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      Investing in Early Talent, Relearning, & More: Talk Talent to Me April ’23 Recap

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      Catch up on the April 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. 

      Putting people first with Kelly Minella, Head of Recruiting at Calendly

      Investing in early talent with Krishna Kumar, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Quintrix 

      Relearning and eliminating biases with Jenny Cotie Kangas, Director of Employer Branding and Awareness at PandoLogic

      Creating a thriving company culture with Maryjo Charbonnier, CHRO at Kyndryl 

      1. Kelly Minella, Head of Recruiting at Calendly

      Put people first. You’ll be more likely to make quality hires and maintain a cohesive work environment, according to Kelly. In this episode, she shares how she knew her CEO cared about prioritizing people and the importance of a talent team having a shared understanding. Plus, Kelly tells how the introduction of interview training has made Calendly better and why you should always be asking for and reviewing candidate feedback.

      “I applied [to Calendly], and my first conversation was with our CEO, Tope Awotona, and it was fabulous. I remember calling my mom afterward and being like, ‘Mom, that was special’. And the reason why, and why it has remained special, is how much priority he puts on people.”

      Listen to the full episode.

      2. Krishna Kumar, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Quintrix 

      Investing in early talent is becoming more popular. Krishna discusses why businesses need to think more about this talent in the long term and how companies can better support their new recruits. He also dives into his game-changing post-deployment framework and why many candidates are falling short of the mark. 

      “Career development, or lack thereof, is the number one reason for people to leave their jobs and explore other opportunities. So, you want to make sure that the candidates are constantly receiving the support, feedback, and career development to be successful.” 

      Listen to the full episode.

      3. Jenny Cotie Kangas, Director of Employer Branding and Awareness at PandoLogic

      Sometimes the best approach to a challenge is to start from scratch. When Jenny lost most of her memories as a result of a head injury, she underwent a process of extreme relearning. Though the experience came with hardships and frustrations, it was hugely beneficial to her professional life. In this inspiring episode, Jenny shares how learning to explain things in their simplest form, eliminating biases and blindspots, and employing reverse engineering strategies leads to true organizational change.

      “When you storytell something in a way that makes sense to a 10-year-old – all of a sudden everybody can understand it. Not just the top 10% or the most experienced in your organization, but everybody can. And when you’re trying to actually make change happen, your goal is to hit everybody, not just the top 10%.”

      Listen to the full episode.

      4. Maryjo Charbonnier, CHRO at Kyndryl 

      Maryjo isn’t afraid of a challenge. In fact, she has sought out difficult problems to be part of a solution. Her passion for change-making led her to be Chief HR Officer at the world’s largest startup with over 90,000 employees and $19 billion in revenue. As an expert on cultural processes, Maryjo explains what it takes to cultivate and maintain a thriving company culture. 

      “One of the most important things HR people do is listen to what isn’t said.” 

      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 a Flexible Employer Brand for a Multinational Media Company

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

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      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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      Developing and Activating a New EVP for an Old Company

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      The concept of employer brand is still fairly new to the world of business. Articulating an EVP (Employer Value Proposition) is typically on the agenda of management teams; however, not every organization knows how to go about it.
      Hence I was pleased to chat with Kayla Branham, Marketing Manager of Talent Acquisition at security giant ADT. Most of us will be familiar with this company and brand that has been around for over a century. But what is it like to work there?
      Branham points out that every company has an employer brand or employer reputation. The question is how you manage this and how you can highlight what makes your company stand out as an employer. In this case, Branham adapted Allison Kruise’s 3-step model for brand activation to develop a new EVP at ADT.
      Landing on an EVP
      Step one was to investigate what the current employer brand was for ADT. The research undertaken zoomed in on a number of areas, such as:

      How are we perceived as an employer?
      What is on offer to our candidates and employees?
      What makes working at ADT different from other companies?

      The purpose of asking questions to people around the business was to understand perspectives from all talent groups. The research outcome painted a picture of what it’s like to work at ADT.
      On top of speaking to current employees, the team also carried out external research to determine employer brand perception in the public sphere.
      Establishing the EVP
      One word kept popping up in focus groups: Trust. This particular word happens to be essential to the ethos of ADT and it was a natural place to lay the foundations of the EVP around trust. The governing thought was determined:
      “At ADT, you’re entrusted with tomorrow.”
      Next up, Branham and team identified four pillars of the employer value proposition:

      Take ownership
      Work with a great purpose
      Shape the future
      Win together

