If your organisation doesn’t already have Gen-Y junior staff interviewing your new hires…read on to find out why you should. HR Magazine stole another opportunity to talk with Erik Schmit, Managing Director APAC for StepStone Solutions who—never afraid to speak his mind—shared some fresh insights on practical things that HR can do to attract the best talent to their organisations.
Making employer branding work
HR is finding it increasingly difficult to attract the right talent and ‘employer branding’ has joined the ranks of HR buzzwords in the last few years.
But what exactly is ‘employer branding’ and how can it be done effectively? Schmit explained that the fundamental concept behind branding was for organisations to be consistent and persistent in what they do to brand themselves.
“It’s all too easy to set something up on Twitter and YouTube to make your site look more sexy, but you have to be doing that on an on-going basis,” said Schmit. He added, “You have to allocate resources for this, these days, recruitment teams need to embrace marketing teams within organisations to help make employer branding effective.” [For more on this see our previous article in the HR Magazine Summer 2010 issue: marriage of recruitment and HR].
Utilisation of technology, and combining it with marketing efforts can significantly assist the process of bringing in the right kind of candidates, which often needs to be done within a very short space of time. “Gone are the days of simply posting a position on a job boards, sitting back and waiting for the right candidates to come along. Good recruiters these days have a number of technological tools at their disposal to help them stay in contact with good candidates in the market. They’ll often spend an hour a day on LinkedIn just to fill up their pipeline,” Schmit added.
When asked what HR could do in practical terms to enhance the employer brand of their organisations, Schmit advised, “Get the board to buy-in and understand it’s not a one-off thing, but an on-going thing.”
To make employer branding work it is essential to get the representatives from HR, recruitment, marketing and the board to come together and discuss the company’s approach to recruitment and employer branding. As a team, they need to work out what message the organisation wants to give to potential hires and how that message is going to be disseminated.
Face time & flexibility critical
Face time is now a critical component of successful recruitment and does not need to decrease with the use of recruitment technology. When HR adopts recruitment technology it should be to help provide candidates with the right kind of information, and to help stay in contact with potential candidates who could be useful for the organisation in future. Schmit advised HR to use the right tools to reach new hires, “It’s not just about using Facebook and YouTube, it’s also about getting face time at events such as university recruitment fairs, and company hosted events that are a bit different such as informal days out on a boat for potential hires.” Attending recruitment fairs also helps employers find out more about the current talent pool emerging from universities.
Without wishing to generalise about Gen-Y candidates, Schmit explained that younger candidates today have different views on work-life balance than those in previous generations and contracts have had to become much more tailor-made. To illustrate this point Schmit added, “People may be hiring candidates who are prepared to give up 20% of their salary in order to spend more time with their children and families. So HR has to be prepared to listen to what candidates want and be flexible with tailoring working contracts to suit each staff member’s circumstances and needs.”
Key motivators: China vs HK
Talent management is really taking off in China now and, according to Schmit, will play a very important role in the next 10 years. He conceded that when it comes to recruitment, China is a very different kettle of fish from Hong Kong and quipped that in the mainland candidates frequently had the expectation of starting off in an organisation as the Managing Director. “There’s a huge amount of talent running about there and it’s about trying to find out what are the key motivators for these people,” said Schmit. In his opinion, key employee motivators in China include: the drive to learn very quickly and add knowledge; salary packages—to a greater degree than in Hong Kong; and opportunities to work for western companies and getting access to different skill sets.
Schmit added that employees in Hong Kong were also motivated by self-development opportunities, but they placed less emphasis on working for western organisations and more emphasis on work-life. To help the right talent onboard, he advised HR to, “…embrace the technology available, face time should not decrease, don’t try to make candidates fit into your organisation, listen to your future workforce, open up and try to understand them—this will help you formulate a successful strategy.”
Junior staff as interviewers
Schmit explained that there was often a large discrepancy between recruiters and the potential workforce, particularly with the younger generation. He said, “There is a lack of understanding of what drives these graduates. You can’t change their behaviour, so you need to dig in and try to understand what drives them.” To help bridge this gap, Schmit advised HR to have junior staff, with at least one year’s working experience in the company, to sit in on the interviews of new hires. He noted from experience within his own organisation that this created a win-win situation, “They [junior staff] get to feel important to be part of the process, and get to give their point of view, in their own terms and words. And the candidate gets to ask questions in their terms and words. It is more relaxing this way.”
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
