This is echoed by statistics covered in Maverick magazine recently. In 1978, 80% of US adults could be reached by three sixty-second advertisements, Simon Waterfall, creative director of UK digital agency Poke, said during a recent trip to South Africa. In 2002, to achieve the same impact, an advertiser would have to book 117 prime-time commercials.

Many companies search for candidates in the wrong environments. This equates to looking for a baracuda in your swimming pool. Some fish also move around a lot, making them even more elusive. Unless you know where to throw in the line, you can spend as much money on advertising as you like with little success.

My advice to HR managers is to look at the experience of traditional advertising agencies, which have been open to the shifts in audience attention. An IBM study, “The end of advertising as we know it”, predicts a third of broadcast advertising spend will shift online by 2012. This does not mean the need for bigger budgets, but rather a more discerning approach to media allocation. Active and passive job seekers also live in different waters. For active job seekers, who are plentiful in middle-tier management (the sardines), newspaper advertising makes sense. The challenge is recruiting senior and specialist skills (the blue marlin). Passive candidates do not read job supplements as they are mostly happily employed. They may also register their CVs with only one or two employers directly. To get these candidates’ attention takes a special approach. So, how can you successfully engage them? HR managers need to think about how they put strategies, media plans and campaigns together to attract the special skills candidates.

Relevant media, targeting the right audience, often enough, is the basis of a successful recruitment advertising campaign. A lot of HRs don’t understand this space yet and don’t like to take risks. As their suppliers are often similarly unfamiliar with such strategies, many opportunities pass by unnoticed. I suggest developing a generic plan for middle-tier candidates, which can be fine-tuned according to a specific audience. Tactics could include anything from traditional print advertising and online job boards to social networking, sponsorships, blogs, search engine marketing, and pay-per-click campaigns. Insight into the audience’s psychographic profile will reveal additional opportunities. Using media cleverly, HR managers can engage candidates through communities they belong to, which may have nothing to do with recruitment, but instead are based on personal interest.

A great example of an offline campaign is Google’s recruitment drive for software developers. This consisted of a billboard next to a prominent road in Silicon Valley, featuring a mathematical equation. Candidates able to solve it were directed to a specific website where they were asked to crack another equation. Using the answer as a password they were able to gain access to Google’s campaign-specific career website. Aimed at top-level coders, this campaign successfully tapped into their love of problem solving, eliminating job seekers lacking the right skills from the application process and providing Google with a targeted list of top talent. Companies are also increasingly leveraging online platforms.

The Vancouver police department has successfully used the virtual reality world, Second Life, to recruit candidates. Online opportunities consist of much more than job boards, although these are a valuable part of the recruitment media mix. For example, applicant-tracking can support media placement by pushing positions to job boards and other online platforms to drive candidates back to a company’s own website. A new breed of HR manager is required that can drive change.

Successful recruitment advertising at the lowest cost per head requires understanding of media planning, as well as a comfort level with the Internet. HR needs to empower themselves with this knowledge. Supper depends on it. Mark Gray is the head of Graylink (www.graylink.biz).

As the quality of skills a company has over that of its competitors’ has become the last bastion of competitive advantage, companies must fight to attract, retain, motivate and develop the right people. To do this, they need to position themselves as a place where the right personalities want to work. Yet, very few local companies focus enough attention and resources on this process.

Heard of, but don’t understand

Companies have heard of employer branding, but don’t really know how to tackle it. About 90% of the JSE 100 still do not understand employer branding. Many companies interpret employer branding as recruitment advertising, focusing on activation rather than articulation (defining a unique brand promise), which is a bit like putting the cart before the horse. This often sees companies spend thousands on advertising the wrong brand messages.

Employer branding is an emerging discipline with its roots in classical marketing and brand management principles. It aims to position an image of a company as “a great place to work”. The idea is first to develop an emotional link with the best talent, then offer prospective candidates tangible benefits based on evidence. The promise and fulfillment of an employer brand enables the attraction, motivation and retention of appropriate talent for the business to continue delivering on the corporate brand promise.

Not a substitute

An employer brand is not a substitute for, or a separate brand, to the corporate brand but rather an extension, expressing the corporate values and attitudinal requirements in a people context.

