  The floods in Nashville and St. Louis represent perfect examples.  During Hurricane Katrina, our branch manager made sure the location was open in order to serve those in need.  We had teams of volunteers who traveled to New Orleans from our support office and other branch locations to make sure we could provide as much support as possible.  But, we also have employees who will gladly run out to a customer’s home to fix a down piece of equipment or provide needed advice on a Saturday afternoon.

Some people believe HR to be the only department with a responsibility for the organization’s people. Can you tell me how you make your overall talent strategy a priority and the role you play in driving it?
To be a good leader you also have to know when to get out of the way and follow.  One person can’t take the headwind constantly and providing opportunities for others to demonstrate leadership skills is not only a learning experience for them but will be for you as well.  Leaders must also be good communicators and listening is one of the most important attributes of communication.  Listening skills start with creating the opportunities to receive input from customers and employees.  Creating these opportunities will strengthen an organization as well as allow it to run faster than you could ever imagine.

ABOUT JOSEPH PHELAN: Joe Phelan brings more than 25 years of experience, visionary style and inspired leadership to Sunbelt Rentals. With a solid understanding of the industry and an impressive management background, he was named to this position in April 2009. Mr. Phelan joined Ashtead from Deutsche Post DHL, where he served as Chief Executive Officer of DHL Global Mail based in Weston, Florida. Before joining DHL in 2004, he held a number of senior executive positions with American Airlines. He has been an Executive Director of Ashtead Group plc since April 23, 2009. Joe is a native of southern California. He holds an MBA from the University of Dallas, and a BA, Business Administration from California State University.

ABOUT SUNBEST RENTALS, INC.: Sunbelt Rentals prides themselves on their people. They realize that their national network of construction and industrial equipment rental stores, with more than $2B in equipment and small tools for do it yourselfers to large national contractors, can be duplicated by others.  What is most difficult to duplicate is the talent of the 5,000 employees pulling together to make it happen for their customers. Their employment brand and the external brand they go to market with is built on dedicated and committed employees who feel empowered to do what makes the most sense for our customers.  By creating the environment for their employees to excel with this vision, they create opportunities for career growth, successes for our customers and growth for our shareholders.

GUEST CONTIBUTOR: Co-Authored by Carisa Miklusak and Keshet Lemberg
This post originally appeared on Carissa’s Blog – Making Sense of the Social Media Jungle. An inquisitive problem solver by nature, Carisa Miklusak is an entrepreneur, consultant and speaker by trade. Connect with Carisa’s social media profiles, on Twitter and Facebook or join her LinkedIn Resource Community.

When it comes to finding the best employee for a position, many organizations are now turning to alternate routes. Our complex and competitive business landscape has created an imperative need for a well positioned employment brand. Businesses traditionally relied upon industry contacts, expertise, job boards, and third-party recruiters to uncover the best match, but today the majority of corporations are also embracing social media as a leading recruiting tool.

In order to successfully utilize social media as part of a recruiting strategy, it is first necessary to understand how your target audience is using LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites to land jobs. The most obvious reason job seekers use social media is to source companies for open positions. For example, TwitJobSearch is a social media job search engine that candidates rely upon as a resource to find open positions that are not always posted on job boards or company sites. Moreover, job seekers use online media to verse themselves in the culture of a target company. Job seekers study company pages on social media sites to gather insight about the company’s culture via photos, videos, and information provided by the corporation. Companies such as MTV Networks have successfully built their presence on social media sites by encouraging users to ask questions, offer info, and seek advice. Through its Facebook page – MTV Networks Careers – the entertainment leader sparks engagement with users, responds to questions, and posts open positions.

