Aurelia Butler

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    in Employer

    8 Ways Talent Professionals Can Drive Business Impact Despite a Hiring Freeze

    Pausing hiring efforts may be necessary for a variety of reasons but talent professionals can still drive business impact. Whether due to missed projections, shifts in funding or shareholder priorities, or even a global pandemic, a hiring freeze sometimes means cuts to recruiting and TA teams.

    This doesn’t have to be the case. This hiring freeze may be a golden opportunity for TA and recruiting teams to pivot to other projects, assist other internal teams, or focus on new initiatives.

    Related: How to Improve Job Security During an Economic Downturn: Career Advice for Recruiters

    There are ways to use this time to start strategic projects that positively impact business with your insight and skill set, even when you are not hiring. Here are the top 8 things you can do to drive business impact and set yourself up for success after a hiring freeze is lifted.

    1. Keep your existing pipeline warm

    If a hiring freeze was unexpected, you might have candidates in your interviewing pipeline you need to notify. Sharing your hiring status (and the status of their application and candidacy) will require a balance of transparency and empathy. Let candidates in your pipeline know a hiring freeze is taking place. Offer a tentative timeline of when your team foresees hiring to pick up again. Assure them that you or your team will follow up with updates. Those are the best ways to retain your candidate pipeline while keeping the conversation and their interest warm.

    2. Engage internal employees

    During a hiring freeze, recruiters can work closely with the People Team to engage internal employees. Turnover is an aspect of people management that HR teams work to estimate, prevent, or lower. HR partners with talent acquisition teams to incorporate turnover into recruiting goals. Despite a hiring pause, turnover typically continues as expected or might even increase depending on the state of the business and company morale.

    By partnering with the larger People Ops Team, recruiting can support at-risk employees the team identifies and engage different populations to help retain and re-spark their passion for the company. In addition, working closely with company executives to be transparent about business strategy moving forward is especially crucial during this time as a means of supporting your team.

    3. Get involved with other business initiatives

    Lend your time and expertise to more teams and get creative with how to advocate for the company in new ways. Need some inspo?

    Hired’s Senior Internal Recruiter, Jules Grondin, pivoted to immerse herself in launching new initiatives. To support fellow recruiters and individuals in Talent Acquisition, Jules helped establish Hired’s Tech Recruitment Collective. Recognizing that Talent Acquisition is at the heart of building great teams, the collective connects these professionals with Hired’s extensive network of companies actively hiring TA talent.

    Another recent initiative is Hired’s Candidate Credit Program. To address a candidate supply and demand imbalance, Hired offered companies the opportunity to refer candidates in their ATS to Hired in exchange for credits to use on future Hired services and solutions.

    Brainstorm new ways to involve yourself in other aspects of the business. Reach out to other teams or colleagues to collaborate!

    4. Focus on employer branding

    A hiring freeze might create a negative perception of how the business is doing. To remain proactive, consider refreshing your employer brand strategy as a lever toward getting ahead of any negative misconceptions and attracting top talent when you open roles and resume interviewing. A company’s brand can be aspirational. Positioning your employer brand through thought leadership, company initiatives, and values helps build a relatable narrative that your company should be known for.

    Despite a hiring freeze, don’t hit the brakes on sharing your company’s forward momentum. For distributed teams, a great example would be to amplify ways your team creatively adapted to remote work, approached collaboration, and remained diligent about fostering company culture to maintain a healthy work-life balance.  

    Also, consider encouraging happy and engaged employees on your team to become promoters of the business. This supports a spirit of pride, ownership, and advocacy for the great work your company is doing! Aligning your employees with company and employer branding can turn your team into brand ambassadors to their network. This offers interested candidates a view of your company that goes beyond corporate branding and marketing but a more personal look into the employee experience from a peer.

    5. Optimize recruiting process

    Taking a step back from the ins and outs of your recruiting process will help you see areas to revise and make more efficient. Recruiting teams can take the time to evaluate many areas of their process from application to offer acceptance. This goes not just for efficiency but to assure the process promotes an excellent candidate experience. For instance, going through the application for an open role from a candidate’s perspective could flag hurdles in the process that candidates would experience. This includes complications with your ATS, resume upload issues, or LinkedIn profile integration errors.