In marketing the company’s brand image to candidates, employer branding applies the same marketing and branding practices to HR tactics as would be used in customer-targeted efforts. However, in the case of employer branding, authenticity in presentation is even more critical, as great talent will very quickly validate your proposition using a wealth of information available on the web, for example, using social networks.

South African companies lag behind global competitors when it comes to the adoption of employer branding. According to the Employer Brand Institute Global Index 2008, which measures the development of employer brands in a global context, 16% of companies already have a clear employer brand strategy, 31% have one that can be developed further, and a further 37% of companies have started working on such a strategy.

Shielded from skills crisis

One reason for this is that organisations with good reputations have been shielded from the skills crisis until now. With the skills shortage tsunami set to hit South Africa full on in the next 5 – 10 years, this is going to change. Diverse levels of education quality, our brain drain, and a general shortage of senior and specialist skills around the world mean companies will have an increasingly tough time finding enough good people.

As companies start realising talent is the only way they will survive in a crisis economy, so the global demand for the best people will become more apparent. This will be to the detriment of companies without a compelling employer brand strategy when they start losing their stars.

The ability to attract skills will depend on a strong employer brand as people’s perceptions of what it is like to work at a company is becoming increasingly important in their “buying decision”. The link between shareholder value and people is evident ¬ great, motivated people improve your ability to drive value. Companies with strong brands have to capitalise on this opportunity. Organisations with weak brands have to do a lot of work on their employer brands to re-educate the market accordingly.

Another inhibiting factor is complexity. Employer branding is a broad-based discipline involving many different activities across an organisation ¬ not to mention the change management thinking required from day one. This requires specialist brand and change consultancy coupled with marketing skills to successfully develop and launch a new image.

Need for specialist providers

In my experience, most companies lack these abilities in-house. Most corporate brand agencies possessing these skills lack an understanding of good HR or shy away from related activities, as it seems an unlikely match for their strategic efforts. This creates the need for specialist providers that can successfully operate across all boundaries.

Employer branding is a cost-effective, sustainable strategy with a far better return on investment than traditional recruitment advertising. Companies need to proactively understand what prospective employees are looking for and map what they can provide to them.

Once a strong employer brand is established, the success of future recruitment campaigns will enable companies to get a much better return on traditional advertising. By cutting out the recruitment agency middleman, South African companies can further dramatically cut their staffing costs while building up a steady pipeline of great talent.

Article published on Bizcommunity.co.za, click here

After sell-out events in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East, Brett Minchington world-renowned thought-leader author and speaker on Employer Branding comes to Johannesburg to present Employer Branding Masterclass

Date: 18 March 2009
Venue: Summer Place, 69 Melville Road, Hyde Park, South Africa

Globalisation, increasing job migration, the brain drain, aging population and demand for more flexible working arrangements have resulted in a talent crunch which has pushed employer branding to the top of the leadership agenda. It has become a critical driver in attracting, engaging and retaining talent increase productivity and ultimately the financial success of any organisation.

“The concept of employer branding is relatively new to South Africa. As a global Employer Branding and Marketing agency and proud partner of this event we believe those organisations that embrace employer branding will have a significant competitive edge in this current economic climate” states Peter Schmitt, Managing Director, graylink.

The one-day event offers senior level management the opportunity to discover the latest global employment trends and how they impact on employers in South Africa. Attendees will learn about worldwide best practice in Employer Brand Management, how to tailor the employment experience to attract, engage and retain talent, how to decrease recruitment lead times and increase quality of hires.

“For many years Companies have identified the need to develop a corporate identity and brand products to position and promote the promise of themselves to consumers. The concept of marketing your employment offering is no different. Candidates like consumers have choice and maintain different perceptions of organisations as an employment destination. So it is in every organisation’s best interest to brand themselves in a similar way to attract and retain the right-fit talent.” states Peter Schmitt

Since the launch of his book “Your Employer Brand attract-engage-retain” in 2006 Brett Minchington has delivered employer brand workshops and keynote addresses at conferences in 10 countries and his book has been sold in over 30 countries.  “My travels over the past year have confirmed that Employer Branding is high on the leadership agenda in all parts of the world and across all industries. It is this reason we have decided to bring this event and share this knowledge with organisations in South Africa,” Minchington said.

