Yesterday Universum released it’s very first annual IDEAL employer rankings by young professionals.
Universum surveyed 10,306 young professionals, defined as college graduates with 1 to 8 years of professional experience, and asked them to pick their most ideal employers.
The results have caused quite a stir with Google (chosen by 25% of young professionals) nearly doubling its next closest competitor, Apple (13%).
Perhaps the biggest theme that can be drawn from the rankings is that young professionals are drawn to the jobs with the most financial stability. This can be seen with major tech companies and government jobs leading the way over many other employer brands.
You can read more analysis into the Universum rankings and see the ideal employer list in its entirety in the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703512404576208702115862760.html?mod=WSJ_Careers_CareerJournal_4
So you want to attract diverse candidates to your company. Great, you’ve made a step in the right direction towards enhancing your employer brand. However, you’re not getting the right diverse candidates to apply. What should you do?
Take a look at the message you’re sending to diverse job-seekers:
- Look at your website. Does it send out a message of diversity? Does it show a diverse group of employees? If it doesn’t, minority job-seekers will feel it – and look elsewhere.
- Fine-tune your message. It’s one thing for a company to have a theoretical commitment to diversity. But if recruiters are sending out a mixed message, it can alienate people. Even if it involves a new training process, make sure that recruiting is happening in a culturally sensitive manner.
- Don’t get cute. Candidates will relate more enthusiastically to the concepts of job fulfillment and career growth than to blatant ethnic appeals. A message targeted to one particular ethnic group, if it seems condescending or pandering, it will backfire.
In a recent article from Recruiting Trends, Author Chad Storlie discusses how military experience can translate extremely well into the work place. The example Storlie uses is that of Operation Command Centers or OPCEN. Walt Disney World recently opened a brand new Operations Center, “to ensure that theme parks guests, employee, and services run smoothly, effectively, and on time.”
Globally, there are several hundred military OPCENs running all day and under combat conditions. Certainly, that type of experience could prove invaluable to Walt Disney World when looking for candidates to run their brand new Operations Center.
Since Gulf War Veterans make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. population, Storlie listed some incredibly useful ways for recruiters to learn more about adding value to their company by utilizing military experience:
1. Leverage Their Military Experience to the Company & Job
2. Mentor an Individual or Group
3. Further Education One Class at a Time.
Storlie goes over each of these methods in great detail and the whole article is worth a look. You can see the article in its entirety here:
http://www.recruitingtrends.com/how-recruiters-can-leverage-military-experience
Re-published: “Diversity”, by Annika Lagerholm, Universum Quarterly 2006, Issue 1
Embrace diversity: It’s necessary to meet an increasingly diverse customer-base and be able to recruit and retain skilful employees. If you fail to introduce diversity into your workforce, it’ll cost you missed business goals and even potential lawsuits.
For many years, diversity was regarded an unimportant issue. Yet, due to demographic changes that have lead to shortages of skilled workers, employers need to recruit from a broad and complex talent pool. The success of diversity initiatives generally depends on three key factors:
3 success factors for diversity initiatives
1. Develop formal structures and processes in the organization, such as recruitment, compensation, promotion and career development
2. Change personal attitudes and behavior, such as corporate culture, leadership styles and attitudes amongst employees and managers
3. Include everyone in the organization
Dr. John Sullivan from ere.net has posted an interesting article about the top 30 social media recruiting errors. Many employers think that just by saying they “use social media” they are using it effectively when in reality that is really not the case. In fact, there are a number of mistakes that employers make over and over again when trying to implement social media strategy into their recruitment plans.
The common errors that Dr. Sullivan includes are separated into five major categories: strategy related errors, channel and tool selection errors, message and coverage errors, recruiter and employee support errors and process and administrative errors.
Essentially, for social media to work for your overall recruiting plan, a solid strategy is a must. You need to know who you are targeting, how you are communicating and always keep in mind your employer brand. In fact, Dr. Sullivan lists underemphasizing employer branding as one of the biggest mistakes.
What it really boils down to is that social media makes it too easy for employers to flood their subscribers with too much information that isn’t targeted or consistent. It’s important for an employer to have a plan in place and to stick to it lest they lose potential recruitments.
The fact is that social media can be an incredibly useful tool in recruitment. But unless you have a good plan in place, you should avoid it. To see the full list of common social media errors, go to:
http://www.ere.net/2011/02/07/high-impact-social-recruiting-errors-the-top-30-to-avoid/
We all know that LinkedIn is an incredibly useful tool for those trying to build a strong personal brand. There are tons of tools all across the Internet offering aid to individuals looking to improve their LinkedIn image..
But what about employers trying to build a brand on LinkedIn. Can LinkedIn be a useful tool in employer branding?
Read the rest of this entry »