    Beyond this, there are various areas of the recruiting process that teams can evaluate, including:

    Streamlining processes in your ATS to increase data cleanliness

    Evaluating your application to improve completion rates

    Updating the careers page and job descriptions to align with talent branding

    Evaluating the recruiting funnel for biases and exclusive language

    Diving into recruiting metrics, including outreach to lead conversion rates, rejection reasons, time to offer, time to hire, etc.

    Evaluating recruiting or sourcing tools

    Related: How to Secure Approval for New Tech Tools (Free Template)

    6. Invest in training hiring team members

    Having downtime from sourcing and interviewing offers the opportunity to evaluate your process and train your interviewers. For recruiting and talent acquisition team members, training or taking certification courses can advance the team’s recruiting strategy and overall professional development. In addition, training hiring managers (and other team members who participate in interviews) around efficiencies your team has made in your recruiting process aligns everyone to best represent the company when conducting interviews.

    7. Ensure your recruiting process is inclusive 

    Now more than ever, companies are being examined for their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond public statements and surface-level efforts. The public and their workforce evaluate them based on their executive leadership team and how they conduct business day-to-day. As it relates to hiring, take the time to ensure your recruiting process is inclusive to all candidates who may apply and interview in the future. Consider everything from the verbiage in job descriptions to the logistics of how to best conduct an interview.

    This is also a great opportunity for teams to undergo unconscious bias training. This ensures recruiters and interviewers accurately represent company values during interviews and champion an inclusive hiring process.

    Related: Diversity features on Hired

    Unconscious biases may present themselves at any point, even with something as simple as seeing the full name of a candidate on their resume. For example, a person’s name can implicate their sex, ethnicity, and fluency and literacy in English. This can lead to a member of the interviewing team building stereotypes around the candidate without having met or spoken with them. Evaluate your recruitment and interview processes from beginning to end with potential biases in mind. It can help eliminate additional and unnecessary barriers to entry for qualified talent.

    8. Develop a recruiting plan

    As your team anticipates when a hiring freeze could lift, having a recruiting plan will ensure the team is ready to begin sourcing and interviewing again. Connect with your hiring managers to identify and prioritize roles that are an immediate need post-freeze. As the time gets closer, preliminary sourcing and pipelining quality candidates is a proactive way to get a preview into the active candidate market for these high-priority positions.

    In addition, you can begin to review organic applicants and put your feelers out to your existing pipeline to reignite that interest. Lastly, consider working closely with leadership. Establish a tentative timeline so the team can effectively plan their work and OKRs for the coming months. 

    Regardless of the hiring pace, skilled talent professionals drive impact throughout the organization

    Hiring freezes illicit thoughts of uncertainty for many people within a company and for those who are applying. Despite that, a freeze in hiring doesn’t mean that business strategy and talent teams are on a freeze too. Recruiting and talent acquisition teams offer value to the business beyond sourcing and interviewing. When times call for their main priorities to pause, it offers an opportunity to grow together and invest in team members. Talent professionals are incredible partners to drive impact while building a strong company. More

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    in Career Hacks

    The Ideal Side Hustle You Can Do Where You Want, When You Want

    Over the past few years, the work-from-home industry has undergone incredible growth with numerous companies shifting to partly or fully remote operations. With this change, a lot of opportunities have opened up for college students looking for part-time jobs and individuals looking for side hustles. However, the rise of all these opportunities has also led to a crowded job market that has left job seekers directionless looking for the right fit.

    As a company that helps thousands of young professionals find jobs, we’ve been able to identify the makings of great remote job opportunities. During our search, we came across Appen, a machine intelligence company, and its Yukon Raters program.

    As a Search Engine Evaluator within Appen’s Yukon Raters program, you are responsible for rating the quality of web pages and the relevance of search results. Undertaking any number of tasks such as rating automated voices, determining what topics are central and secondary to what a given web page is about, and more, being a Yukon Rater allows you to work at any time and from anywhere you have a computer with internet access

    Recently, we spoke with a few former Yukon Raters who were recently promoted within the company to Quality Analysts. In our conversations with them, we learned that the flexibility, the engaging material, the impact of their work, and their ability to grow professionally at the company all contributed to Yukon Raters being the perfect part-time, work-from-home job.

