PathMotion took a look at all the bot-driven conversations on its platforms to see what candidates wanted to know more about. This isn't what candidates said they wanted, it's what they asked for, so if you don't know what to add to your career site and social channels, this is a solid starting point for a content map. I will caution and say that Universum's data (day job alert!) agrees with a lot of these conclusions, they aren't equally true across the board for all audiences. Just keep that in mind.

This is a great article on the seven trends in ecommerce for 2020, which are all applicable to any employer brand pro: personalization, digital savvy, and developing a real candidate experience STRATEGY (remember: if you invert your "strategy" and it isn't a strategy, you didn't have a strategy in the first place).

Universum’s Employer Branding NOW 2020 survey, now in its fifth year, shows best-in-class talent leaders are quickly adapting to the new-normal of Covid-19. STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN, July 2, 2020 – Universum’s much-anticipated Employer Branding NOW 2020 study, conducted during the pandemic’s surge months in early 2020, shows the World’s Most Attractive Employers do not expect a hiring …

Brands are things humans build feelings around. Are you thinking about what emotions you want to encourage and when?

Has anyone come across a legitimately good (not “good enough”) talent community? I still haven’t. But I have hope that it can be done, especially when I see consumer-side communities grow. Here are some examples on a strong community and how they got that way. P.S. the word “community” suggests two-way communication. P.P.S. If you think spamming people with open requisitions is a “valuable service,” try again.

On the recruitment marketing side of things, we are faced with a slew of cool tools to help us place our message in front of people who just visited our career site, or are a lot like people who follow our Facebook page. There are two issues with that. One, most of us are just pushing out lame job ads to these people, as if applying for a job is the same as downloading a whitepaper (it’s not). Two, we don’t spend time thinking about how or why the tools are designed to work. We just get thrilled by the “extra clicks” or “deeper awareness” rather than thinking through how to use the tools properly. So here’s a Hubspot article on how to approach your behavior-targeted ad (I bet you didn’t even know that that was what that was called).

What’s wrong with corporate job interviews? Pretty much everything. Interviews are the second most used and “flawed” tool in HR (right after performance appraisals). They are used and relied on around the world for hiring, transfers, promotions, and for selecting leaders. After studying and researching interviews for over 40 years, I find it laughable when…For all the work you do in establishing and instilling/imbuing your brand throughout all the various touch points of the candidate’s brand experience (bigger than the “candidate experience”), there’s one place where it tends to fall apart: the interview. The interview is like talking 6 months of potential brand interactions and compressing them into an intense 1-3 hour live session (virtual or not). Worse than that, they are always happening and they are always out of your control. Let’s be clear a bad 30 minute interview is the difference between a positive or negative experience, between a 1 star and 5 star review, and between a yes and a no. So here’s a list of the 50 biggest issues with interviews. Ignore the fact that it is a 8-year-old article: it will let you blueprint ways in which to influence better brand experience into this crucial experience.

My feeling on over-indexing on candidate experience are well known (your CX should reflect your brand and work reality, not just “white glove”), but there are still great online ways to engage talent online outside of tests and (god help us all) the ATS. Here are some examples from the consumer world we could all steal ideas from.

We always like to talk about engaging candidates, but… what constitutes “engagement?” An impression? A like? A click? Watching a video? Signing up for your newsletter (I won’t call it a talent “community” until you let members talk to each other)? How long does it take to become engaged in your brand? Perhaps we’re measuring the wrong thing. Rather than focus on an action, maybe engagement is a function of time and intensity.

Companies have to hire the best, but that won’t be enough. They’ll also need to rethink how they reskill and upskill their people.