Rethinking Recruitment: Building NPR's Employment Brand

Rethinking Recruitment: Building NPR’s Employment Brand

Lars Schmidt | NPR Senior Director, Talent Acquisition & Innovation | @ThisIsLars AmplifyTalent.com

Tuesday, June 18, 13

Foundation

• Recruiting team needed to be rebuilt from the ground up

• Lean team, lean resources

• Competing against top organizations (often for-profit)

• Need to reach new talent pools (Tech/Diverse/GenY)

• Strong consumer brand

• Loyal fan following

• Evolving and expanding into new digital platforms

• Established active social media channels

• Digital-savvy employee base, many active social media users

Recruiting Organization

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NPR + Social Media

• @nprnews: 1,804,836 followers

• @NPR: 171,046 followers

• @NPRjobs: 18,314 followers

• NPR Facebook Page: 2,651,703 likes

• This Is NPR Facebook Page: 63,988 likes

• LinkedIn: 16,852 followers

• Instagram: 244,146 followers

• Foursquare: 13,065 followers

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* Stats as of 6/4/13

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Brand Ambassadors• Leverage NPR’s history, consumer brand, and social media to

build our employment brand & drive talent attraction

• Internal Brand Ambassadors: engage our employees and encourage them to share their experience (#NPRlife) and jobs.

• External Brand Ambassadors: consciously cultivate engaged community of fans interested in careers at NPR through a variety of social media channels, campaigns, and conversation.

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Building a Social Recruiting Strategy

• Understand your goals and objectives

• Find your internal social media stakeholders

• Step out of HR - identify internal influencers and invest in those relationships

• Engage your employees and your fans

• Select appropriate SM channels (see next slides)

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Twitter• @NPRjobs launched July 2011

• 18,000+ followers

• Primary social recruiting engagement platform

• #7 source of applicants

• #4 source of hire

• Helps NPR reach new audiences (63% of followers are under 35)

* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.comTuesday, June 18, 13

Hashtags#NPRlife - Employer Branding

#PubJobs - Collaborative Recruiting

#AskNPRIntern - Campaigns

#JournoJob - Recruitment Marketing

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Why Social?

Excerpt from Washington Post article: For non-profit NPR, social media is a great equalizer when it comes to hiring.

Social recruiting in action:

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Case Study: The Power of a TweetSituation: The volume of applications for our Fall 2011 internships was below target levels as the deadline approached

Results:114 RTs, 742,976 impressions, 140 new applicants, 15 hires

Solution:We extended the application deadline one week and announced with a single tweet (below)

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#NPRlifeUnfiltered social media posts by NPR employees sharing their experience across Twitter (6,000+ tweets), Instagram (1,000+ photos), Vine, and other channels.

* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.comTuesday, June 18, 13

LinkedIn

• Utilize employment branding features

• 16,800+ followers

• 1,442 monthly visitors

• #3 applicant source channel

• Talent Brand Index: 15 (higher then New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, ABC)

* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.comTuesday, June 18, 13

Facebook• 64,000+ likes

• Collaboration with NPR Marketing, Branding, and Communications

• Strong branding channel

• Work4 job sharing

• #8 applicant source channel

* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.comTuesday, June 18, 13

Instagram

• NPR account managed by editorial team

• 250,000+ followers

• Employment branding content (1,000+ #NPRlife photos)

* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.comTuesday, June 18, 13

YouTube

• NPRjobs: 33 subscribers, 3,707 video views

• High potential, high investment

• Not yet a focus of NPR social recruiting strategy

* Stats as of 6/4/13 AmplifyTalent.comTuesday, June 18, 13

Career Site• Reinforce culture

• Optimized for mobile (responsive)

• Media rich (photos, videos, social media)

• Set applicant expectations

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Blogs• Employee generated

content

• Engaging, shareable

• Easy to start (Tumblr)

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Job Descriptions• Extension of your employer

brand

• Convey why someone should want the job; culture, expectations, goals, target results, growth

• Get creative (infographics, video, links)

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CollaborationFind partners to collaborate with, open your

brand up to new audiences.

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Brand AmbassadorsAmplify Jobs:Drive Engagement:

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Key Takeaways

• Have a strategy and goal before you start. What challenge are you trying to solve? What is your target outcome?

• Select appropriate channels

• Build relationships with internal stakeholders & influencers

• Activate your employees

• Pilot, start small, scale - important to build internal credibility

• Multi-channel branding: social media, career site, job descriptions, blogs, conferences, etc

• Listen to your fans, interact with them

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Lars SchmidtNPR | Senior Director, Talent Acquisition & Innovation

Founder, Amplify Talent

@ThisIsLars | @AmplifyTalent

Lars@AmplifyTalent.com

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Tuesday, June 18, 13