    Set Your Own Schedule

    As a college student or professional looking for a part-time gig, being able to set your own schedule is a very rare, but sought-after feature. At Appen, you are able to work at any time of day on any day of the week! The work is always there so you can log in and log off when you choose.

    While there is a minimum amount of hours you must work, you are still able to complete tasks on your own schedule.

    There’s so much that opened up for me because the work is literally there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I was able to take a last-minute trip in 2017 to Japan because the schedule was so flexible. Another instance was when my mother had some health problems and I was able to travel in order to provide care for my family without missing work. I have worked in hospitals, restaurants, and even in a car. For me, it’s just allowed me to really do what I want while earning a living.
    Laura James, Quality Analyst*

    Chelsea Mitchell, another long-time Yukon Rater turned Quality Analyst, said the flexibility of her schedule allowed her to pursue another job at the same time.

    The hours were very flexible. You could work as much as you want as long as you don’t go over a certain amount of hours each week. You could even work in the middle of the night from 1:00 AM to 3:00 AM if you wanted. It was great because I was able to have my other job with the set schedule and then just work around that. I could work on the weekends, I could work three days a week, I could work five days a week, just as long as I met the minimum and didn’t go over the maximum.
    Chelsea Mitchell, Quality Analyst

    The ability to manage your own time as a Yukon Rater gives people the freedom to pursue other goals in life, both professional and personal.

    Learn About Interesting Stuff

    Another thing that makes the Yukon Rater position so sought after is the fact that the material you’re looking into is engaging and oftentimes never the same. Due to the nature of the job, having to examine different websites and different types of content, you are exposed to a wide expanse of information. This keeps the job fresh and new!

    I think it’s a job where it’s really difficult to get bored. We’re researching different types of information and content that you get to learn about through the process of rating. You get to learn about all different kinds of topics whether it’s cultural things, current events, or cool science stuff. So I think that that helps to keep it really interesting.
    Elizabeth Parker, Quality Analyst*

    For Elizabeth, she was really interested in politics. So for her, getting paid to read about topics that she finds interesting has been more than ideal!

    It wasn’t really a boring job at all and I was always learning something. There was a lot of diversity in the tasks that we would get in our queues every day. You never kind of knew what you’re gonna be working on so it was really cool in that regard.
    Susan Garret, Quality Analyst*

    While the work the Yukon Raters were doing was enjoyable and engaging, it was just as much impactful to the digital world and the billions of users who occupy it.

    You’re Making the Digital World a Better Place

    The main goal of the Yukon Rater is to make searching the web a better experience. While this has to do with assessing the accuracy and relativity of web pages and search results, it also has to do with making sure no offensive or harmful material is present. 

    For example, this might have to do with a Yukon Rater flagging a children’s YouTube video because it has inappropriate content in it or a rater flagging a blog for containing offensive language. 

    One responsibility of ours has to do with offensive-type tasks. One of the big things was trying to weed out upsetting or offensive videos on YouTube. We would also examine videos and pages to make sure there was no porn or racist material which is really important. It’s a rewarding job because I did think we were making a difference. Everyone wants to have a pleasant internet browsing experience and we are helping facilitate that.
    Laura James, Quality Analyst*

    The Internet is a place full of endless information and opportunity, but it also has some shady and dark places. Luckily, there are people like Laura and the rest of the Yukon Raters keeping the website clean and free of offensive material.

    We’re definitely helping to make search a better experience for users and that’s something to take a lot of pride in. Everybody uses search, so it’s exciting to be a part of what’s making that better.
    Susan Garret, Quality Analyst*

    Ability to Grow Within the Company

    During your work as a Yukon Rater, you get the opportunity to grow your skills in a number of ways. Whether it’s research skills, data and analytics muscles, communication abilities, or general knowledge, being a Yukon Rater is just as good for your resume as it is for conversation at a dinner party.

    However, Appen and their Yukon Raters program also help you grow your professional career as well. All of the Appen employees we spoke with were former Yukon Raters that are now full-time with Appen working as Quality Analysts who, in addition to other job functions, oversee the raters.

    While Appen wants their employees to enjoy the liberties of their incredibly flexible and lucrative Yukon Raters job, they also want to encourage and enable employees to grow within the company. While Raters are invited to become Quality Analysts, they are also encouraged to reach out to management if interested in the position. More often than not, management will give you the tools you need to make it to that level!

