“Marketing is a crystal ball for recruiting.”

Ah, welcome to the first #HRTechConf — HR Tech 2018 — post on this site.

This is a quick-hitter recap of a session MC’ed by Katrina Kibben, who herself is a former employee of RD. (“Friend of the program.”) She had this crew with her:

• Courtney Martinez from Houlihan’s
• Katharine Mobley from First Advantage
• Susan Vitale from iCIMS

First, let me say this: all these women are completely bad ass. You should follow them online — Mobley, Kibben on Twitter at those links — and understand what they’re discussing. They all “get” it.

Some important discussions in this panel

Marketing is a crystal ball for recruiting: Indeed. This whole panel was about the tie between marketing and talent acquisition efforts. There was some confusion at the question and answer period about metrics. Should TA follow the business marketing metrics, or follow TA metrics? That’s going to vary by organization, of course. But this is something I see a ton on Twitter and LinkedIn: marketing will spend months crafting some seemingly-amazing campaign, and then recruiters not being aligned can torch said campaign in a second because all these candidates will now dislike the brand. Marketing and recruiting are not in the same silo (obvs!) but their connection is palpable. Organizations that “get” said connection = ahead of the pack.

The Glassdoor deal: Back at Indeed Interactive in May, I met a guy at the bar at Austin Fairmont whose agency scrubs Glassdoor profiles for companies. (I shall not name the agency.) I thought that was kind of ridiculous, although I could see companies wanting something like that, so business-model-wise, it makes pretty good sense, I suppose. (Feels like I used a lot of commas in that sentence.) Kibben made a good point on her panel: look at Glassdoor negative reviews and wonder “What could we do better?” That seems like a better idea than “Scrub them!” or “Those are an anomaly, we have a perfect culture!” Right?

Employer branding: It’s not necessarily a campaign. It’s how your culture resonates in the broader hiring ecosystem.

CHROs and CMOs should be meeting and talking all the time: I agree with this, and that’s how Mobley does it at First Advantage.

Silos need to be smashed: Ditto, and see above.

Think about what role you play in people’s career arcs: Vitale was great on this panel, and this was an important point — Houlihan’s is employing entry-level workers, second-or-third-job workers, and “this is where I’ll get stability” workers. Now look, we all know jobs are somewhat fleeting in the modern age to an extent. But take a great responsibility for what types of jobs you’re providing to your full ecosystem of people. It matters. And if you take responsibility for it honestly and openly, it will make what you’re doing — and how you’re engaging with employees — better.

Final note: I mixed this panel with a sales-marketing alignment discussion courtesy of Starr Conspiracy. One thing that popped there: “The biggest mistake you see from HCM founders is that they expect everything out the door to be perfection, and that limits their growth and scale.” Concur.

More to come from #HRTX (last week in Chicago) and HR Tech in future posts.

Authors

Ted Bauer

Originally from New York City, Ted Bauer currently lives in Fort Worth, Texas. He's a writer and editor for RecruitingDaily who focuses on leadership, management, HR, recruiting, marketing, and the future of work. His popular blog, The Context of Things, has a simple premise -- how to improve work. Ted has a Bachelors in Psychology from Georgetown and a Masters in Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. In addition to various blogging and ghost-writing gigs, he's also worked for brands such as McKesson, PBS, ESPN, and more. You can follow Ted on Twitter @tedbauer2003, connect with him on LinkedIn, or reach him on email at [email protected]