Content marketing and its critical role in recruitment marketing and employer branding is a topic very close to my heart and something we have covered many times on the podcast. One of the most challenging aspects for any talent acquisition content strategy is often generating the content itself. So how can employers be effective at content marketing in a time of shrinking budgets and smaller teams?
My guest this week is Anthony Jones, Global Head of Talent Brand at Rockwell Automation. Over the last two years, Anthony has built in house content creation and digital marketing capability to address Rockwell Automation’s recruiting challenges. He has some excellent insights and advice to share.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The recruiting challenges at Rockwell Automation
• The approach to Talent Branding
• Standing out in the places that matter by using content to get attention.
• Building capability to produce unique content
• The importance of specialists in talent acquisition and the key skills required
• Types of content and the importance of doing things differently
• Why authenticity is critical
• The role of technology
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:13]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 282 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Content marketing and its critical role in recruitment, marketing and employer branding is topic very close to my heart and something we’ve covered many times on the podcast. One of the most challenging aspects for any talent acquisition, content strategy, is often generating the content itself. So how can employers be effective at content marketing in a time of shrinking budgets and smaller teams? My guest this week is Anthony Jones, Global Head of Talent Brand at Rockwell Automation. Over the last two years, Anthony has built in house content creation and digital marketing capability to address Rockwell Automation’s recruiting challenges and has some excellent insights and advice to share. Hi Anthony and welcome to the podcast.
Anthony Jones [00:02:15]:
Hey Matt, nice to be here and appreciate being able to join you on this conversation.
Matt Alder [00:02:20]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself as and tell everyone what you do?
Anthony Jones [00:02:25]:
Sure, yeah. My name is Anthony Jones and I’m the head of Global Talent Brand at Rockwell Automation. I say that my job is to make sure our company stands out in the places that matter. I happen to lead a small creative digital team that looks for really every possible way to create what I refer to as smart and emotional connections between our company. So Rockwell Automation and future talent.
Matt Alder [00:02:47]:
So tell us a little bit more about Rockwell Automation. What does a company do and what are the main recruiting challenges which you face?
Anthony Jones [00:02:54]:
Yeah, we’re a company that really looks at increasing productivity, flexibility and sustainability for industrial companies. So all these big enterprises, I would say that we’re unique in the sense that no one can do it better because we’re in a unique position to be able to combine it, which is information technology with ot, so plant floor operations technology. You know, much of what we do as a company is behind the scenes from the car you drive to the food you eat, to the medicines you use. We’re essentially a company that combines industrial manufacturing, know how with the latest digital technology to solve problems for these big companies. And really our goal is to help them make better decisions. So we do a lot with, with the data, with our software and with the technology that we use so that they can operate more efficiently. In terms of recruiting challenges, I would say right now what’s unique is that we are becoming like a lot of different companies. You know, we’re going through our own digital transformation, but we’re also a company helping other companies go through their digital transformation. And so as we evolve and we become more of this technology company, we are looking for software engineers, which is essentially, you know, we’re traditionally, we have a lot of industrial engineers working for us and now we’re looking for software developers and more technical talent to help us evolve. And so the biggest challenge is, I guess I feel like brand awareness. You know, there’s not a, unless you’re in, you know, going to school for industrial automation or you’re already in the industrial automation space and you’re dealing with our products. You don’t really know who we are much because of what I mentioned before. We’re behind the scenes. And so I would say that that’s one of the biggest challenges is trying to, to get the attention of that particular audience. So the more technical audience, software engineers, developers, data scientists, that sort of stuff and really trying to convince them that, hey, you know, we are doing some really cutting edge things at our company. You know, come work for us, use your skills to, to help us evolve.
Matt Alder [00:05:02]:
So I’m really interested to find out more about the strategies you’re using to solve those challenges. Before we do though, when you were sort of talking about talent branding in your introduction, you mentioned building emotional connections with, with audiences. Tell us a little bit more definition and approach to talent brand.
Anthony Jones [00:05:20]:
Yeah, you know, I think, you know, my definition around talent brand is really around how the, the world, prospective candidates, employees, how they talk about Rockwell Automation or how they perceive us. Right. And then on the employer brand side that’s basically, you know, our, what I try to drive is authenticity, but basically what we can offer as a workplace to people that want to come work for us. And so yeah, so anyway, so that’s, so that’s my definition of what that is. Back to your point about creating those emotional connections. I think it’s really important, especially now people have a lot of access to information upfront, much like how consumers have around products. And so they’re able to do research and they’re able to look into whatever they’re about to consume. And like in our case, if they want to come work for us, so if they’re about to apply and whatnot. And so we want to be able to again, you know, especially because we want. We don’t want them to join our company and not. And feel like we’ve kind of duped them. So we want them to understand what it’s like to work for us. Some of the neat things that we’re working on, what our culture is like, what makes us uniquely who we are, we want to be able to showcase that. And that’s what we try to do with, with our employer brand.
Matt Alder [00:06:39]:
Tell us a bit more about your strategy. How are you getting attention of the target audiences that you mentioned?