About the Presenters

Brett Minchington is an Internationally Renowned Employer Brand Strategist and Author.

Brett is the Managing Director of Collective Learning Australia and a Founder of the Employer Brand Institute, a global network of employer brand thought leaders providing strategy, research, guidance and thought leadership to individuals and organisations to develop their employer brand to attract and retain talent.

Brett’s global footprint has included delivering employer branding events in over 10 countries and his work has been published around the world in major newspapers, HR, Management and Marketing publications.
Brett’s book “Your Employer Brand attract-engage-retain” has now been sold in over 30 country’s. The book has since been read by managers from companies such as JP Morgan (UK), The McDonalds Corporation (USA), Vodafone (Italy), Telstra (Aust), MTV (UK), Deloitte (Aust), Fiat (Italy), Madame Tussauds London (UK), Lion Nathan (Aust), Universal Music (UK), Coca-Cola Amatil (Aust), Boots (UK), Elders (Aust), Serco (UK), Financial News (UK), William Buck (Aust), Wesfarmers (Aust) and BHP Billiton (Aust).
His new book, “University means Business” will be published in early 2009.

“Attending Brett’s Employer Branding event strengthened my determination to successfully implement the employer brand strategy across Al Fara’a Group of Companies. I highly recommend the session to leaders across all industries as an effective tool to drive future growth and to enhanced their reputation amongst the target audience.”

A. Banna, Group Director HR-Corporate Affairs & Business Strategies, Al Fara’a Group of Companies (UAE)

Special Guest LIVE Employer Brand Case Study Presentations – graylink & Deloitte Consulting

Peter Schmitt, Managing Director for graylink Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific has three passions in business: talent, brand authenticity and performance. He believes one cannot exist without the other. His prime motivation lies in developing authentic brands that attract, inspire right-fit talent and deliver competitive edge.

As the first to market with integrated talent acquisition and retention solutions and with global clients such as British American Tobacco, SABMiller and Nakheel, graylink is a market leader in employer branding.
A highly focused, tenacious and energetic entrepreneur, Peter has worked globally within a variety of industries since graduating in mechanical engineering in 1990. With varied experience in engineering, plastics manufacturing, management consulting, marketing consulting and senior sales roles in global ERP and banking solutions industries, Peter has developed a pragmatic approach to solving talent acquisition and retention challenges.

Gillian Hofmeyr is Director of Human Capital Consulting at Deloitte Consulting, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Gillian has assisted leaders in the USA, Canada and South Africa to transform their organisations in her 18 year consulting career. She has extensive experience in the management of large scale change programmes to support the implementation of Culture Change, Strategic Repositioning, Enterprise Value Management, Employer Branding, ERP implementation, Merger and Acquisition and Industry restructuring.

She specialises in the areas of Large Scale Change, Talent Management, Positioning HR functions for business effectiveness, Leadership Alignment and Development, Stakeholder Management and Organisation Design. Over the last few years she has focussed on helping organisations better retain and develop their people through a focus on a differentiated Brand Promise to employees and  through initiatives and programmes to deliver against this Brand Promise. These initiatives have included talent engagement and retention processes , HR process improvements,  leadership to shopfloor engagement and organisation, job and reward design initiatives.

Her key clients have included top listed and private SA companies and many global/multinational companies. Gillian has a MSc Management (Industrial Relations) (University of Oxford) and BA (Hons) Industrial Psychology (Wits).

For more information, please visit: http://www.collectivelearningaustralia.com/index.php/view/seminars/cat/33
Or to download the brochure: http://www.collectivelearningaustralia.com/files/2009_employer_brand_global_tour_minchington_south_africa_graylink_vip_rate.pdf

Can an elaborate employment branding strategy be successful if managers suck? Probably not, which is why leadership is closely linked to successful employment branding and employee relationships. The implications for any business are potentially far-reaching.

Talent, says HR Future Publisher Alan Hosking, resides in the top 20% of a company’s employees who, by their skills, knowledge, experience and attitude, generate 80% of the company’s revenue.

