Competing for Talent:

Becoming an Employer of Choice

Presented by Lighthouse Labs & BLANKSLATE Partners

Thank you so much to our panel participants:

@AgataZasada - Talent Manager @hootsuite

@Lesmatron - People & Culture Manager @unbounce

@IzzieEgan - Co-founder at BLANKSLATE @blankslateHR

And our illustrious host

@Char_Fothergill - Director of Career Services @LightHouse_Labs

What does being an employer of choice mean to you?

• Agata - “Candidates and people know your brand, know you have good people working for you and like working for you, and candidates seek you out.”

• Also, you retain people once they are in the door

• Leslie - Being an employer of choice means creating that environment for people from the moment they walk in the door.

• “Are you fulfilling what you’ve said you’re doing?”

• Izzie - Building the foundation so that your company has systems that support you. Hiring 100% on referrals

What tangible things do you do to be an employer of choice?

• For many start ups, it isn’t about winning awards (though this can be nice), it’s about building a place where people seek you coming to work for you

• Hootsuite has a detailed and comprehensive auto response to all candidates, that includes different ways to reach out to the company and why the candidate may or may not get a response.

• Hootsuite also has an survey for employee engagement. They run it internally and measure, report and act on the results. The results are also discussed at the town hall meetings. One measure they look for in particular is the E-NPS, or how likely a current employee is to refer a friend to work at Hootsuite.

How do you communicate the company culture?

• Unbounce - Unbounce has a blog called “Inside Unbounce”, that is “curated for grammar, not for content”.

• It is written by current employees about life inside Unbounce, and matches the company value of Be Transparent. This allows anyone at the company to have a voice in sharing their experience

• Hootsuite - Uses #hootsuitelife on all their channels to promote what life is like working there. It started partly as a way for people internally to keep in touch globally, as Hootsuite grew offices around the world. It began as a way to connect, and now gives insight into the workplace.

How do you make sure you’re staying true to your values?

• This is especially timely, given the Amazon story and response this weekend

• BLANKSLATE - Have teams check in as part of their meetings, how does their work and how they are working fit with the company values?

• Hootsuite - Hootsuite collects lots of data about employee experience of the company values that is then shared to the executive level. Including 30, 60, 90 day checkins, exit interviews and annual reviews. The executives then act from that information.

• Unbounce - One way, has been to have events where employees split into teams and share stories about how they saw someone living a value

How important do you feel Twitter & Hashtag campaigns are for hiring?

• Hootsuite - It really depends on who you are trying to attract. It likely won’t bring in your next CFO. However, community managers, digital media, engineers, you might see more draw in those areas

• “Don’t do it just for the sake of doing it, that looks jaded”

• Unbounce - Have found amplifying the social networks of current employees works well. Sending out notes internally asking people to share open roles immediately expands the reach

• BLANKSLATE - Often the hiring manager is the best recruiter for a role. Asking them “Where would you look for a job? Where would people they want to hire hang out online?”

What mistakes have you learned from?

• Hootsuite - Not making the right decisions about people fast enough. This has a huge impact on the existing team. Then, just as importantly, finding out what went wrong, so that this can be avoided next time.

• Quality of hire is so much more important than time to fill.

• Hootsuite uses 30, 60 and 90 day check-ins and really leverages the probation period to help know if someone is going to succeed

• “For every hour spent talking about an employee, spend the same time talking with the employee. We really want people to win”

• Unbounce - For Unbounce, it has been a matter of being clear on what career development looks like. Entering a company at 15 employees is different than at 110, and education about what “we’re a start up” means for how people progress is so important. Messaging shared through the recruitment and hiring process needs to evolve with the company size and needs.

• BLANKSLATE - We’ve seen companies plaster over legitimate issues with trying to ‘be on culture’. This can lead to dissonance in experience for people and attrition.

Last Thoughts

• Hootsuite - Do not become a robot. Allow your hiring managers to have real relationships with candidates

• Unbounce - Be authentic in your social brand if you do decide to share it. Understand what makes you and your company unique.

• BLANKSLATE - Be clear with managers what you are actually hiring for. Set expectations and follow them.

Bonus Resources

• Lars Schmidt - for nuggets on employer brand and social recruiting

• Click to Tweet - for easy Twitter sharing of your open roles

• #HROS - Hootsuite’s open HR experiment

• Using Unbounce for Unbounce’s Careers page - It’s meta, we know

• Talent Hacking on Medium from iNova Capital

• For hiring developer talent in Vancouver, LightHouse Labs of course!