      “There’s a give-and-get element to each of them. It’s what team members offer to an employer and what the team member is receiving in exchange,” Branham notes.
      Time to activate
      The EVP was launched at the back end of 2022, and before this, it was communicated internally to various stakeholders and teams. The idea was to stoke interest in the upcoming external rollout.
      Branham and team developed a number of content pieces designed to inspire employees and to create engagement. Videos, LinkedIn banners, and social sharing contests were all part of the plan.
      Looking to the future, Branham will be partnering closely with Talent Management to focus on continuing internal activation and adoption. “We want to ensure that our EVP is a lived experience for our team members,” she says. They know that scaling the employer brand internally is the most important thing for growing external awareness.
      The next stop on the journey is to partner with Talent Management to embed the EVP with the employee lifecycle. By scaling internally, the EVP will manifest itself in the public domain in an organic fashion.

      To follow Kayla Branham’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For help with your own EVP, get in touch. We help you identify the values and culture you want to create in your company.
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      How VMware Attracts and Retains Tech Talent

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      Long before COVID-19 made working from home the norm, this software company was experimenting with remote work and exploring its impact on employer brand. This unsung hero of the B2B technology space was powering some of the busiest and most visible brands of the early months of the pandemic, all while supporting a globally distributed workforce.
      Keeping a watchful eye on these experiments was Global Employment Brand Manager Price Peacock, whose team is responsible for showcasing that employee experience to the public.
      Embracing Remote Work
      Embracing the distributed team model benefits businesses in several ways. Chiefly: It allows hiring managers to recruit from a larger pool, and it makes you a more attractive employer to the staggering number of workers who now prefer telecommuting.
      The move to a distributed team helped VMware address its top talent challenge: standing out in the competitive local tech talent market in Palo Alto, California, where VMware’s headquarters sit. “From a talent perspective, we’re enabling our recruiters, sourcers, and hiring managers to look for people in areas not near VMware offices. That’s allowing us to remove some of those challenges that we historically faced and hire more diverse talent,” Peacock says.
      Prioritizing the “Why”
      Every year, Peacock’s employer brand team sits down for a “gut check.” They reevaluate their priorities and check their efforts against their larger relevance to the company. “It’s allowed us to be nimble, learn, and evolve our employer brand strategy,” Peacock says.
      VMware’s internal EVP reflects this commitment to employees’ development: Own your future. Its employer brand team also maintains a close relationship with the corporate brand team to ensure the message they promote internally stays aligned with the values VMware professes externally.
      Centering the Employee Perspective
      One of the most direct, meaningful ways to keep your employer brand messaging aligned with employee perspectives is to center those perspectives in your content. “Employee referrals today are our number one source of hire. Knowing that, we recognize the importance of our people’s perspectives and voices,” Peacock says. “We actively partner with the 33,000+ employees that work at VMware to create, share, and participate in the content and experiences we’re creating for prospective employees.”
      In foregrounding employee storytelling, Peacock is allowing VMware’s culture to speak for itself. “VMware’s brand is the sum of the emotions and attitudes that people have with us, whether it be our employees, our customers, or the broader community,” she says.

      To follow Price Peacock’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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      How the Automotive Technology Space Is Attracting New Talent

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      Big changes in the automotive technology space have inspired a renewed focus on attracting tech talent and workplace diversity for this company’s employer brand leadership.
      That focus is just one of the creative challenges Joanna Babiarz faces as Aptiv’s Global Employer Branding Director.
      Your Candidate Messaging Should Evolve with Your Industry
      Recent and rapid tech innovation is rendering certain skill groups obsolete while placing others in high demand. This is especially true of the automotive industry, which now courts very different talent pools than it did a decade ago, according to Babiarz.
      At first, Aptiv’s employer brand messaging wasn’t focused on tech. However, after clocking the industry shift toward being a tech-centric space, Babiarz and her team reshaped their candidate messaging to grab the attention of tech talent and position Aptiv as a competitive employer to this sought-after demographic. Today, roughly one-third of Aptiv’s engineers are software developers and ship over 40 billion lines of code each day.
      To Achieve Workplace Diversity, Start Early
      Refurbishing your employer brand is an ideal time to ensure your messaging reflects your values. During a recent rebrand, Babiarz and her team realized they had an opportunity to disrupt an automotive industry trend with Aptiv’s employer branding: its male-dominated workforce.
      Aptiv employs a diverse team of workers from many backgrounds, but like most other companies in the space, it still struggles to reach women and other demographics underrepresented in STEM. “We are trying to change this ratio. We are trying to show that this space is a fantastic opportunity for growth for anyone, regardless of gender or ethnicity,” Babiarz says.
      What Candidates Really Want
      Today’s candidates don’t just want to collect a paycheck; they want their work to hold meaning. Babiarz observed this when talking to Aptiv employees who’ve stayed at the company for five years or more, as well as those who returned after leaving for a different job.
      She noticed a theme among employee responses: “They have a purpose here. It’s not that they’re working on another software app; they’re helping save lives and mitigate the risks of accidents. They offer solutions that reduce emissions.”
      No matter the nature and scale of the shifts occurring in your industry, Babiarz’s advice to employer brand leaders is the same: Ask your employees about what needs to change. “It’s not always about the market trends or what the stakeholders expect from you,” she says. “You have to talk to your employees!”