    So if you’re looking for a part-time, work-from-home job that allows you to work when you want, learn about interesting topics, make an impact on the world, and grow yourself professionally, be sure to check out Appen and their Yukon Raters program.

    Start browsing open roles at Appen today!

    *Names of employees have been changed* More

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    in Career Hacks

    Day in The Life of an Investment Analyst at Insight Partners

    The private equity and venture capital space is one of the most exciting and dynamic industries to work in. So much so, that job descriptions often fall short of capturing the incredible opportunities and fulfilling work that professionals get to do.

    This being the case, those who want to pursue a career in PE and VC don’t always have a clear picture of what it looks like. To shed some light on what a career in investing entails, we spoke with a pair of former analysts and current associates at global software investor Insight Partners about their day-to-day work. Insight Partners invests in high-growth technology, software, and Internet startup and ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries

    Sourcing

    Analysts are responsible for identifying new investment opportunities in the form of businesses and products, or what’s known in the industry as “sourcing.” At Insight Partners, analysts look to source promising companies in a variety of software subsectors such as FinTech, HealthTech, cybersecurity and more.

    Simply put, sourcing is the active process of identifying and evaluating potential investment prospects. The actual undertaking of that can consist of anything from market research and referrals to outreach and pitching. What’s so enjoyable about this part of the job is the excitement surrounding the discovery of a new business or opportunity that no one has come across before!

    Talking to Founders

    A big part of sourcing is talking to founders and executives. As an analyst, you’re given the opportunity to speak directly with these founders as they share what oftentimes is their life work, and something they have built from the ground up. In addition, being able to speak with some of the smartest subject matter experts across a variety of industries and sectors presents analysts with a massive opportunity to grow and learn about different technologies and domains.

    Zack went on to say how thought-provoking it is to listen to someone sharing the most interesting things that they know—things that might have taken them years to find out, test, or hypothesize. For Zack, having access to that kind of information and learning more about the world are what he really loved about being an analyst. 

    Becoming a Market Expert

    Although talking to founders is a crucial aspect of being an analyst, it is just one of many levers pulled on the track to becoming a market expert. Analysts also need to be well-versed and informed on particular markets in order to evaluate the potential of a business. While much of this is done by individual research, the analysts at Insight Partners have the opportunity to learn from those around them, which makes for an incredible culture of learning and development for all.

    For Ana Hugener, the Onsite Diligence & Growth Strategy team and the broader Insight Onsite team were two of the biggest influences to her becoming a market expert. The Insight Onsite team is made up of 140+ operational experts who work side-by-side with Insight’s portfolio companies in the key functional areas of a software company, including talent, sales, marketing, product, engineering and strategy. Onsite’s different Centers of Excellence mirror these company functions.

    These Centers of Excellence allow analysts the opportunity to grow in a variety of fields while also setting themselves up for future opportunities.

    Diligence

    While becoming a market expert is crucial for sourcing, it is equally as important for conducting diligence. The end-to-end diligence for new investment opportunities can consist of talking to founders about what they are building, telling them about Insight Partners, learning about markets, and more. Whether that’s looking at the model, the customer data, the competitive landscape or talking to customers, analysts at even the most junior level are given the opportunity to get involved.

    In our conversations with Ana and Zack, one thing they made clear about diligence is how much Insight allows entry-level and junior-level employees to get involved. Right from the get-go, analysts are making lasting impacts and contributions to the firm and their portfolio companies.

    Meaningful Work with Meaningful Companies

    Whether it’s sourcing, diligence, or portfolio work, one of the most gratifying aspects of working as an analyst at Insight Partners is the opportunity to do meaningful work with companies that make a difference. 

    After meeting with these successful analysts, it became clear that the software and technology industry is an incredibly fascinating and ever-expanding industry. This being the case, there is no shortage of interesting companies to work with.

    For Zack, his favorite portfolio company that he’s worked with sells software to pharmaceutical companies to help with clinical trials. The software allows the companies to simulate parts of the clinical trial process so that they can get FDA approval for drugs faster. For Zack, this meant he was helping a company that might be responsible for getting life-saving medications and drugs to market faster. This was an incredibly fulfilling opportunity in his day-to-day work as an analyst.

