Casestudy Bersin Pfizer Red Hat[1]

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Introduction

In recent years, the downturn in the global economy has forced

companies to critically eye global performance. Not surprisingly,

these dynamics are pushing talent acquisition teams to recruit and

hire more efficiently and effectively. Among the critical tools to do

so is social media, which has exploded in popularity and is revamping

the recruiting landscape. Whereas third-party recruiting agencies

once played a dominant role, especially in some geographies, now

social networking tools help internal recruiters gain more control

over their employment branding and hiring efforts. Many talent

acquisition teams, however, are still learning how best to use these

vital tools.

This Bersin & Associates research bulletin is targeted to corporate

recruiters in global organizations, and explores how two companies

– Pfizer Inc. and Red Hat – deployed LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions

worldwide. LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions provides a platform

through which talent acquisition teams can more easily communicate

with targeted talent and collaborate with other recruiters on their

teams, surpassing the value that LinkedIn by itself provides to users.

Competing for Global Talent

To be competitive in the talent market, global talent acquisition

teams should learn to execute a successful talent acquisition and

employment branding strategy using social media tools. Bersin &

Associates research shows that these tools can improve internal

team, organizational and brand performance markedly – and rapidly.

Smart use of social marketing tools gives recruiters better control of

channels used globally to communicate with target candidates and,

September 30, 2011 Volume 6, Issue 49

Using Social Networks: How Global Recruiting Tools Help Attract Top Talent

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About the Author

Katherine Jones,Principal Analyst

Bersin & Associates provides objective

research and analysis performed in

accordance with our rigorous research

methodology. This document is

underwritten in part by LinkedIn and

represents the unbiased view of the

analyst, based on conclusions from

that research.

Research Bulletin | 2011


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Using Social Networks Katherine Jones | Page 2



if deployed discerningly, can even help companies optimize

internal performance.

Both Pfizer Inc. and Red Hat selected LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions,

including the flagship Recruiter product, to improve their employment

brands and help their talent acquisition organizations become more

cost-effective. The insights of recruiting executives from each company

demonstrate best practices for companies planning a global rollout of

LinkedIn’s Recruiter platform.

Taking Control: From “Post and Pray” to Building a Recruitment Brand That Draws Top Talent

Previously, recruiters posted a position on a job board and hoped that

qualified candidates would respond to it (hence “post and pray”). Social

networking has changed that. Today, it plays a crucial role in recruiting

candidates, supplanting less efficient job boards and first-generation

applicant tracking systems by enabling companies to locate and attract

top talent quickly and economically. Social networking solutions, like

LinkedIn Recruiter, focus on facilitating relationships between users –

because building personal relationships with candidates often proves

critical to recruitment success.

A solution such as LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions uses built-in processes

and communication tools to allow companies to communicate in a

single brand “voice” to their markets of targeted talent. Tools on

LinkedIn can quickly evaluate how effectively recruiting campaigns

reach target talent while, at the same time, enabling top talent to more

easily reach the recruiters. The result is shortening the time it takes to

fill open positions.

An Overview of LinkedIn Recruiter: Social Networking Expands and Filters the Prospect Pool

A critical element for global talent acquisition teams is the ability to

rapidly scale, a capability aided by LinkedIn’s communication platforms.

Recruiters in global talent acquisition organizations have direct access

to 120 million professionals. From this talent pool (the largest of its

kind available online), companies can source applicants looking for new

roles, as well as “passive candidates” who are not in the job market, but

may be persuaded to change for the right opportunity.

In the global war

for talent, having

a reputation as a

good employer

does not necessarily

mean the right

candidates apply

for the jobs that

are right for them.

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Case in Point: Red Hat Capitalizes on Its Ability to Attract Social-Savvy Employees

Red Hat is the leader in enterprise Linux and is the most

recognized open source brand in the world. Founded in 1993,

the company sits at the intersection of cloud computing1 and

business computing, where both the business climate and the

labor market are highly competitive. The company currently

employs approximately 4,000 people, one-half of whom are

based in the U.S., and it hires about 400 new people per year

from all around the world. So the company has recruiters

everywhere – in North America, Latin America, Europe, the

Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific markets.

Three years ago, Red Hat had more than 2,500 employees and

was scaling rapidly (the company was making more than $600

million in revenue). The problem was that the company did not

have any meaningful way to scale its recruiting technology and

process – nor a philosophy or approach to internal recruiting.

