As Facebook sets the wheels in motion for its IPO, it couldn’t be timelier to ask the question “do employers use social media and do they know what they’re doing?” Nobody can doubt the powers of social media to connect to large, as well as relevant, audiences. And as one expands his/her network, one can also take advantage of the connections of others – the possibilities are endless.

Yet although the principal of the net and social media to expand networks, connections and reach-out to huge audiences is a communication revolution, do we all know what we’re doing? Are we really capitalizing on the potential? Is it all just a fad of various people wanting to be there, because they must, but in the end have no idea if it’s beneficial? In other words, is social media helping you become more successful in attracting, recruiting and retaining staff? Perhaps we should ask that as our next question.

However, from our poll of the week, and as we could predict, the majority of employers are using social medial but still have no idea of what they want, or maybe even of what they’re getting out of it – only time will tell if all of this is just a craze or if Facebook is indeed worth $80bn or more. As the BBC rightly mentioned, it depends on how much we’re all worth, as in the end user, and whether or not we’re all willing to be targeted by more and more advertising – for it to be seen.

Here is a sum-up of this week’s poll. Thanks for your participation!
• Interestingly, the majority of employers are using the channel but still have no idea what they want (65%).
• It’s only a small fraction of companies, over one in ten employers that surprisingly do have a clear strategy and defined goals – perhaps they can be kind enough to advise the other 65%.
• Almost one out of five isn’t present in social media but is planning to be there. Only a small minority of employers (5 %) doesn’t want to and doesn’t see the purpose.

To see the results, click on the infograph below: Is your company actively present in social media for talent attraction purposes?

Print ads, brochures, Facebook, campus events. Finding the right communication channels has mainly been guesswork. Not so anymore: a new Universum survey shows just what channels grab student attention, and at what stage of the game they are most effective.

By Fred Cohn

Sometimes the medium really is the message. Corporate recruiters can’t help but understand this: any time they devise a communication strategy, they might well contemplate Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum. They have a choice of numerous channels for reaching job prospects: print and television ads, brochures, social networks, career fairs, campus presentations, job boards, and above all, company Web sites. They also know it’s important to choose the right channel. It doesn’t matter how strong the employer branding message is, unless it’s transmitted through the correct carrier it won’t reach its full effect. But until now, there has been very little reliable data to help them choose the proper pipeline. Read the rest of this entry »

I would like to wish everyone a good start to 2012 – let’s hope we start believing in opportunities again, find solutions to problems and, more importantly, make positive changes for a better future.

Before we embark into a new year, I would like to make a quick recap of the top 5 most read articles on employer branding today, i.e. non-ranking related stories.

1. Talent management from an EB perspective

Talent management is about how to manage employees. Employer branding is about how to create and communicate a strong corporate culture that resonates well with your right target group. This article addresses how talent managers can incorporate employer branding activities in their work. Read more

2. Talent relationship management is the future

Universum has seen a trend of employers targeting younger audiences. In this article, we highlight a few examples of companies that are thinking long-term about their talent pipeline and we go back to basics on what talent relationship management actually means. Read more

3. The Era of Personality Targeting

Cecilia Dahlström, Global Marketing Director and guru of personality targeting, introduces the new trend of attracting candidates based on their cultural fit rather than skill set. Having the right attitude today is more important than aptitude. Read more

4. Universum meets Facebook to get the inside story

Being a social network, Facebook is its people and they, in turn, are the company’s brand ambassadors. The organization is extremely flat, no hierarchy of positions or top management sitting in an ivory tower. This is the image that Facebook conveyed to Universum in an exclusive one-on-one session with Matt Millunchick, recruiting programs manager, and Orna Holland, EMEA recruiting manager, to get the inside story. Read more

5. Your guide to build a diverse workforce

It’s unquestionable that today’s employers need to embrace a diverse and globalised workforce. Aside from being obligated by law to provide equal opportunities and not to discriminate, evidence shows that diversity is beneficial in a number of aspects. However, if employers want to build a more diverse workforce, they need to be sensitive to dissimilar needs and wants. Read more

by Joao Araujo

We already know the top 50 World’s Most Attractive Employers of 2011. But which companies are close to enter this restricted group? Will the new social media players like Facebook and Twitter make it? What about the financial institutions like HSBC or Barclays? Or consumer products companies like Henkel or Mars? In this article we look into what some companies might need to do to capture even more the hearts of career seekers. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Millunchick, recruiting programs manager, and Orna Holland, EMEA recruiting manager

Being a social network, Facebook is its people and they, in turn, are the company’s brand ambassadors. The organization is extremely flat, no hierarchy of positions or top management sitting in an ivory tower. Even Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s CEO, works in the open space and the only conference room they have is called the aquarium, because it has no solid walls but only glass. Being a company where people are at the core of what they do and represent, Facebook encourages its employees to be bold and open, to challenge and make a difference.