Lured by news, rumors, and trends, people are drawn to online media sites by the appeal of industry chatter. Professionals with social media know-how realize that industry chatter is an extremely valuable resource for gaining new and important information that can make them better candidates in the interview process. Job seekers in search of firsthand user-to-user information can easily connect with current and ex-employees through social media outlets. A directory of people organized by area of expertise, profession, and hundreds of other categories is available to the public on Twellow, the yellow pages for Twitter. LinkedIn provides similar information. Candidates also use social media sites to scope out recruiters and hiring managers to determine if they are a compatible match, and to gain helpful information for potential interviews and conversations. To find excellent advice that is pertinent to a specific situation, job seekers follow and connect with job search experts in the social media sphere. Many such experts exist offering daily advice. Ideas, tips, leads, news, informative articles and best practices can be accessed at the touch of a finger by using Twellow’s job search to find people to follow who send out helpful information. The vast array of social media tools now makes it possible for bold job seekers to attempt to engineer their own opportunities instead of waiting to be uncovered by recruiters and hiring managers. Some follow employees at their target company until news of a fitting open position arises while others network their way into new positions by engaging in strategic conversations with potential leads.

By understanding why job seekers use social media to land jobs, companies can leverage their activity to more effectively and efficiently recruit new employees. When using social media as part of a recruiting strategy, it is important to create a consistent and automated method for uncovering the social identity of job seekers. Sites like TiVo makes job opportunities accessible across major social media platforms so that anyone can post, direct message or update their status. Corporations can benefit from the opportunity to build relationships with candidates in their target audiences by maintaining an official company presence on social media sites. By following relevant people and igniting conversations, organizations can begin to create a healthy level of influence over their brand – a clear best practices in the social media sphere. Moreover, companies can determine what type of information fuels the jobseekers’ interest by listening to the candidates and then provide that content on their social media platforms. In order to avoid an influx of irrelevant offers to their job posts, however, it is necessary for businesses to refine their searches by specifically targeting candidates by location, career interests, and other top candidate profile credentials.

Through social media platforms, companies can connect to talent anywhere in the world and access personal information about top industry leaders. Social media is as valuable resource for organizations of all kinds and sizes to build employment brands and make the right candidate connections. It is equally as productive for job seekers, creating a platform where companies and talent alike can connect directly with multiple stakeholders in their target audience.

Liberty Tax Service has been the recipient of several awards in the past couple years – which of these are you most proud of and why?

We’re proud of all of them, but I think the one that we’re most proud of is one that we just received locally from Inside Business magazine, calling Liberty Tax Service “one of the best places to work in Hampton Roads” (which is the Tidewater Region of Virginia). To be named the best place to work in an entire metropolitan region was really special to us because we really embrace our culture, and we are proud to be recognized as a great place to work. Our rankings in Entrepreneur Magazine also stand out because that’s an industry-wide franchise publication that many people refer to when they’re looking to purchase a franchise opportunity. To be recognized by them as one of the fastest growing franchise opportunities – and one of the best out of 500 opportunities – is good for the franchise system in general.

The Liberty Tax Service franchise opportunity is #9 on the fastest growing franchises list of the 2010 Entrepreneur “Franchise 500.” To what do you attribute your growth?

I think the number one thing is the experience of the management team. Our CEO, John Hewitt, founded Jackson Hewitt Tax Service in 1982 and grew that to a very large franchise system, a system that today still bears his name. I, myself, am one of the founders of Liberty Tax Service, and I have over 20 years of experience in the income tax industry. When we decided to start another income tax company, we made a bunch of rules: to learn by our mistakes, to help foster the culture, and to promote people to jobs that they were good at. I think that the reason that we’ve been so successful is because we have been able to hire the right people, make them happy and then bring on great franchisees.

How would you describe your philosophy as it relates to people and their impact on your daily business?

I believe that people should be left to do their jobs. I don’t believe that [micro management] fosters creativity and excitement in the workplace. My personal philosophy is to hire the right people, give them their job description and what their key result areas are, and then let them go ahead and figure out how they are going to achieve those results. One of the principles of our company is, “Mistakes are a wise person’s education.” We believe that nobody’s perfect, and you’re going to make mistakes, and your mistake is like an education. We [as managers] are here to guide you, but you’ve got some freedoms and some flexibility to make your own decisions on how you’re going to run your business.

How do you engage and relate to your people? What experiences or lessons influence your leadership style?

Many folks who work with me have been with me for a long time, from the beginning of starting Liberty Tax Service. We are, as a group and as a department, very tight. There’s a lot of laughing that goes on, but when the work needs to get done, we push to be the best and to really get results because everybody is proud to be a part of the marketing department. If I attribute anything to my management style, it’s the fact that I let people do their jobs. I truly believe that you can have fun every single minute you’re at work if you enjoy what you’re doing.