      To follow Joanna Babiarz’s work in employer brand, connect with her on LinkedIn. For help gathering data and insights you can act on to improve your company, get in touch.
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      Activating Employer Brand as a Science and Technology Company

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      Successful employer brand activation is all about thinking globally for this 352-year-old, progress-driven science and technology company.
      Merck Group has dedicated itself to furthering human progress through science and technology. It’s a lofty mission and one its team takes very seriously, particularly employer brand leader Chris Dinwiddy.
      You Value Curiosity
      Merck Group’s EVP, “Bring your curiosity to life,” carries two meanings for Dinwiddy. It invites employees to nurture their curiosity, but it also encourages employees to direct that curiosity toward improving life on earth. Curiosity isn’t just a trait of a great hire; it’s a skill that helps Merck Group make the world a better place.
      Curiosity also motivates the employer brand team’s investment in its ambassador network. With so many markets worldwide (including China, the US, Germany, and others), Dinwiddy has realized the importance of nurturing one-on-one relationships with regional heads of recruitment and demonstrating an interest in their unique region.
      You Stay Innovative
      When courting an in-demand demographic, filling a specific role type, or launching a campaign, the employer brand team relies on SAP SuccessFactors tools and custom landing pages. They keep a close on their Google Analytics and other sources of quantitative data, while also tracking more qualitative feedback (candidate comments like ”I didn’t know much about you before I applied” or “I’ve seen your brand around”) to measure success.
      The team is also trying out a new tool that’s been instrumental in gathering employee-generated content: an app called PathMotion, specifically designed to help candidates connect with employees.
      You Prioritize Humans
      “The recruitment industry’s drifted in the last few years away from corporate and polished,” Dinwiddy observes. Now, candidates are responding more to honest, authentic, and candid messaging.
      For Dinwiddy, this human-centered and end-user-focused culture is key to what makes it a great place to work and such an easy employer to promote. In describing his experience at Merck Group, Dinwiddy offers the same kind of candidness he encourages in brands: “My job’s really special. I work for a brilliant company—and I’m not just saying that because they pay my salary!”

      To follow Chris Dinwiddy’s work in employer brand, connect with him on LinkedIn. For help gathering data and insight that you can act on to improve your company, get in touch.
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      Building Employer Brand Awareness with Global Tech Talent

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      Everyone’s looking for tech talent, and the competition within this highly in-demand market is steep. This is the challenge Liz Gelb-O’Connor faces as ADP’s VP/Global Head of Employer Brand and Marketing. Here’s how Gelb-O’Connor and her team are tailoring their employer brand strategy to attract tech talent specifically.
      Building Global Awareness
      As a payroll services provider, ADP pays one out of every six workers in the US and is almost a household name. However, outside of the US, it doesn’t have the same level of recognition as major US consumer brands.
      The employer brand team spent 10 months researching the international talent markets that yielded the most candidates and nurturing relationships with partner organizations in other countries. The result was an EVP localized for each country—a monumental effort that turned out to be well worth it, Gelb-O’Connor says.
      Nurture Future Talent
      ADP’s employer brand team also devotes energy to the very top of the tech talent funnel, those that aren’t looking for work right now but may be strong candidates in the future. ADP’s tech blog, a first of its kind for the company, keeps future talent abreast of industry conversations and news while showcasing the brand’s innovation and the thought leadership of its tech employees.
      The results of this tech-tailored approach to employer brand have been powerful. In the five years since Gelb-O’Connor began leading employer brand, ADP has won industry accolades, and earned a strong NPS score for its candidate experience. Cost of hire has dropped, and the candidate conversion rate for the tech career site is twice the rate of its main career site (despite launching during the hiring slowdown of May 2020).
      This rapid change and growth around tech is one of the things that makes Gelb-O’Connor so excited to lead employer brand at ADP. “It never gets old,” she says. “That’s been the most rewarding thing: seeing how far we’ve come.”

      To follow Liz Gelb-O’Connor’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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