“They want to work in companies that enjoy good standing in the community, in the marketplace and in the eyes of its employees, so that they can talk about their employer with pride,” says Hosking. “Consequently, they are not attracted to companies which do not have a strong employer brand.”

While South African business are slowly waking up and implementing employment branding strategies, these are still centred on how managers view the business (and their own management skills) rather than how current and future employees view it. The first step towards effective employee branding seems to be assessing the people management skills of management.

Hosking agrees, saying there’s no way incompetent management can create a reputable employer brand. “Essentially, while management creates the strategy to strengthen the employer brand, its success is in the eye of the employee. The employer brand has to be seen to be good by the employees, not the employers,” says Hosking. “Unfortunately, incompetent employers believe their own lies. The employees have a better chance of seeing the true state of things.”

Sadly, the human resources function in many companies today seems to have very little to do with building people up and a lot to do with controlling them. Etsko Schuitema, author of Leadership – The Care and Growth Model, suggests the mechanical metaphors we use to describe business (’If all parts of the system work, then the machine makes money’) make us overlook the fact that people are more than just parts of the system.

“We can nurse a mechanistic view of an organisation as much as we like,” writes Schuitema. “The simple fact of the matter is that if the people are not committed to the business, and therefore willing to go the extra mile, we do not have a sustainable enterprise.”

Some companies are getting it right. Hosking says Investec has such a good employer brand that they don’t have to advertise positions – they have quality candidates approaching them for work and they can afford to pick the best. Mark Gray, of marketing and human resources firm Graylink, also points to Outsurance and RMB as positive examples. “They’ve successfully integrated their corporate and employer branding efforts, linking their people directly to the success of their businesses and saying to the market ‘we respect those that work for us’,” says Gray.

What are people looking for in a company when they seek a new employer? Gray believes needs change from audience to audience. Often age (and generation) has a large part to play. “When you’re just out of college looking for your first job, things like travel and experience are top of your agenda,” says Gray. “For those with families and a large mortgage, security might be of greater importance. The trick for any employer is to map what attractive things (value propositions) they can authentically offer with those things the target audience actually values/ wants/ needs.”

Leadership, or the lack thereof, helps define every aspect of a business. Schuitema argues for the importance of leadership in empowering employees through genuine care (about them, not just the stock price) and the creation of growth opportunities and empowerment (less control, not more).

Companies that understand that employees are not simply a cost but a credit to the business are better positioned to release the full value their people bring. This ultimately is what makes or break an employment brand and a business.

This trend will also impact on South Africa as the skills shortage turns the talent hunt global, with resources at home dwindling, says Gray. UK recruitment consultancy Joslin Rowe, for example, reported in its Financial Service Employment Index: September 2007 that financial services companies in London are on the hunt for South African professionals, who are in high demand because of the quality of their education, their work ethic and the similarity between the business cultures of the two countries, he says.
Gray believes that because of these trends, the search for talented employees will continue to become tougher, and South African HR managers will have to use imaginative, cutting-edge methods if they want to attract, retain and motivate the next generation of workers. HR managers need to understand this generation to relate to them in a meaningful way, he says.

Generation Y, also known as the digital generation or the entitlement generation, is a very different breed from the Baby Boomers “ those born between 1946 and 1964 – who have dominated the workplace until now. Disenchanted by the old paradigm of employee loyalty because of workplace trends towards consistent downsizing, rightsizing and retrenchments, they are not easily attracted and retained, says Gray. According to the US Department of Labour™s Employee tenure in 2006 report, the average 25 to 34-year-old employee keeps their current job for only 2.9 years.

He adds that, unlike the Baby Boomers who would have given almost anything for a top-paying spot at a big-name firm, younger employees are more interested in what companies can do to help them lead a more purposeful and meaningful life.

This is reflected in the findings of a recent volunteer impact survey carried out by Deloitte & Touche USA, which showed that 18 to 26-year-olds would prefer to work for companies that give them opportunities to contribute their talents to non-profit organisations. This generation expects to make a difference. They give of themselves and they want their employers to help them contribute as well, said Stan Smith, national director of Next Generation Initiatives at Deloitte & Touche USA. Companies that facilitate meaningful community involvement opportunities for their people will be very attractive employers.

