I demand better editorial content in the job adverts' section!

I read job adverts. It's a work related hobby. Most of the times I don't really pay attention to what they're seeking but to what they say they are offering. What strikes me is that there's really no difference in the offering. Very seldom the advert works as an advert and actually tries to convince the audience to change behavior. In other words become so much as interested (particularly in this amazing company) to lift a finger and press enter to the job application.

I give you few examples from this morning:

1. Finnish insurance company, sales position: "We offer you challenging work in a forward thinking organization. In addition to your monthly salary we offer a result based provision, support of our organization and training to your tasks."

(I don't see anything in the advert to support the "forward going" and knowing the company, I think they are just as any other insurance company on the market.)

2. Finnish media company, marketing planner: "We offer you a challenging and interesting position and wide range of opportunities to further your skills. Our professional and motivated team will support you in your position."

3. Finnish media company, business controller: Umm, they only write what they require and expect from the candidate.

Let's take a 4th just out of curiosity.

4. Internationally operating logistics and whole sale company, CFO: "We offer you a key position within (wide range of sectors), motivated and modern work environment and benefits matching your experience."

The serious problems with job advertising today are the clinical approach of one fits all companies and the mentality where an employer stills feels his right to request and expect a hell of a lot without bothering to think what to give in return.

In my previous blog post (in Finnish, sorry) I talked about the issue of recognizing the competitive advantage, the sales argumentation of why anyone should want to work for your company and letting them know! This refers back to that.

I've been reading job adverts for over a decade out of curiosity and not much has changed during this time. Every time there is a fresh breath of air, I salute. In this same daily there is an advert from the publisher. One page (ok, they don't have to pay for it), header asking kindly "Could we offer you one of the best workplaces?" and a nice copy to it. Half way there. But still finishing it off with: "We offer you a position among the media professionals and a great opportunity to develop your knowledge." Umph? Why kill the great start?

I complain because:

1. I seriously want companies to win great candidates
2. I know changing the mentality works just to do this. We do it for our customers daily with great results.
3. I'm bored. I want to see better editorial content in the job adverts' section.

Susanna

Yes, this is me way back ago.
This communicates very well the unique culture
of the company I worked at the time. Be proud of
who you are as an employer and let it show!

Great Place to Work race comes to Finish in few weeks - Is your company in it?

Paid a visit to the Finnish Great Place to Work Institute today. The New List will be published in less than a month's time and based on my own experience, about 150 employers in Finland are living exciting times. According to Panu, who is the CEO of the Finnish organisation, the trust index keeps crawling up year by year making the competition ever so tough. If you succeeded well last year does not mean you will this year as everyone has worked hard to be even better this year around.

Me on the left (you didn't guess, right?) and Panu Luukka, CEO of Great Place to Work Institute Finland on the right

What does "being better mean" in this race?
First of all, I think it's fair to say, the companies who participate in the survey are not taking part on it only to succeed in the public race. They are participating in it to get prove their leadership culture rocks and rolls, to become benchmarked against others and to gain insight into how others lead.

Even though the goal should be to be on the top of the rank to make participation an investment worth while, success means the company has done not something, but many things right in order to engage talents to their organisation. It's a good "competition" for HR people, we don't have anything else to measure our success in our jobs so well than such a survey.

 

Leo from HR 2.0 with Panu engaged in discussion at the new GPTW Finland office

It has a huge impact on HR's job, CEO's job and People's jobs

Participation in the GPTW survey was major part of my job in my previous workplace before becoming an entrepreneur. I'm a big fan of the survey as it is an excellent tool to make me do my job really well as an HR. I really saw the impact of great results in the development of our employer brand, engagement of people and abilities to attract talents. As a result, the company made great financial results.

Great Place to Work -survey is really not just a survey. The survey results are the epitome of the leadership culture of an organisation. Benchmark results are a prove you're taking the People Promise seriously, you're working on it continuously and you want to have the best there are to work for you.

When you get the best people, you want to make it a sound & profitable investment, so you take care of your investment, nurture it and make it grow for you. That should be of a CEO's interest.

How does it have an impact on people's jobs then? If the employer wants to attract and keep the best, employer provides such working environment where the best have the best oppotunities and possibilities to bloom. I've always wanted to work in an environment where I can make the most of my career for a win-win situation.


Lot of money can buy a good word but is it credible and have you got it?

The problem with this "lot of money" is that HR departments never have it. So what can we do to get a great employer image, a brand of a good work place where all the best want to nest?