The company’s talent acquisition team began using LinkedIn

Recruiter after determining that the candidates being targeted

were all early adopters of LinkedIn. In fact, 95 percent of the

people Red Hat hired in the U.S. were already on LinkedIn and

75 percent of its new hires elsewhere around the globe also

already were on the social networking site (other than those in

China, the Czech Republic and Germany).

Within 30 days of launching LinkedIn Recruiter, Red Hat had

what it considered “quality wins” up and down its organization.

The company’s internal recruiters credited the tool with driving

candidates to them and the company has only seen this success

1 The term “cloud computing” originates from the common practice of using a cloud symbol to stand for the often nebulous networks (especially the public Internet) in between an end-user computer and the various servers and services that user accesses. Originally a buzzword in the IT world, cloud computing is a natural extension of the concepts of SaaS and services-oriented architectures. For instance, imagine that every one of the systems you use in your company was delivered to you on a fully SaaS basis – and yet (because those systems were designed to be open), each of those systems was fully integrated with each other. The IT department within your company would not need to worry about questions of hardware (other than the PC on your desktop), data centers, system integrations, et al. That is the vision of cloud computing.

Social networking

tools are

transforming

the recruiting

landscape.

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intensify in the last few years. The Red Hat Career Page on

LinkedIn is shown in Figure 1.2 e

2 Source: http://www.linkedin.com/company/red-hat/careers.

Case in Point: Red Hat Capitalizes on Its Ability to Attract Social-Savvy Employees (cont’d)

Figure 1: Red Hat’s Career Page

Source: LinkedIn. 2011.

http://www.linkedin.com/company/red-hat/careers


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Social Networking in Recruiting

Social networking supports hiring managers in several ways, by:

• Enhancingcommunicationbetweenrecruiters,andbothjobseekers

and passive candidates;

• Enablingapplicantevaluationthroughtheuseofonlineprofiles

and references; and,

• Helpingtobuildaconsistentemploymentbrand.

LinkedIn Recruiter resides on a social networking-based search

and communications platform through which talent acquisition

professionals can:

• SearchdeeperintotheLinkedInprofessionalnetwork;

• Communicatedirectlywithtargetedtalent;and,

• Collaboratewithintherecruitingteam.

Recruiters today often use LinkedIn as end-users to search for talent;

LinkedIn Recruiter allows them to expand those capabilities.

LinkedIn Recruiter also enables recruiters to better source candidates

and to more successfully collaborate in the search process. Recruiters

can share searches, profiles, notes on candidates and “InMails3,” so

that talent management teams can collaborate effectively, whether on

recruitment, hiring strategies or employee branding initiatives.

In addition, recruiters can conduct searches of all LinkedIn profiles and

initiate conversations with target candidates anywhere in the world

using the built-in templates at LinkedIn InMail. Talent acquisition teams

can create personal profiles that attract targeted talent, post jobs

directly from LinkedIn Recruiter to LinkedIn Jobs Network, monitor

conversations across the web, set profile reminders to follow up with

candidates in a timely fashion and collaborate across LinkedIn Groups

with peers while also communicating in Groups with job seekers (see

Figure 2).

3 “InMail®” is LinkedIn’s messaging environment.

Social networking

tools help internal

recruiters gain

more control over

their employment

branding and

hiring efforts.

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Branding to Hire

Recruitment brand-building is critical, and requires both building a

consistent global brand and controlling the channels through which

that brand’s message is conveyed. LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions allows

enterprises to build a recruitment brand campaign through its ability

to foster connections to and build closer connections with job seekers,

and to enhance brand awareness among a global talent pool. LinkedIn

achieves this whereas traditional applicant tracking systems cannot (see

the following case in point).

Figure 2: LinkedIn Recruiter

Source: LinkedIn. 2011.


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Case in Point: Pfizer Goes Social for Employment Branding

Pfizer Inc., founded in 1849 and headquartered in New York,

is a leading global biopharmaceutical company that offers

prescription medicines for humans and animals worldwide.

Historically, the company had a decentralized talent

organization, with recruiters reporting up through different

lines of business or regions. In 2009, recognizing the need to

scale and coordinate recruiting efforts to build a recruitment

brand and attract top talent, the company formed a global

talent acquisition team.