    For Ana, her favorite companies to work with were startups that were early on in their growth journey. Ana claimed that these companies are so interesting to work with because of all the questions that still need to be answered and the opportunity to have a real impact on the success of a business. For Ana, growing something from these early stages is what made the analyst role so appealing for her.

    Whether it’s sourcing, talking to founders, becoming a market expert, doing diligence, or making meaningful impacts on businesses, the work of an analyst at Insight Partners is an unbounded position with infinite potential. If you’re interested in a role where you can launch your career in private equity and venture capital, check out some of Insight Partners’ open roles today. More

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    in Career Hacks

    How Two Engineers Found Success with Klaviyo and Their Boston-Based Experience

    When you think of an ideal internship, what comes to mind? Do you think of a sprawling office space in a big city? Maybe you imagine rooms filled with massive whiteboards and colleagues sharing ideas and making moves? Or maybe, you think of an ideal internship as a place where everyone is friends as much as they are colleagues with a fantastic work-life culture?

    If you answered yes to any of those questions, then the Boston-based e-commerce marketing automation platform, Klaviyo, may be the place for you. Their summer engineering internship is a dynamic opportunity for aspiring engineers to find their footing in the industry and get a taste of the local tech scene in the Northeast. 

    We decided to sit down with a couple of Klaviyo engineers, one of whom started as an intern, to find out what it is that makes the program so special. In our conversations with them, we discovered that the hands-on work, vibrant office space, and incredible culture at Klaviyo helped make their internship experience memorable, and their work today as engineers so satisfying.

    Building Real World Applications

    Everyone we spoke to at Klaviyo agreed that part of what makes Klaviyo’s engineering internship unique is that interns get to work on things that have real business applications and problem-solutions for the company. Klaviyo’s goal for their interns is that by the end of the summer, they will have a project they worked on where they can really see their contributions taking hold.

    Maya Nigrin, a former intern and now senior software engineer, recounted how these very real engineering endeavors and projects made her feel like she was progressing in her career.

    Maya went on to share that never felt like she was being treated like an intern or somebody that didn’t know what they were doing. The fact that she was trusted to write code, do a good job, and take on difficult projects gave her the confidence needed to grow herself both as an engineer and early career professional.

    A Vibrant Office Space

    One of the biggest headlines over the past few years at Klaviyo is without a doubt the arrival of their downtown Boston office. With multiple floors fitted with everything from coffee, beer, and snack bars, a large outdoor balcony/terrace, open format workspaces, and even arcade games, ping pong, and shuffleboard, there is little that the sprawling office space doesn’t offer.

    In our conversation with Dmitry Mamyrin, a veteran engineer with tons of experience in the industry, he remarked on how much he enjoyed the layout and overall aesthetic of the space.

    Definitely not a bad view to have while writing some code or working on a project!

    Keeping a Level Head

    For Dmitry Mamyrin, it was the way in which his fellow colleagues dealt with high-intensity situations that made him admire the culture so much. Referring to a problem he and his team were addressing, Dmitry remarked that “everyone was so cool-headed during the event.” It made him realize how much he wanted to be a part of a culture with people who, “think critically and seriously, but don’t freak out and continue the process when out-of-the-ordinary events occur.” From our conversations with Dmitry and Maya we could tell that they are impassioned engineers who work alongside a cohort of similarly passionate colleagues who love what they do and the customers they do it for.

    As Klaviyo continues to grow, so too does its summer engineering internship and the opportunity it affords everyone who participates in it. For more information on Klaviyo and internship application details head over to their company profile today! More