This thinking is in line with the work/life balance that Generation Y employees “ those born between 1977 and 1994, representing over 70 million people in the US “ want to achieve and believe they deserve, having been brought up in a world in which they were told that they could have it all. As spending time with family and friends is important to younger workers, companies may increasingly have to consider benefits such as flexible work schedules and longer holidays to attract and retain the services of high-calibre staff, says Gray.
Surveys also show that Generation Y employees expect more rapid career advancement and better pay than older workers, and are more likely to move on if their goals are not quickly realised. They seek challenging work, and try to find ways of working better and faster, rather than spend long hours behind their desks, as their parents did. Generally more highly educated than previous generations of workers, they constantly seek to expand their skills and value opportunities for ongoing learning in the workplace through activities such as mentorship and coaching.

There are many differences between the attitudes, values and work ethic of the different generations that will now find themselves working side by side in the workplace. A critical difference is the way in which they communicate. Growing up in a world of rapid technological advancement, with more access to electronic equipment such as computers and cell phones, 25 to 34-year-olds have embraced mobility, accounting for 36% of South Africa™s online population and owning about half of the country™s cell phones, Gray says.
This generation increasingly consumes news through a collection of websites on their laptops, cellphones and iPods. As the media becomes more fragmented, media planning has become more complex, and it is difficult to speak to the right candidates using only traditional advertising methods, says Gray. He points out that a common misconception among HR managers is that companies need to reach as many candidates as possible but, in fact, using the most appropriate channels and devices to get the right message across to the right audience can substantially increase a company™s hit rate.

Technology has created many new opportunities for targeted recruitment via new media channels, he says. It can also improve recruitment efficiencies and reduce costs by automating the management of manual processes, such as managing job applications. For example, an external careers website that we implemented for SABMiller enables the company to filter, screen, manage applications and engage with a large volume of job seekers in seven different languages across Africa, Europe, the UK, Central and South America each month.

Graylink provides recruitment technology and marketing solutions built on international best practice and has amassed extension experience through direct involvement with client in global markets, he says. The company also spends a lot of time tracking and analysing global trends.

Gray says that to stay in the game HR managers now need to develop a level of comfort with technology and marketing practices. One way of up-skilling fast is to hire consultants. Another is to integrate a new generation of more internet-savvy practitioners into the organisation.

One thing is clear. The basic approach to recruitment is changing, and for recruiters and employers who want to source, recruit and retain the best talent, doing nothing is not an option, nor is mildly incremental improvement. It™s a challenging new world out there for HR managers.

Contact Graylink 086 114 5465 or visit www.graylink.biz.

FORGET the credit crunch, what about the career crunch? A survey of graduates and students conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers last month found that 81% were more concerned about their job prospects than they were a year ago.

Getting a job as soon as possible, they say, is a top priority. So much so, in fact, that more than 50% conceded that they are willing to look for work that is not relevant to their qualifications to ensure that they are employed. Furthermore , 42% anticipated less pay than they had initially hoped for.

And that is only one side of the recruitment coin.

As budgets come under pressure to facilitate the economic downturn, companies and their recruitment agencies are increasingly looking for more cost-effective and creative ways to fill positions.

But while in some places employers are cutting back, indications are that the majority of businesses across the world are still looking to recruit, particularly those in budding economies such as that of the Middle East. This means that overall, there are more applicants in the mix and that an increasing number of hopefuls are prepared to consider global assignments. The result for many human resource professionals and recruitment agencies is an increase in workload and the call to make greater use of technology to more effectively manage the rising flood of applications.

Technology, says Mark Gray, who heads up South African-based recruitment and technology company, Graylink, has had a huge effect on recruitment processes — for candidates, recruitment professionals and employers alike — in the past five years. Not only are employers and their agencies increasingly adopting online-only recruitment policies, but more and more are using social networking platforms — such as Facebook, Orkut, MySpace and Linkedin — to hunt for candidates. These sites, he says, are also increasingly helping job hunters market themselves online by providing potential employers with access to profiles, work history and details of specific skills.

