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It’s the season for trendspotting. As the new year settles and plans are set into motion, we reached out to innovative employers in our network for their insights. What trends do they see and what exciting projects are on their list for 2018?
Read the thoughts and plans of Jennifer Newbill (Director Employment Brand at Dell), Koos Wurzer (Global Employer Branding and Candidate Experience Manager at Danone), Suzanne Johnson (Employment Branding Manager at General Motors), Stefan Hay (Social Media Expert Employer Branding at thyssenkrupp group), and others.
Jennifer Jones Newbill from Dell on improving the recruiter experience as well as the candidate experience, and Dell’s future job search site
What do you think will be the main trend in recruiting, HR, and employer branding in 2018?
Inserting meaningful automation in the recruitment process. In particular, in the stages of the process that are transactional for recruiters and also consuming a lot of their time. Candidate experience will continue to be the ultimate goal, but also how we improve the recruiter experience and allow recruiters to spend more time on building pipelines (in particular, diverse pipelines) and engaging with top candidates.
What’s your one most ambitious plan or project for 2018?
Complete revamp of our job search site including the creation of a multi-brand experience across all of our Dell Technologies brands, advanced job descriptions with more employee videos and content destinations beyond what we have today for veterans and students, but also destinations for people looking for remote/connected work.
For fun: What are you reading or listening to right now?
I am always reading multiple books at a time. I am finishing up Getting to Yes, a book on the skill of negotiation while also in the middle of The Alienist by Caleb Carr, and just kicking off Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan.
I listen to podcasts on National Public Radio mostly including classics such as "Fresh Air". I also like "Hidden Brain" and I recently listened in on "Planet Money" and loved it. In general, I am interested in storytelling and what motivates people.
Jennifer Jones Newbill
Director Employment Brand at Dell
Koos Wurzer from Danone on being data-driven and mindful of the interrelation of consumer and corporate brands
What projects are you looking forward to the most in 2018?
There are always several projects to work on, but these are my top 3:
1. Relaunch of the Danone Career Website.
We’ve made the most of the opportunities with our current platform and we see with the Potentialpark rankings that the competition is picking up. We know, and the research shows us, that the Career Website is still the most valuable place where candidates go for information about a company. We want to make sure we’re doing our best by using technology to drive conversion and broadcast our message, and the Potentialpark research helps us with data to know what the market is doing and what the candidates’ preferences are.
We’re also aware that although the Career Website is the most important platform for telling candidates about Danone, it’s one part of several in the Employer Brand and everything is interconnected. This relaunch is also my biggest challenge this year. Our company is big and has many established processes, so this kind of projects aren’t exactly a walk in the park for us. But like the Dutch expression says, you can’t have heat without the friction! And if it’s not challenging, it becomes dull.
2. Improving our job ads
I believe creating good job ads really is a skill. We want them to be informative, but also interesting for candidates. Most of the career content that we put out there is job ads, so we’ve established great templates that will change the way we publish them.
3. Diving deep into data to improve the candidate experience
We want to know everything about the candidate experience. We’re looking into making database improvements that will impact the candidate journey, while keeping in mind that these are not just candidates we’re talking about, but consumers. We receive about half a million applications every year, and like I tell my team, these are consumers that we hire or reject. At Danone, we always keep in mind the way that our consumer brand and corporate brand impact each other. We have to keep both strong, and one way to achieve that is to make sure we listen to how happy candidates are with our processes.
For fun: What podcast are you listening to right now?
I religiously listen to Chris Roberts’ podcast “The Nine Club” every week on my way to work. It’s a program with professional skateboarders where they talk about how they started and their journeys. I started skateboarding when I was 14 or 15 (I call myself a recovering skateboarder), and this program is like listening to all my childhood heroes. There’s a lot of childhood reminiscing but it’s also very interesting to hear where they are now and what they’re doing.
Koos Wurzer
Global Employer Branding and Candidate Experience Manager at Danone
Suzanne Johnson from General Motors on the critical skills the company seeks as they transform the future of personal mobility
One of our main challenges in 2018 continues to be attracting and retaining candidates with the hard-to-find skill sets that are essential for transforming personal mobility. Areas such as cyber security, machine learning, autonomous, engineering, and data analytics to name a few. It’s an exciting time to join General Motors and we are passionate about getting that story out!
On a more personal note, this year I vow to FINALLY ship off the old mini camcorder and VHS cassettes to one of those places that puts them all onto a thumb drive for you. It would be amazing to have everything in one place (and actually be able to watch them all again), right?!
Suzanne Johnson
Employment Branding Manager at General Motors
Stefan Hay from thyssenkrupp group on growing influence of Instagram Stories, virtual collaboration, and addressing millennials
What do you think will be the main trend in recruiting, HR, and employer branding in 2018?
Nowadays, there’s not one trend, but many. One of the biggest trends, that has kept my mind busy during these recent years at thyssenkrupp is definitely the growing influence of social recruiting. In 2018 we’ll also see some game-changing social recruiting trends, and Instagram Stories might just be ready to become the next big thing. Already today, corporate brands’ Instagram Stories are creating a slowdown in regular post engagement. Plus they outperform other channels’ options in that field: Instagram Stories for example capture 30 per cent more views than Snapchat Stories. Besides that rising feature, Instagram has probably developed one of the biggest capabilities in social recruiting in the Western hemisphere.
Why? Because it is about people and culture. That’s one major aspect in finding not just the best, but also the right people for your company. And that is one thing we can contribute to successful recruiting. So: Jump on Instagram Stories right now, or risk missing out on followers, engagement and potential new hires. We will see!
What is your one most ambitious plan or project for 2018?
Last year thyssenkrupp launched its Global Functional Team Sourcing & Recruiting in China, Germany, and USA which mark our biggest recruiting markets. Virtual collaboration will be challenging for us in 2018. Our Employer Branding team members are geographically scattered over the globe and therefore communication can be a critical element in creating successful results for the business. There are several key standards and practices that are essential for our virtual collaboration which we have to look at. So we are looking forward to an exciting year ahead of us!
What do you think will be the main challenge for you in 2018?
Addressing millennials in Employer Branding already is and will become even more challenging. Not only in 2018 but from here on. Their way of living is quite different from older generations. Current trends show that millennials are interested in many things beyond money - they value time with family, will not sacrifice their quality of life for a career, and are very team-oriented.
Adapting to these preferences while maintaining our unique corporate culture can be difficult, but it’s not impossible.
For fun: What are you reading right now? What podcast are you listening to right now?
I am reading the new book by John Hall, Top of Mind: Use Content to Unleash Your Influence and Engage Those Who Matter to You, where the author explains why we want to be top of mind and how to get there.
And at the moment I am also listening to a podcast called "Edge of the Web", a weekly digital marketing podcast where some of the successful names in the industry provide tips to improve their business. Both are highly recommended.
Stefan Hay
Social Media Expert Employer Branding at thyssenkrupp group
| What trends and projects are you and your team looking forward to this year? Let us know! twitter.com/@potentialparkab |