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    in Employer

    Building a Flexible Employer Brand for a Multinational Media Company

    NBCUniversal is a media company with more than twenty businesses in thirty countries, including theme parks, television stations, motion pictures, and premium streaming services. With so many diverse brands and localities, creating an EVP (Employer Value Proposition) that works for all of them is a significant challenge. Anne Hurley, Director of Talent Branding at NBCUniversal, discusses the process of executing an EVP refresh for one of the world’s largest multinational media companies and building the flexibility to activate it across a wide variety of brands and countries in an interview with the Employer Branding Podcast.
    Setting Objectives for Employer Brand
    To articulate an EVP that works for all the different brands, NBCUniversal started by laying out the Talent Acquisition organization’s goals as a whole. They decided on setting objectives around brand awareness and engagement, employee experience, DEI, and recruiting excellence. These objectives helped steer the process and defined what they were trying to get out of their new EVP and how they should measure success across all brands.
    EVP Built on Flexibility
    NBCUniversal is a decentralized company, with properties operating independently. Hurley says, “our job is to influence them at each point of the candidate lifecycle.” They needed to create an EVP that brought everything together and was flexible enough to work equally for NBC News and Peacock streaming.
    They began with a research phase by hosting employee roundtables, looking at internal data collection, and engaging with external vendors. They then took those findings and got together with other internal groups like Corporate Creative and Corporate Communications to distill everything into the tagline: “Here you can.”
    “It’s simple, right? But that’s why it works,” Hurley says, “it acts as a ‘fill in the blank’ where we can insert language at the end of the phrase based on personas, skillsets, or interests. It doesn’t need to compete with our consumer brands—it’s simply complimentary.” For example, for E! News, it might be articulated as “Here you can be Pop Cultured,” or if they wanted to speak to their DEI initiatives, it might become “Here you can be authentically you.” Their EVP is powerful because it can be articulated differently to different personas.
    Activating EVP Globally
    Hurley’s Talent Branding organization has been working to make localization a priority. “Our brand does not resonate with people in the UK or Germany or France in the way it resonates with people in the US,” Hurley says, so they set to work creating a global toolkit to bring everything together.
    Hurley and her team started with focus groups to more clearly identify needs in each global territory and used that information to create localized assets that would align with the organization’s EVP while sharing the same look and feel across all languages. They worked closely with local brand champions to develop these resources, which in turn gives them everything they needed to create their own localized, inclusive content.
    Connect with Other EB Pros
    Hurley advises you to be clear about your internal goals before starting the EVP refresh process, do the research to get a complete picture of your organization and make sure to bring everyone to the table when the time comes to take the following steps. Large organizations come with unique challenges, but best practices exist for developing and activating an EVP. Additionally, don’t hesitate to reach out to other professionals working in the employer branding space. “I’ve made a lot of connections by simply pinging the guests on this podcast,” Hurley says. This podcast includes a way to get in touch with all of the guests, so don’t be afraid to make a connection.

    To follow Anne Hurley’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. To identify the values and culture you want to create in your own company, get in touch.
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    in Employer

    How to Use Coding Challenge Events to Build Tech Talent Pipeline

    About this eBook

    Today’s recruiting and hiring teams face multiple challenges, from low brand recognition to the capacity to efficiently assess an influx of candidates. Use this eBook to discover how events, such as coding challenges, can help you build your pipeline, expand into new markets, progress on DEI goals, and free up your teams to focus on their biggest priorities.

    What You’ll Learn

    Common challenges for employers that events help solve

    How to promote and manage events

    Examples of virtual candidate events and coding challenges to reach goals More

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    in Employer

    Diversity & Inclusion Recruitment, Retaining Talent, & More: Talk Talent to Me March ’23 Recap

    Catch up on the March 2023 episodes of Hired’s Talk Talent to Me podcast featuring recruiting and talent acquisition leadership who share strategies, techniques, and trends shaping the recruitment industry. 

    Diversity and inclusion recruitment with Jacob Rivas, Sr Global Technical Talent Sourcer, Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) at WW/WeightWatchers

    Recruiting and retaining with Nancy Connery, Co-Founder of OpenComp

    1. Jacob Rivas, Sr Global Technical Talent Sourcer, Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) at WW/WeightWatchers

    Jacob shares his recruitment knowledge, including how he communicates with candidates and best practices for approaching subject lines. He also explains how he got into D&I and how things have changed for him since leaving Vox. Jacob wraps up the conversation by sharing the most impactful career advice he has ever received!

    “Diversity is really the new area to go and if you’re intentional, you can make a big impact.”

    Listen to the full episode.