Gray, who is the son of 1980s Johannesburg recruitment buff Don Gray (of Don Gray Associates), and the nephew of Allan Gray (founder of investment management firm, Allan Gray Limited), established Graylink as a supplier of specialised recruitment software to replace paper-based processes in 2002. Since then, he and his developers have advanced and expanded the application — which is delivered to clients over the internet — to make it possible for their 150 active clients to better track, screen, filter and manage applications, and to engage with thousands of job seekers in seven different languages across the world each month.

“Most companies readily acknowledge that recruiting talent is a priority,” comments Gray, whose enthusiasm for the internet survived the dotcom meltdown and which, combined with his understanding of recruitment, has helped put Graylink up ahead in the field of online recruitment in this country.

“Managing the recruitment process is, however, a challenge. When there is no database to source from directly, costs and time-to-hire increase. Done manually, the process requires a great deal of administration, and is inefficient and slow. What’s more, traditional recruitment advertising is increasingly costly and, in most cases, it does little to build the organisation’s brand.”

Graylink — which, in addition to operating out of its head office in Cape Town with a bureau in Johannesburg, also has offices in the UK, France, United Arab Emirates and Singapore, and representation in the US, Australia and, from early next year, South America — provides a single software code base to automate clients’ recruitment processes. Each organisation gets its own database of potential employees, and a recruitment website that is incorporated into its existing website.

The look, functionality and marketing-led approach of an organisation’s online recruitment service are, stresses Gray, fundamental to its success.

“It goes without saying that, like customers, candidates are attracted to strong brands,” he says. “Our approach ensures that each client’s brand is carefully managed and that it wins the attention of the right audience. With more organisations moving their recruitment online, competition has increased and it is no longer enough to have a website that merely lists current vacancies. You have to add value, compete for the best talent and, wherever possible, go out and look for it — and that is where social networking sites come into play.”

According to a study by CareerBuilder.com, which is one of the largest online job sites in the US, one in every five employers in that country uses social networks to research information about job candidates.

Reuters reported last month that “traffic on the world’s top professional web networks has surged since the financial crisis started to make headlines, with top player, privately held Linkedin, notching 25% more registrations in September than forecast”.

Membership on Linkedin has increased from 18-million at the beginning of the year to more than 31-million. It is growing fastest in the financial services, media, education and technology fields.

Increased use of social media, says Gray, compels employers and recruiters to examine, network, attract, engage and connect with potential employees like they have never done before. Companies are increasingly questioning long-standing recruitment strategies and accepting that social media has entered the mainstream as a recruitment strategy.

“While South Africans are slower on the uptake than many of their international colleagues, the more savvy local recruiters are already getting into social networks as a new way to hunt talent and market their clients as employers,” he says. “When done correctly, recruitment via social networking platforms can be a more effective and inexpensive way to reach and engage relevant talent than traditional methods.”

There are two options for recruiting candidates via social-networking sites: recruiters can either set up pages on the sites for passive recruiting or, using various search tools, actively troll the sites for suitable candidates.

Trolling is generally done by using keywords to search targeted sites. This way recruiters dig out high-quality candidates that cannot be found elsewhere. These candidates can then be contacted directly about job offers that might interest them. Organisations can also set up groups to create communities around a shared interest, simultaneously using it to find talent.

The premise is that employers and recruiters have the opportunity to target, sound out and interact with candidates at length before final interviews take place.

Candidates, on the other hand, receive job offers from companies that have taken the time to seek them out, and find out all about their career objectives and skills.

Moreover, the kinds of online conversations recruiters have with candidates can reinforce the organisation’s brand. For example, Linkedin has a very active feature for asking and answering questions. As a member of Linkedin, a candidate is able to convey knowledge and expertise, positioning him or herself as an expert on a certain subjects. Linkedin also allows job seekers to list previous employers to confirm credibility.

But, cautions Gray, using social networks for recruitment and branding is not as simple as clicking and searching.

Recruiters need to understand exactly what organisations need, what each site provides in terms of service to users and intelligence to the recruiter, and which of these their desired candidate audience is actively using. In other words, it requires a specialised approach.

“For employers and job seekers to remain competition, they have to start getting more active around marketing themselves on social networks,” says Gray. “But it is as important to do it correctly to make it work — and to avoid damaging the brand, whether that of the company or the candidate.”

That then, is perhaps the other career crunch of the 21st century.