We start working from inside out.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inside out gives you a lot of embassadors

Great work places are made of the following:

1. Simple, clear vision
2. Solid leadership foundation and culture you can call your own
3. Lot of (I mean LOOOOOOT of) internal communication and marketing coming from all angles and adobes 
4. Values that are lived on a daily basis and everyone knows how to
5. Appreciation

Working on these aspects with a great passion, your people will have many great stories to talk about to their friends. The word starts to spread naturally, without a marketing budget. Word of mouth coming from past and existing employees are the most credible statements affecting employer image. As people will talk, why not offer them success stories to talk about.

Passion for great work places and employer images

I have worked with building a solid foundation of a great place to work. I know what it ate, what makes it tick and what it requires from everyone - CEO included. And most of all, I know the effect it has on success of a business. Now that's really tasty! It's such an exciting circle that feed's itself once you get in it. But you have to want to get in it and work for it. If it was an overnight task, we wouldn't be reading so much about the difficulties to find and engage talents. 

Just to make sure you got it:

1. Make a great place to work your HR priority
2. Get the best of the best in and step ahead of competition
3. See, feel and live the experience of how well a great place to work can attract and engage the talents
4. Hear the happy steps of a happy CEO as he evaluates his excel
5. Be proud of your accomplishments that make you an HR every success driven CEO wants

I'm excited to see what companies made it to The List this year!

Susanna

Have you got an attractive and engaging people promise?

I picked up few interesting reads from Waterstone in Manchester over New Year's. "Purple Your People" is a book by Jane Sunley and it pretty much focuses on attracting the right people that can make the business very succesful. You do know that it's people who will or won't make your business great?

Can you pick up the talent from the crowd?

We all agree on great ideas, innovations and capital being critical to a succesful people, but so are people. Yet we don't tend to think too much about the people, what kind of people we really need and why would anyone want to work for us, much else give their best for us. What are you willing to give back? 

The importance of people has been clear for me obviously for a long time, after all, I've made a pretty successful career out of dealing with people - talents and otherwise. But it really striked me when my company went through our first financing round last year. I spoke with many investors then (and since) and each one of them highlighted the critical importance of team (i.e people) when making an investment. Someone said in these words: "Even a wonderful idea can suck if the wrong people attempt to make it. Yet an average idea can become a success with a great team." So my word of advice for all those companies who aim to make it successful: invest in your employer brand and keep your hands tightly on the talents you find. It's the people who make your brand.

5 tips on starting the job of becoming an acknowledged great place to work

1. Place the same importance on getting your company known as a superior place of work as you would do on getting your customers know about your excellent products or services
2. Investigate, understand and clarify your "People Promise" (as Jane Sunley calls it) = Your employees' experience about your company as a workplace
3. Your People Promise must be a clearly articulated offer, that is continuously communicated and delivered within the organization
4. This job can not be an HR start up and initiative, it's an internal movement inhaled and exhaled by all managers
5. Once you got it straight, your employees will start to act as your marketing department communicating your distinctive People Promise outside the organization

So how do we do this?

1. Ask your most long term employees what has made them stick with your company for all those years
2. Ask all of your people what are the things that make them proud working for your company
3. Ask what are the top 3 things they would change if they were the CEO
4. Analyze your strenghts and weaknesses as an employer
5. Make a combined decision and effort to start working on your great place of work -strategy
6. Set up 2-3 initial goals and work on those
7. Communicate plans, actions and results. Like on and on until everyone working for your company tells you they already know. 
8. Measure results, get feedback, set up new goals together with the staff. 

From a long term experience I can assure what a difference great employer brand does for finding and keeping the talents, and thereafter building on a success of an enterprise. Building such a reputation takes a solid plan and time. It will not happen over a night and for it to actually materialize, it has to be someone's priority in the company. That someone has to understand people, leadership, communication and marketing.

We at HR 2.0 are currently working on an exciting project in which one of our customer's is going to find such a person with our help. This is a project that started with a question: What kind of people promise are we offering? We've figured out what actions and activities supporting the people promise already exist, who is responsible for those, what kind of actions are required to meet the goal of getting a great employer brand, what kind of person we need to fulfill the goal and what will his or hers job be about. Next step: recruitment. I hope I will be able to share this exciting story with you one day! Until that, have a great place to work as your new year's resolution.

If you're interested in picking up few ideas on employer branding, check another article we wrote about the topic.