How do people affect your business, particularly as it relates to your revenue stream?

We manage our employees though the position-results description method: Our employees set a goal for what their job is, and then there are key result areas that they agree with their manager are “the things that I am going to achieve this year.” We make sure that each key result area is measurable, but we also make sure that they are attainable. We work together throughout the year to make sure that everybody is on track. It’s a really good way to kind of put your goals down on paper and then track if you are achieving them.

Some people believe HR to be the only department with a responsibility for the organization’s people, yet you’ve made your overall talent strategy a priority in your role. Tell me about that.

I think our company operates quite a bit differently from some other large companies to attract good people. We have a referral program that motivates our employees and our franchisees to seek out good people. Our HR department is not a traditional HR department. They help us with issues, but when it comes to the actual hiring process, it is really left up to the managers to find and interview those people and make the hiring decision. We look for the right people, we bring them on, we test them in different positions, and we find the right job for them. It really boils down to this: you’ve got to hire for attitude and then train for skill. If somebody doesn’t have the right attitude, it doesn’t matter what job you put them in, they are not going to perform. We like to hire people who are happy, positive, and willing to stretch and to learn.

I understand that Liberty Tax Service doesn’t advertise nationally, and you’ve relied heavily on guerilla marketing with wavers and franchisees generating most of the buzz about your brand in the market. How have you used social media to extend your non-traditional marketing to reach a wider audience, centralize marketing efforts, and preserve your brand?

We’re new to social media. We knew that we needed to be involved in that, but we weren’t really sure how to do it. The first thing we did was hire an online brand manager who has experience in that environment. We’ve relied pretty heavily on the folks at CareerBuilder to help guide us through that and give us ideas on how we can better position ourselves on the web with social media.

We don’t believe in traditional national advertising. Television has lost a lot of its effectiveness. We continue have a very high percentage increase in business every year, and I attribute it to the fact that we’re doing non-traditional things, whereas our competitors are still acting very traditionally when it comes to media and to advertising.

We’ve developed a persona: We’ve developed a Facebook page that is dedicated to “Libby” and her adventures going across the United States and what she is going to encounter during tax season. We also have a traditional Facebook page where people can ask questions and we can post tax tips. Building the friend base has been very easy. People are interested, especially during tax time. Everybody has to file taxes, so you have a ready-made base of people who are seeking information, and we’ve found a fun way to do it through the interaction on the social media sites. And it has been very successful for us so far.

Tax preparation is a very personal service, and communicating on a one-on-one basis is far more meaningful to our customers than mass media advertising.

What lessons have you learning along the way in regards to social media?

One lesson we’ve learned is that you need to have a solid background in what your strategy is and how you’re going to implement it. I think you can hurt yourself very easily by going out onto Facebook or Twitter and not understanding what the rules of engagement are. You can kill your image as quickly as you can build your image if you don’t respect those parameters.

When we started, we were dabbling in it and didn’t really have a firm grasp of what we should be doing. I think we made some wise decisions by getting help from people who understood the space and could make some recommendations on how we should move forward. I feel really comfortable with where we are now with our social media presence, because we are moving through the environment in a way that is not only proper, but also fun and inviting for the people who are participating on our sites.

How have you leveraged your employment brand to grow your business? Why is this important to you?

It may sound cliché, but we have a group of advocates out in the marketplace, in virtually every DMA in the country who really love Liberty Tax Service, and who love working for Liberty Tax Service. So we’ve got this band of advocates who are out there singing our praises. Just last weekend I was at an office and there was a waver out on the street, and we had three separate people walk in and say, “How do I get that cool job? I’d like to have that job.” It’s rewarding and gratifying, but it also lets you know that people are noticing us and they understand what it means to be part of Liberty Tax Service. We’re just doing an outstanding job of recruiting the right people, showing them the right way to do business, and they in turn tell everybody they know.