This is the image that Facebook conveyed to Universum in an exclusive one-on-one session with Matt Millunchick, recruiting programs manager, and Orna Holland, EMEA recruiting manager, to get the inside story. “The open office space is what drives productivity and team collaboration”, says Matt.  “If people want to focus, they can wear earphones”, he said.  Yet, there is more to Facebook than just a bunch of people working in an open office. Both Matt and Orna were noticeably the perfect representations of what a brand advocate should be. They conveyed enthusiasm and passion for what they do in the way they spoke about the company – something they insist every employee feels at Facebook.

The importance of cultural fit

Perhaps this is the company’s true magical formula for success: identify talented individuals, make them believe in the company, its products and services, and finally turn them into the ideal brand advocates. Unsurprisingly, 30% of their recruitment needs are done via referrals. “Smart people know other smart people and that has helped us attract new talent to the company”, said Matt. 

Similar to Zappos, reported as a perfect business case study by the Financial Times, Facebook also assesses cultural match of candidates as part of their recruitment process.  “How potential candidates fit the corporate culture is definitely important to us at Facebook”, said Orna.  More and more companies that excel in talent attraction and retention proactively work with personality targeting; a practice that Universum advises will provide most employers with a competitive edge. 

 Yet, with the rapid growth Facebook is currently experiencing, both Orna and Matt expressed their concern about the company staying true to its core values. Facebook has gone from 200 employees, when they first started, to over 2000 colleagues today.  To prevent the risk of losing part of its initial identity, Facebook sets-up new offices with cultural carriers – to make sure that Facebook anywhere will have the same feel as the initial Palo Alto office. “We don’t want to be an organization that is bureaucratic and hierarchical”, Orna said.   “To remain true to who we are will be one of our future challenges”, she added.

Facebook’s popularity as a great place to work is impressive – the social network received a quarter of a million job applications in 2010 worldwide! “It’s overwhelming to process and review each and every candidate”, says Orna, “but the team works hard to do so and we rely on technology to identify promising individuals”. In addition, “all candidates that interview with us conduct a candidate experience survey, which is important to ensure that no candidate experience is negative”. It’s a best practice approach to consider, especially for organizations that struggle to manage the huge influx of applications.

A corporate culture that inspires action

Facebook is a company with an extremely strong corporate culture. It has five short and easy to remember values: 1) Focus on Impact 2) Move Fast, 3) Be bold 4) Be open and 5) Build trust. The values permeate the whole organization, with posters on the walls reiterating the key messages, with employees writing their own personal tributes or even comical interpretations of the core values. In their corporate videos, which were shown during their presentation at the Universum Awards in Sweden, the viewer was constantly reminded by Zuckerberg and other representatives of their core values. One could almost walk away with a feeling of knowing the company without ever having worked for Facebook or even visiting their headquarters. A simple exchange with two ambassadors, a presentation and a few videos gave all the impression one needed.

Facebook is an organization that empowers its employees. Their videos showed that and Matt stressed that everything filmed was non-scripted and truly shows how people feel about their work. “It’s an open and honest environment”, he said. The corporate values represent the trust in their people to do great things and make a difference, and they constantly encourage their staff to be bold and make an impact.

Being a social network, you would expect it would be relatively easy for a disgruntled employee to write something disagreeable about the company, but again they are all about being open and they say it is not something that has really happened. “We are authentic and true to what we say and we haven’t really had a situation of an employee experiencing otherwise”, insisted Matt. Because of the transparent and flat corporate culture, Facebook really works hard to recruit people who have an affinity to the corporate culture and they allow their employees to dare to work on their own projects, provided that there is, of course, some sort of impact to what they are doing.

Creating great content is the cornerstone of their employer brand communications

From an employer brand perspective, everything Facebook does is focused on content and building connections with and between people. “That’s our employer brand work in a nutshell”, said Matt. With regard to any guidelines in terms of what content they could generate, Matt said he had more or less free reign to do whatever he wished.  “When good content is created, it gets shared”, was his wise words of the day to other professionals in field.

How does Facebook measure the affects of their employer brand activities? By the number of connections, interactions and sharing of content they make and build. It’s obviously something which is relatively easy for a social network to do, but perhaps harder for other companies that don’t have at their disposal the ownership of such a powerful communication channel. However, the most important message of the day, which Matt summed up perfectly for every employer, was the rule of three 1) be authentic, 2) be meaningful and 3) be relevant. And for companies that are willing to explore social media, he said that social media is a team effort, “get everyone to tell a story!”