Today, Pfizer has a vice president of talent acquisition, under

whom are regional directors who manage recruitment within

each geographic region. The company’s talent acquisition model

enables its directors to create teams to meet the specific talent

acquisition needs of each region. Currently, the company has 51

recruiters across the globe using the LinkedIn Recruiter platform.

The only area in which the company has not completely rolled

out LinkedIn Recruiter is in the Asia-Pacific market.

The company’s applicant tracking system does not enable it to

accurately track the source of hires, so LinkedIn Recruiter has

become the resource through which Pfizer’s talent acquisition

team does this. The team can view the volume of activity

generated by jobs placed on the LinkedIn Jobs Network, see

who views each job and understand how well jobs are being

seen to determine whether jobs posted are reaching the target

audience. The manager of branding and operational excellence

for Pfizer cites the level of reporting it receives from LinkedIn

Recruiter and LinkedIn Reports as unparalleled.

“[LinkedIn] is a significant connection partner that

supports my team’s strategy and helps us reach

around the globe with ease. It has truly made the

world a lot smaller.”

LinkedIn Recruiting Solutions have proven to be so powerful

within Pfizer that the company recently launched its new global

recruitment brand using LinkedIn as the primary vehicle. The

Recruitment brand-

building is critical,

and requires

both building

a consistent

global brand and

controlling the

channels through

which that

brand’s message is

conveyed.

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company derives recruitment insights from the solution to

understand how people perceive the Pfizer brand and then

launches targeted materials to give individuals information

requiring feedback, which can be measured again to see

how perceptions of the Pfizer employee brand are changing.

Recruiters also use the question-and-answer section on LinkedIn,

so that they can build credibility with their own personal brands

on LinkedIn. e

For industries whose target candidates tend to be technologically

savvy, LinkedIn Recruiter may offer an ideal social networking

recruitment solution.

Red Hat uses LinkedIn Recruiter to drive top talent who is already using

LinkedIn to the Red Hat brand.

Case in Point: Red Hat’s Talent Pool

Red Hat realized that the vast majority of the company’s target

talent pool was already using LinkedIn, in part due to the

“early adopter” mentality of the company’s technology-driven

industry. The talent acquisition team held internal discussions

about the metrics on finding the right candidates for Red Hat,

using LinkedIn Recruiter to help convince colleagues to invest

time in learning the platform. The company decreased spending

on, and use of, its other recruitment tools after internal research

showed that people were getting results with

LinkedIn Recruiter. e

Best Practices in Social Recruiting

From these LinkedIn deployments, best practices are beginning

to emerge:

• Startwithsmallpilots;

• Measureinitialsuccessbeforeglobalrollouts;

Case in Point: Pfizer Goes Social for Employment Branding (cont’d)

To be competitive

in the talent

market, global

talent acquisition

teams should

learn to execute

a successful talent

acquisition and

employment

branding strategy

using social

media tools.

A N A LY S I S


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• Providetrainingtotherecruiterswhowillusethetoolandthen

ensure that it is actually being used.

For the global organization, LinkedIn Recruiter provides key flexibility –

it can be scaled as needed and used as required in various markets

to meet different recruiting needs. Starting small gives talent

organizations the option to “tweak” strategies that work best in

different markets as they increase their use of LinkedIn Recruiter.

Case in Point: Piloting at Pfizer

Pfizer’s talent acquisition team initially started small –

purchasing three LinkedIn Recruiter user licenses and five

Job Slots4 in the U.S. in 2008. The three user licenses were

purchased for use by junior-level recruiters who supported the

company’s three major divisions (sales, business, and research

and development), each of whom is responsible for posting jobs

and assessing the efficacy of the solution. When Pfizer recruiters

realized that they could find the majority of candidates without

using agencies, they invested further in LinkedIn Recruiter. e

Successful Deployment of LinkedIn Recruiter

When deploying a new solution to a team of recruiters who work in

different time zones and geographies, the following three issues are

essential to success.

1. Training – Continually reinforcing correct behaviors and training on

new processes help users to extract the greatest value from a social

networking investment. It also clarifies what works best in which

locations. Teams may have different needs depending upon cultural

norms, talent pools targeted, et al.

2. Utilization – Making sure that staff members use the

solution deployed.