    2. Nancy Connery, Co-Founder of OpenComp 

    Fun fact: Nancy was the very first VP of HR at Salesforce. She spearheaded strategic investments in human capital and fueled the company’s remarkable growth by building its industry-leading HR infrastructure. Her latest venture is co-founding the compensational intelligence company, OpenComp. Nancy also co-hosts the OpenComp podcast, High Growth Matters. In this episode, Nancy sheds light on her days at Salesforce and her critical role in recruiting (and retaining) the best talent as the company grew. She explains her decision to leave a comfortable position as VP to pursue her own path in the industry. You’ll also gain insight into her belief that talent retention and upskilling are as important as hiring.

    “You need to think about employees [in the same manner as customers] as you grow the company, not only recruiting them but also, how do you develop them? How do you retain them? Can they grow with the life cycles and stages of the company?”

    Listen to the full episode.

    Want more insights into recruiting tips and trends?

    Tune into Hired’s podcast, Talk Talent to Me, to learn about the strategies, techniques, and trends shaping the recruitment industry—straight from top experts themselves. More

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    Building an Effective EVP: The Journey of a Bangalore Tech Company

    India’s startup ecosystem has been experiencing a rapid growth rate, with the country emerging as the third-largest startup hub globally, posting record revenue of $227 billion in 2022, according to Mint. This growth has led to a highly competitive market for talent, making it essential for companies to have strong employer branding and an attractive Employer Value Proposition (EVP) to remain competitive.
    To gain insights into creating an effective EVP in such a fast-paced environment, we caught up with Malliga Rajkumar, the Senior Director of HR and Talent Branding Lead at Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in India based in Bangalore, which began as a startup 15 years ago with a team of 200 people.
    As a 30,000-strong organization serving 150 million customers across all of India, Flipkart is known as the “startup of startups,” with alums going on to found their successful tech enterprises. Despite its size, the startup ethos of risk and innovation remains near and dear to Flipkart’s heart.
    However, with the tech sector’s growth came fierce competition for key talent, prompting Rajkumar and her team to build and implement an employer branding strategy to ensure Flipkart could compete. Rajkumar’s approach was to ask two simple questions: “What is it about our culture that we want to absolutely retain and rebuild where it may have atrophied? And what are the elements that we want to add on?”
    Developing EVP
    The journey to Flipkart’s EVP was months of extensive primary and secondary research. Rajkumar and her team interviewed people at all levels within the organization, spoke to headhunters, and did market benchmarking with accredited organizations like the Great Place to Work Institute and Mercer.
    In the end, they had a list of all the things Flipkart wanted to be known for and a list of the things talent cares about. The challenge was to find a balance between the two to stake out an EVP that encapsulated what Flipkart stands for while appealing to the talent they wanted to attract.
    They settled on a simple EVP that stitched together all of the concepts they wanted to include in one phrase:
    “Together, We Dare to Maximize.”
    Together spoke to everything they hope to foster in terms of community and collaboration. Dare represents their startup heart by celebrating audacity and breaking boundaries. And maximize represents their ambition to be the best they possibly can be and continuously improve.
    Activating EVP
    Articulating an EVP is only half the battle; Rajkumar and her team still needed to activate it for both employees and candidates. “Together we dare to maximize” is displayed in every Flipkart office. More importantly, that concept and the four pillars that support it are woven into all internal communications, awards, employee forums, and events throughout the year.
    They also measure its resonance each year in their annual employee engagement survey. A team of over 250 employee advocates helps get the word out and shares an honest look at what life at Flipkart is like.
    Aspirational EVP
    Flipkart sees its EVP as aspirational, and they want to ensure that they live up to its promise. Therefore, they used their mission statement to build a 3-year maturity model that articulates every process’s intent, design, experience, and measurement. The goal is to look at everything they do and take the time to align it with their EVP incrementally.
    As always, it is crucial to measure the impact of employer branding to demonstrate its value to key organizational stakeholders. At Flipkart, they compare their engagement statistics to a benchmark list of other companies to assess their performance and identify areas for improvement. Additionally, they have specific metrics for individual campaigns and regularly conduct internal surveys to assess the level of awareness within the organization regarding employer brand themes.
    According to Rajkumar, “Employer brand is not about who you are today; it’s about who you aspire to be.” A good EVP should reflect the organization’s current state and set higher standards for what it can become. Good employer branding presents an opportunity for an organization to improve and live its values, which in turn attracts top talent.

    To follow Malliga Rajkumar’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For help identifying the values and culture you want to create in your company, get in touch.
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