 

Kind regards, Susanna

8 Habits of Successful Bloggers by Annabel Candy

Too few companies (in Finland) are actively working on their employer social footprint. Employer social footprint refers to everything the search engines list about your company as an employer that positively add to your employer brand. In our previous posting we wrote about why it's worth for an employer to blog. I found the following 8 habits of successful bloggers written by Annabel Candy, who is an australian social media blogger. I'd like to share these with you. 1. Effective bloggers take risks Most successful bloggers have one thing in common: they've started blogs that failed. They don't stop trying new things at the first sniff of success either, their blogs keep evolving and changing to move with the times and with their readers. You have to be brave when you start blogging, then keep taking those risks and keep innovating. Not every idea will work. Many will fail, but if you don't keep taking risks and trying new things your blog will get stale and your readers will get bored. 2. Effective bloggers are creative If you're ready to take risks you need to come up with creative ideas to run with. As time goes on it can feel harder to come up with and act on new ideas that keep adding value to your blog. It's critical to keep acting creatively, and then fine tune those ideas that have legs. If you want to be truly creative you'll need to keep taking action and develop a thick skin. 3. Effective bloggers are really passionate You're passionate about what you do, aren't you? But the whole idea of being passionate about your niche is such a cliché, I can see you're just about to skip this bit. Yes, you might know you're passionate about your topic — but you need to make sure your readers know it too. You need to make sure your passion jumps off the screen from your blog, your Facebook page and your Twitter account so that your readers love hanging out with you and don't take their attention or business elsewhere. 4. Effective bloggers are visible and engaging I'm always astonished by how many new bloggers see comments as being a pain in the neck. It seems they look at comments as something that only eats up their time. Effective bloggers see their blog readers as interesting people who they naturally want to interact with them. They reply to comments on their blog posts and talk to their readers on other social media because they value them. The best bloggers focus on creating strong content that resonates with their readers. They're not afraid to be provocative or share personal stories. They have that unique voice and point of view which creates reader loyalty. Effective bloggers really talk to people. They show they care, and engage their readers rather than just going through the motions of networking because it has to be done. 5. Effective bloggers are disciplined and organized If you've got one of these traits, you’re onto a good thing. If you have both, you'll go far. The top bloggers are able to focus on the big picture and have the discipline to stick with it. They have organized systems with editorial calendars planned months in advance, lists of RSS feeds for blog reading, and deadlines for new products they're developing. Like many good traits, you're not going to nail discipline and organization overnight, but if you keep working on them, and keep improving your productivity, your blogging will improve. 6. Effective bloggers are self-aware They know what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to work to them (or through them) to achieve their goals. You need to know your limitations and learn how to delegate the tasks you can't do well, or don't enjoy, to people who can take care of them more effectively than you. Things like blog design, technical issues, or editing can be handed over to other people or organizations. If you're not a natural born writer you can even pay someone to ghost write your blog posts for you. 7. Effective bloggers use a variety of media In 1995 I signed up for an Master of Arts program in Design for Interactive Multimedia. We spent a lot of time working out which media would best communicate our desired outcomes. We spent spent days debating if a particular point would be best taught through video, with images, or in text. But out in the real world, it doesn't work like that. Bloggers are governed by budget and time constraints. It's easy to stick to text and hope for the best, but more and more bloggers are turning to video, audio, and more. Video doesn't have to be a difficult undertaking, and it needn't cost an arm and a leg. And it's a powerful way to get your point across or to make your point more accessible to your readers. Nothing will personalize you and your blog better than video, even if it's just a two-minute production filmed on your iPhone. 8. Effective bloggers diversify their income Having multiple income streams is a good idea in any business. It's key if you want to make money blogging. It protects you if one income stream fails, and allows you to safely test new ways of earning money. There are many ways to build a business around a good blog. You may use your blog to build your profile, sell your services, open up new career opportunities, or partner with the right people to develop software or instructional courses. If you've grown your readership and built trust and authority with them, you can make money directly through your blog by selling advertising, offering sponsored blog posts, or becoming an affiliate. (These aren’t Copyblogger's preferred models, but they work well for many bloggers.) A combination of some or all of the above will increase the income that your blog generates, whether directly or indirectly. It's not what happens, but how you act on it Whatever habits you do or don't currently possess, one thing is inevitable when it comes to effective blogging: The bumps and turns will pop up regularly. You will reach plateaus that you feel you won't be able to break. The only way to get over those humps and through those plateaus is to keep blogging, to slowly adjust your habits, and keep learning and applying new techniques that work for you. The problem is not that these challenges come along, it's that we don’t face them correctly. Annabel Candy targets her blogs towards small business owners and writers but I think us HR and employer brand specialists can take can learn from Annabel's advice and experience and take something with us, don't you? -SR-

