A glimpse of the future… or time to invest in singing lessons
It’s a rare thing for me to find surprising careers content that makes me think: “Wow – I love that!” But that rare thing happened this week when I discovered a company called Medallia.
I’m not even sure where to start here, but a good place could be the all-singing, all dancing “We are Medallia” video on their Careers landing page. If you don’t do anything else with this post, I suggest you do watch this because it’s certainly entertaining. Then watch it a second time because this is a corporate video that entertains and sends out key messages about their culture.
Medallia is obviously a company that likes to use video. There are fast-moving workplace tours rubbing shoulders with video communicating those essential “Why work for us?” messages. And there are lots of employee video profiles as well, with staff members sharing memories of their first day at Medallia, or chatting informally about what it’s like to do their job.
Social media is another key component of Medallia’s career page strategy, with embedded links to Twitter, Instagram and Glass Door. The Instagram and Glass Door links are particularly interesting, and suggest Medallia is targeting the increasing number of candidates who like to share.
Then I found Medallia’s Interview Guide. Now I never thought I’d say this about a PDF, but I really enjoyed reading this.
Not only does it provide basic interview tips, it also gives candidates a glimpse of company culture and Medallia’s intriguing recruiting approach. For example, Medallia use three types of job interview: Functional interviews to assess skills, Culture interviews to understand character, and Worksample interviews that test task ability. Is this an approach that could work for everyone? Maybe not, but it’s certainly food for thought.
The guide also provides a clear overview of the application process and asks for feedback. Yes, that’s right. Medallia wants candidates to let the company know about their recruiting experience, so they can identify and fix issues. And that includes leaving public reviews on Glassdoor.
The Medallia Career pages aren’t perfect and there are some things I’d change (I’d like to see the Interview Guide content actually on the Career pages in glorious HTML), but I don’t want to sound finicky, as I think there’s a lot to like here.
The key things that stand out for me are the engaging videos that are just asking to be shared and the big focus on interaction. But is it really that surprising to find this sort of content on Career pages? For those under-35 candidates who’ve grown up with digital (and an increasing number of digitally-savvy over 35s), sharing and interacting online is well, normal every-day stuff, isn’t it?
Now I’m guessing there are probably some recruiters reading this who might be thinking something like the following: “But my company isn’t a Silicon Valley software company. All that sharing and video stuff wouldn’t work for us.”
Okay, I can understand that point of view, and I’m not suggesting all companies should mimic the Medallia approach. But every company needs to recruit. And today’s jobseekers will increasingly expect to see good quality video on hiring sites, as well as sharing and interaction opportunities. If your career pages don’t have these features, it might still stand out among your peers, but possibly not in the way you’d like.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can improve your career content, drop us a line and we’ll be happy to share our expertise.
PS – And thanks to Recruiting Social for letting me know about Medallia!