3. Measurement – Effectively assessing the results. Metrics matter.

4 “Job Slots” are the job postings on the LinkedIn Jobs Network that automatically target relevant candidates.


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LinkedIn Recruiter gives users the ability to customize their usage

reports, enabling talent acquisition leaders to track how successfully

their recruiting teams operate around the globe. This software also

offers metrics by which to assess the company’s own communication

and team performance.

Case in Point: Pfizer Measures Recruiter Use

Customized reports allow Pfizer’s talent acquisition team

to monitor adoption rates and understand where in

the organization training is most needed. The company

acknowledged spending an “inordinate” amount of time on

change management and holding repeat training sessions for its

talent acquisition staff.

LinkedIn representatives went to regional team meetings and

attended a lengthy all-hands meeting in New York at which every

recruiter in Pfizer was present. Pfizer’s global talent acquisition

leaders also worked with its sourcing teams and hiring managers

as they collaborated on the skills sets sought, while using LinkedIn

to post jobs and post their own profiles. What made this possible

was the company’s ability to measure recruiter usage rates on

LinkedIn Recruiter, and to monitor region-by-region usage rates

and InMail response rates for each recruiter.

• ForacompanydealingwithteamsinEuropeanandAsian

markets that routinely use external recruiting agencies,

LinkedIn Recruiter has had a transformational effect on

Pfizer’s recruiting organization.

• Pfizer’stalentacquisitionleadershipinitiallyhadearly

successes with LinkedIn Recruiter to foster broader global

adoption within the team by having each of its regions

nominate a person from their team who would serve in a

“super user” role. In recognizing and rewarding these users,

the company encouraged other team members to follow

their leads. The effort has proved successful. Pfizer overcame

a dependence on external recruiting agencies in some of its

international markets by demonstrating how it could deliver


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the same, if not better, results with LinkedIn Recruiter.

Talent acquisition leadership members leveraged the

advantage of their inside view; they inherently had a better

“picture” of the organization and culturally understood the

organization better than any outside agency ever could. e

Monitor Usage Patterns for Faster Global Deployment

Monitoring usage and response enables talent acquisition organizations

to pinpoint where recruiter training is needed most, thereby

streamlining deployment of social networking solutions like LinkedIn

Recruiter while enhancing team performance. For example, Red

Hat’s senior director of global talent acquisition and infrastructure

commented that the firm could have sped up the adoption and

effectiveness of LinkedIn Recruiter with a more regional rather than

global approach. The company’s recruiting leaders found that they had

to spend time working with each regional market’s team members to

help them gain familiarity with the tool.

Reduce Total Recruiting Costs

Monitoring recruitment successes also helps teams better understand

how targeted talent perceived the company’s brand. It also

demonstrated the savings derived through the use of LinkedIn Recruiter.

Case in Point: Red Hat Lowers Cost of Recruiting

With its global rollout of LinkedIn Recruiter, Red Hat reduced

its agency fees by 80 percent and total cost of recruiting by 20

percent. The company dramatically reduced its job board budget

once LinkedIn Recruiter was put in place. It then redirected 60

percent of the money saved into building the team, and funding

the company’s relationship with LinkedIn and others. Red Hat

also has reduced the time it takes to source candidates. At the

same time, the company has increased hiring by 20 percent. Red

Hat reports a dramatic change in time to present and time to fill

Case in Point: Pfizer Measures Recruiter Use (cont’d)

With its global

rollout of LinkedIn

Recruiter, Red Hat

reduced its agency

fees by 80 percent

and total cost of

recruiting by

20 percent.

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since it began using LinkedIn Recruiter. According to the senior

director of talent acquisition and infrastructure for Red Hat,

“Three years ago, we largely outsourced looking

for many of our critical hires; now today we largely

in-source and use the LinkedIn Recruiter platform for

our critical hires. We did not have a good database

frankly, so it instantly gave us a database that far

exceeded any of the vendors we were using. Then it

was just incumbent on us to get the

maximum benefit.” e

Bersin & Associates ongoing research demonstrates that tracking metrics

is important to evaluating recruiting performance. Recruiting managers

who measure their cost-savings (e.g., in vendor fees or time required to

source a candidate) not only lower their total cost of recruiting, but also

can better explain the quantitative value of their efforts to the company

as a whole.