Why it's worth to blog as an HR

Don't you agree, that these days finding and attracting your future employees is not only time consuming and expensive but also darn difficult? There are more and more channels, networks and social media where we should be present and active at all times. What if you could enhance your employing power by attracting people to you instead of you hammering each and every door possible in the attempt to find them? Employer marketing is more than job advertising Generally marketing in recruitment goes by the name of job advertising. In other words, we post the vacancy to selected job boards. But who do we reach? Mostly those who are actively looking for new career opportunities. But who are they? And what if our company brand isn't appealing, attractive and known in our recruitment target groups? Write a blog! Blogging regularly is an easy way to establish an employer image in your target group as well as engage the potential future employees into your company culture, values, business and ways of working. Blogging shouldn't be limited to the company CEO. Job seekers are generally interested in different types of stories than what comes out of a CEO's pencil (or pad). Even though blogging is made super easy these days by variety of services offering free blogging tools, such as blogger or posterous, the best way to draw traffic to your company is a blog integrated into the corporate site with an URL containing the company's domain name. But this is getting technical now. Why search engine ranking matters to HR too? When job seekers hunt for career opportunities, they tend to google or go directly to the websites of companies they find appealing. If your corporate brand is not appealing or known, you need to make sure google finds you. Writing a blog is an excellent way to enhance your search engine rankings. I won't go into technical details but in a big picture, the more you write (and tag) about keywords job seekers are interested in, the better will be your company's search engine rankings. You want job seekers to find you, become attracted to you (your company that is of course) and start looking for and forwarding around your vacancies. As the forwarding is made very easy in the social media, needless to say how these little agents can spread the word to millions of people before you count to ten! This is way more cheaper than buying a job advert and way more effective than copy pasting links to your job adverts by yourself. What to blog about? What interests you if you were a job seeker? Of course any data that helps the job seeker to improve their chances in finding the perfect job for them. You want to create content that is interesting, exciting, valuable and easily forwardable. Why? Because the web is full on material that is of no interest to anyone. So it's a waste of your time and space in this universe to produce something of no interest to anyone. Examples of worth while content: Your recruitment criteria, what they mean and why they are important to your company Your company culture in pictures, people and action Tips on what you appreciate in a good job application Advice on how to prepare for an interview at your company Success stories of career development in your company Examples of what opportunities exist for personal development in your company General salary data from your industry Information about industry related vacancies News and innovations within your industry Your goal with blogging should be to get our content to spread across as far and wide as possible so that next time you advertise a vacancy and people google your company what they find is a lot of valuable content that convinces them to apply to such an interesting company and employer. In our recent blog "Pushing or Pulling talents" we wrote about the importance of employer marketing. Being "out there" on the web with your content sheds a light into who you are as an employer and this will most likely make job seekers pay attention to your job advertising in the future as well. What do you think? Do you blog and has it been a good lead generator for your recruitment? We'd like to hear!

Pulling or pushing talents?

What does your company website tell your potential employees? Is it attractive? Does it make the viewer feel welcome? Does it convey the company culture and values? Will the viewer feel employees are important to your company? Does it say: Come work with us and you'll have the ride of your life? When your company is on the web, as it should be these days, your website is not the source of information for business purposes only. It also communicates the tone of your employer culture. The tone can somewhat be split into the following: 1. People are not important to us No information whatsoever of who works for you, who to contact in career related questions or what your company offers to its people. Sends the message, we just don't care who works for us. 2. We're interested in getting you in but that's as far as it goes Vacancy related information in style: "We are always looking for bright and energetic people. If you are interested in our company, send your open application to us at jobs@yournotimportant.com." Where is the sales pitch? Why should I bother as an employer to apply to your company? 3. We really get it. You are important, no, vital to our success Extensive information and proof of ability to provide a good work place and personal career related opportunities to employees. Potrays of who works for the company and what they do. Sales pitch on why you should choose this company as your potential employer including references from past and current employees, benefits and opportunities, leadership culture and values. Dealing with your personnel - past, current and future - is as much of marketing, selling and building on your company image as it is when dealing with your customers and potential clients.  Pitching and delivering the employer culture and a great workplace to the employees shows you are interested in attracting talented people, willing to take care of them and as a result, getting the opportunity to do better business with your customers. Working with employer image or brand is not about showing off once in a while with a 4-color print advertisement with smiley people. It's about creating a consistent culture suitable and attractive for people who give a damn and are willing to commit to your company goals and culture. At best, you don't have to pay for the 4-color print advert ever again. Start by mapping out what defines your company as an employer, what is distinctive to your company, why the existing people still want to work for you and then tell this on your website. We really want to hear about it!

Innovative Ideas for Employer Branding

Oletko kiinnostunut työnantajakuvan kehittämisestä? Katso HR 2.0:n Universumin työnantajakuvaseminaarissa pitämäni esitys innovatiivisista ideoista työnantajakuvan kehittämiseen.

Innovative Ideas for Employer Branding - HR TwopointZero Ltd

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