I would have to start with our CEO, John Hewitt. John is the consummate workaholic. He is constantly striving for betterment: both betterment of the company and giving the people who work within the company the opportunity to continue to grow and to achieve. His leadership, wisdom and vision are paramount to the success of our company. We like to call him the granddaddy of the industry. His wealth of experience and knowledge is unsurpassed in the income tax industry and in business circles in general.

Then I would have to use the franchisees, collectively, as our second group of people who propelled Liberty Tax Service to where we are today. We’ve got, I think, an unusual group of franchisees. Our franchisees are very entrepreneurial and are constantly bringing us all kinds of great ideas. And they bring them to the table with passion and understanding of what it’s like to be out in the field and on the front lines with the customers. They’re all just very, very motivated and really love what they are doing: They’re the kind of people that you want to hang out with.

What other advice would you share through this piece?

My advice to anyone who is looking to start a business or to re-engineer their business is to look outside of what you know. Just because this is the way that we’ve always done it doesn’t mean that’s the way that it always needs to be done. And that applies to virtually any business – whether it’s manufacturing, retail, science, or anything – because if you don’t look for a different way of doing things, you’re going to get the same results you’ve always gotten.

John likes to say, “If you do what you always did, then you’re going to get what you always got.” Another one of our principles is to break boundaries. You have to take those risks. You have to be able to steel yourself and say, “Okay, I’ve never done this before, but now I’m going to figure out how to do it and here’s the goal that we’re going after.”

_________________________________________________________________________________________

About Liberty Tax Service

Liberty Tax Service is the fastest growing retail tax preparation company in the industry’s history. Founded in 1997 by CEO John T. Hewitt, Liberty Tax Service has prepared over 7,000,000 individual income tax returns. Liberty Tax Service provides computerized income tax preparation, electronic filing and online filing through eSmart Tax. Each office offers customers audit assistance, a money back guarantee and free tax return checking. The Liberty Tax Service franchise opportunity is #9 on the fastest growing franchises list of the 2010 Entrepreneur “Franchise 500.” For more information on Liberty Tax visit www.libertytax.com

We at CareerBuilder have created this e-book for you, the employer.

• For the small bait and tackle shop owner, as well as the restaurant franchise owner.
• For the small tech firm, as well as the Fortune 500 corporation.

Because while your recruitment needs may be vastly different from every other business, you still do have recruitment needs. And whether you are concerned with getting less application drop-off, building a stronger employment brand, delving into the world of social media, providing more training opportunities for your employees, or a myriad of other challenges, CareerBuilder’s team of experts can help you isolate and tackle the specific areas of concern in your recruitment process and move forward to meet your next challenge with confidence and ease.

Use this e-book to discover our best tips around:

• Recruitment benchmarking
• Talent intelligence
• Compensation strategy
• Employment branding
• Social media recruitment/ social recruiting
• Employee engagement and retention
• Candidate attraction
• Recruitment process optimization
• Employee training
• Succession management
• Employee onboarding
• Interview questions
• …and more!

Download CareerBuilder’s Ultimate Recruitment Guide e-Book, our brand new how-to-hire guide stocked with the latest tips and advice – and designed to address your unique recruitment needs today.

Looks like the rumors (being rumors and all) were false: TBS announced today that Conan O’Brien has signed a deal to star in a late night talk show on the network, effectively putting to rest earlier speculation that FOX was going to sign the former “Tonight Show” host. 

I wrote earlier about how ,as an employer who’s hoping to attract a top talent like O’Brien, FOX was doing everything right…so how did TBS, a cable television network that isn’t exactly known for its original late night programming and certainly doesn’t bring in the same audience numbers that FOX does, secure this coveted hire?

Oddly enough, it was the perception that TBS is not a network like FOX that became a crucial part of its employee value proposition.  As noted in an NPR story published today, after dealing with all the “affiliate politics at NBC,” O’Brien was apparently wary to sign a deal with FOX only to have to deal with demanding affiliates all over again. (The tactic is not unlike what I posted last week about how AOL was leveraging its status as a “non-Google” to attract former Google employees.)

Another major selling point? TBS appealed to its candidate’s intangible needs: By letting O’Brien own this show, the network is giving its new hire those career opportunities that employees love so much.