Not incidentally, the companies we spoke with believe that they are

hiring a higher caliber of candidate today than they were before they

began using LinkedIn Recruiter. Whether this is due to greater ease of

targeting candidates or to the significant investment these companies

have made in training staff on how to use LinkedIn Recruiter is not

clear. To these companies, however, the benefits are clearly tangible.

Using LinkedIn Recruiter, Red Hat and Pfizer, Inc. report that they were

able to:

• Addressstrategicglobaltalentacquisitionandperformance

management needs;

• Useasocialnetworkingstrategyandsolutionforrecruitertraining

and recruitment brand building needs;

• Monitorandmeasuretalentacquisitionperformanceinternally;

• Buildrelationshipswithtargettalentonascaleheretofore

unmatched; and,

• Reduceoverallhiringbudgets.

Case in Point: Red Hat Lowers Cost of Recruiting (cont’d)

Consider

incomplete

profiles. Red Hat

recruiters found

that top candidates

were so busy at

work, they had

not taken time

to update their

profiles. As the

company’s senior

director of talent

acquisition and

infrastructure

noted, “Those

are probably the

people we want

to target.”

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Social Media in Recruiting: First Steps

For organizations actively recruiting, this research offers some guidance

on how to enhance and elevate those efforts, including the following.

• Ifthemajorityofcandidateswhothecompanyhashiredoris

targeting to hire is on LinkedIn, then LinkedIn Recruiter may prove

to be a useful tool. Both Red Hat and Pfizer executives told us that

this knowledge convinced them to invest in LinkedIn Recruiter.

• Evaluateyourtalentacquisitiongoalsbeforecommittingtoasocial

recruiting strategy. Start with a pilot program and evaluate its

results before going global.

• Deployacustomizedregion-by-regionrollout.Whatworksin

Europe, for example, does not necessarily work in Latin America.

Companies interviewed here had the flexibility to use a variety of

different products, depending upon the regional team’s needs.

• Rolloutenhancedcorporateprofilepagesandcareerpages

targeted to specific regions and functions.

• Encouragerecruiterstobuildrobustandmeaningfulpersonal

profiles. Recruiters with good personal profiles have the highest

response rates and the most conversions. Recruiters who do not

seem to be authentic or well-informed about the jobs they are

seeking to fill are less successful. Pfizer has done significant training

with its recruiting teams to teach them how to build their own

personal recruitment “brands,” including training them to write

effective InMails.

• Thecompaniesparticipatinginthisresearchsharedtheactivities

which their recruiting leadership cited as most critical to the success

of these programs:

o Provide ongoing training;

o Build annual training and host monthly drop-in webinars for all

recruiters using the application;

o Develop tools to educate hiring managers and colleague groups

on effective usage of LinkedIn;

Encourage

recruiters to

build robust

and meaningful

personal profiles.

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o Monitor quarterly recruiter usage rates and InMail response

rates region by region to best determine how to improve

training; and,

o Add LinkedIn usage rates and “Who’s Viewed This Job” analytics

to the recruiters’ dashboards.

• Encouragerecruitingteamstogiveequalcredencetoincomplete

(or “skeleton”) profiles on LinkedIn. Red Hat recruiters found that

many top candidates have incomplete profiles. A likely explanation

is that they are so busy at work they have not had time to update

their profiles, but were likely the very candidates the company most

wanted to attract.

• Sharebestpractices;partnerwithcorporatecommunicationsto

make sure that the company speaks with one brand “voice.”

• Leveragescaletosavecostsanddevelopasocialmediapolicy.

• Employeesarethebestbrandambassadors.Engagethemin

promoting the company’s image as a good place to work and

feature them in the company’s social media. Their personalized

presence often establishes the emotional connection that top

candidates seek.

Conclusion

Bersin & Associates sees social marketing tools transforming global

recruiting practices. In today’s talent wars, companies which exploit the

cutting-edge potential of social networking have discovered that they

can hire faster and smarter. They have successfully and economically

targeted an expansive pool of top talent through collaborative hiring

processes that are enabled by social networking. The exploding

popularity of sites, such as LinkedIn, is revolutionizing recruiting –

allowing companies to expand their searches for top talent around the

globe in minutes.

In today’s talent

wars, companies

which exploit

the cutting-edge

potential of social

networking have

discovered that

they can hire faster

and smarter.

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Documents

Casestudy Bersin Pfizer Red Hat[1]