Two items found in my email recently are definitely worth passing along.
First: Using Twitter for Employment Branding? 15 Things Recruiters Can Tweet About . . . is a concise, creative checklist of ways to make Twitter make sense as a recruiting tool. Tweeting career advice, sharing interview examples, announcing offers and new hires, posting event photos-real-life ideas and information that will make your Twitterstream actually interesting!
The post is so perfect that I won’t try to summarize here. Instead I’ll just suggest you print it out, laminate it, and keep it in plain sight at all times. Even if you don’t tweet, these suggestions can be utilized in a variety of other ways to enrich HR communications.
While you’re at it, check out some other smart advice from the same author (Jessica Lee, a Senior Employment Manager for APCO Worldwide), such as Social Media Won’t Do a Thing for Your Employment Brand if Your Brand Simply Sucks. Partly I just like the title, but the post is also a good reminder that realism is often the first casualty of social-media enthusiasm.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is an item from the Workforce Management website: Employers Grapple with Rise in Workplace Suicides. According to this important article, “there was a 28 percent increase in the number of suicides committed in the workplace last year–251–compared with the prior year, according to a census by the U.S. Department of Labor released in August.”
Note that 251 is the number of suicides actually committed in the workplace. That doesn’t include the much greater number of employees who take their lives elsewhere. The piece goes on to explore some reasons behind this trend, and provides some advice, along with links to related discussions. Again, I won’t summarize–but I urge you to read the article.
What does workplace suicide have to do with recruiting in general, and with the corporate website in particular? Here’s one connection:
Positive corporate values, a supportive workplace culture, respect for life/work balance, and a constructive approach to diversity are intangible benefits that improve the employee experience and should be highlighted on the website, just like tangible benefits such as health insurance and 401Ks. In addition, the availability of Employee Assistance Programs and mental health coverage are valuable assets that enhance the employer brand.
Most people don’t join a company expecting to experience a life crisis–but they would like to know that if or when they do, they can expect help and not harm from their employer. When a prospect evaluates a company, that’s one of the assurances he or she seeks, even if not consciously.
Cynthia Giles has followed a serpentine career path from academia to publishing to marketing and design to information technology and corporate communications. There’s plenty of detail about this journey at www.cynthiagiles.com, but briefly--the common theme has been ideas, and how to present them effectively. Along the way, she became an accidental expert on data warehousing and business intelligence, and for the past ten years she has combined corporate contracting with an independent consulting practice that focuses on marketing strategy for smaller businesses and non-profits.
Having spent quite a bit of time looking for work, and anywhere from two weeks to two years inside a wide variety of American companies—she has given much thought to what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to creating a great employment fit.