Finally, in a move that seemed to cap the deal for TBS, according to Media Decoder, the network wisely utilized what we in the recruiting world call an “employee referral.”  Here’s how it happened…

 TBS’ offer to put O’Brien in the 11 p.m. time slot and push George Lopez’s show to the midnight slot was eerily similar to the very proposal that eventually led to O’Brien’s bitter departure from NBC. Needless to say, O’Brien was unwilling to do to Lopez what he felt had been unfairly done to him, and initially refused the offer. That’s when TBS enlisted the help of its own employment brand advocate, if you will, Geore Lopez himself, who personally called O’Brien to sell him on the offer.

So just to recap what we’ve learned today: FOX’s employee value proposition was good. But as far as O’Brien was concerned, TBS’ was better. Employers would be wise to take a cue from TBS, which smartly did its homework on its ideal candidate, then leveraged what it knew about that candidate’s perceptions, values and needs to market itself and appeal to that candidate as an employer of choice. Well done, TBS.

If you’re new to – or have yet to venture into – social media recruitment, you might want to check out CareerBuilder’s recent webinar on the subject (now available on demand here).  

Not just a clever name, “Social Media Basics for Your Employment Brand,” gives a quick and easy-to-digest overview of what social media is and its value as an employment branding tool.  

Hosted by Melissa Murray, emerging media consultant for Personified, CareerBuilder’s consulting arm, the webinar also covers such topics as: how companies are using social media to impact their business; how to begin creating a social networking strategy; and various policies and etiquette to follow. There’s even an informative Q&A at the end of the session.

Click here to watch the first half of the two-part webinar on demand.  Or for a quick sneak peek, check out the 10 steps to getting started with your social media strategy:

1. Set a Goal – Determine where you want to create a presence, and what the purpose of that presence is.
2. Master One Medium – There are a lot of social networking sites out there right now. So many in fact, that it can be overwhelming trying to decide where to start. Begin by simpling picking one site on which to create a profile and get comfortable using before you venture elsewhere.  Explore the site to see what others might be saying about your brand. See if they’re engaging and if what they’re saying is negative or positive. Figure out how others are using the site and engaging on it.
3. Manage Your Online Reputation – Once you’ve seen what people are saying, create a plan for responding to those comments.
4. Create a User Experience – Create a Facebook page, for example, and post videos, photos or content that gives insight into what it’s like to work at your organization – information users wouldn’t find anywhere else. By providing them an inside look at your organization, you’re creating an exclusive user experience, engaging them and compelling them to want to work for you.
5. Listen, Learn and Engage – This step denotes an ongoing process. Once you have a profile and are active on the site, you can start to listen to the conversations about your brand. Allow employees and job seekers to post questions about the company. You may find that they’re concerned about issues you never would have considered addressing before.  Don’t be afraid of criticism, either. This is an opportunity for you to respond and clarify misconceptions about your brand. (Because the truth is that people are going to talk about your brand – regardless of whether you’re there or not. At least now you have the opportunity to steer the conversation in your favor.)
6. Highlight Specific Jobs – Use the medium as a platform to give information beyond just a job description. You can post employee testimonials, for example, of others who hold that position and be advocates for both the company and the job.
7. Visually Stimulate - Sharing videos and photos of company events is a great way to give candidates snap shots into your organization – in ways they’ve never seen.  “Day-in-the-life” videos, for example, give would-be employees an idea of what it’s like to work for your company, and they resonate stronger than anything job seekers might read.
8. Boost Your Rankings – Having a presence on multiple social networks can improve your rankings in Google search results, making it easier for job seekers to find you when they perform organic searches for either your company or your industry.
9. Promote – Tapping into those passive talent streams and connecting with your ideal talent requires promotion – both internal and external. Use your social networks to market your open positions, company news, or other messages you want to get across to job seekers, and make sure to communicate internally, too, so your employees can further their efforts as brand advocates and push that information out, too.
10. Dedicate Time and Effort – Whatever you to, keep at it. It takes time to build a following and generate engagement - and even longer to see a return on your business, but in the long run, you will reap the rewards for your efforts.

Check back later for our recap of the second part of this webinar series, “Employment Brand Strategy for Social Media.”