Anthony Jones [00:06:44]:
Yeah, I would say. I would say it’s a couple different things. One is, and everyone’s going to be at a different place with their employer brand. There’s. Some companies are very mature. I would say that when I took on this role, which was about two years ago, this team didn’t exist. And at the time, the talent leader who created this team saw it as one of the biggest gaps on his team. Because we were having challenges with attracting talent, because we didn’t have anything that existed that our recruiters could use to do that, to showcase what it’s like to work here, to be able to convince them that this is a great place to work. And so for me, it was really around, how are we going to create compelling content? I do believe that in order to attract attention, it needs to be really effective content. And typically that effective content is driven by the quality of it. But we were going to need to be able to create content really quickly and figure out how to scale that globally. We are a global company, so multinational company, and we’ve got talent needs all over the world. And so we had to figure out how are we going to be able to create this content in a meaningful way to help support all the different hiring initiatives we have across the company, Especially in the absence of what I would refer to as a formalized evp, an employer brand. And so we had to figure that out. So part of our strategy was just, how are we going to. How are we going to create really interesting content that authentically showcases who we are so that we can get them to want to come work for us?
Matt Alder [00:08:25]:
Tell us a little bit more about how you’ve built the capability to. To do that. A lot of companies who, who are kind of building a strategy in this area will try and get their recruiters to produce content or maybe work with an external agency. What kind of approach have you taken to build that content generation capability?
Anthony Jones [00:08:45]:
Yeah, great question. You know, for us, and again, every, every, every company has a unique situation for how they might approach this, but for us, it was a couple of different things. One is, we knew again, we needed to create content fast. And back when I, when I made my comment about how prior to our team existing, there wasn’t any content that existed, the truth is there, there was some that was being created by, let’s just say, some of our recruiters and that sort of stuff. And they’re not professional graphic designers, they’re not professional digital content creators. And so that was one of the biggest problems that our leadership team, our talent leadership team was seeing, was that there was an inconsistency in how we were going out into the marketplace and saying who we were, how we operate, what our culture’s like. And so that was one of the issues we wanted to address. But then for us, when I was approached about this particular role, for me I knew that it was going to be a challenge, especially since we were so premature with respect to an understanding of what it takes to create, you know, to create and showcase your employer brand. I knew that we were going to have some issues securing the budget that was necessary to do that. So for me it was important to build our capabilities in house. And so I had requested right off the bat and built a business case for a filmmaker and digital content creator, essentially is what his title is, but someone that would be able to help us produce high quality videos. So he’s got the capability and the eye for filming, but then also has the technical skills to edit relatively quickly. And then the other sort of headcount that I needed was a digital marketer. A lot of what we do, what we get pulled into, is a lot of obviously hiring initiatives where we have to do recruitment, marketing. And so beyond building a strategy and doing some market research to really build out that strategy, I also needed someone that could help me execute against these campaigns, someone that could get into these systems that knew how to operate within LinkedIn to run an ad campaign versus Facebook, that sort of stuff. So anyway, it was really important for me to build this team in house in order to be able to accelerate the work and scale it as quickly as we needed to.
Matt Alder [00:10:59]:
I want to sort of dig into a bit more into in terms of the sort of workflow of how you work and how your specialists work. But before we do, you mentioned making effective content. What makes content effective for your organization?
Anthony Jones [00:11:11]:
So there’s a couple of things, and I would say I don’t necessarily have some magic formula, but this is what I believe my philosophy around it is. First is really understanding the audience that you’re trying to communicate with. So I would say that we have two types of content that we create. We have general evergreen employer brand content, which is the content that can be used across different hiring initiatives, that can be used on a career website, that sort of stuff that really showcase what it’s like to work at Rockwell. And then the other side of it is we’ve got these hiring initiatives where we might have to. We might be targeting a certain Persona, like a software engineer, for example. And what might appeal to a software engineer might be different than someone that is looking for a sales role. Right. And so we try to look at, okay, what is going to be the most effective means of reaching them. And when I refer to content, too, while I’ve got a, you know, filmmaker is typically top of mind because video, first of all, is so effective. You know, there’s data that shows that it will drive a higher rate of engagement to your career. I mean, to a website in general, which is our goal. Right. We want to drive people to a website. We want them to engage with the content and the copy on the website and then ultimately get them to take action, to convert, to apply. So anyway, so video. Video was. Is an important piece of content. We’ve got social media, we have photography. All of that, to me, is content. And for me, what I believe is that in order to get someone’s attention, it should look and feel good. It should look and feel authentic. So that’s the other thing too is we are very, very careful about the projects that we take on. We want to make sure that we can authentically speak to what it’s like to work in that department, what it’s like to work for that particular organization. And then we go and film it in a way that we believe is different than maybe what other companies are doing. And don’t get me wrong, there’s actually a lot of companies that I admire that do some really awesome content again across the spectrum, whether it’s blog posts or videos. And so we try to not only take that as inspiration, but then we try to differentiate ourselves. And I always think about, for those listening, if you go to our career site, you can go to our video section, for example, and you look at some of our videos. You’re gonna. I believe that you’re gonna think, wow, this is actually different. So, because we try to. Again, I think the message overall is gonna be authentic. It’ll be. It will reflect what it’s like to work at Rockwell. But then the way we shoot it, the way that we. The way we edit the video, I think is pretty unique.
Matt Alder [00:13:58]:
You mentioned that your recruiters were producing some content before you. You got this team set up. How does your relationship with them work now? What do you do? What. What do they do? How do you work together in the most. In the optimum way?
Anthony Jones [00:14:11]:
Yeah, you know, I think we have a great relationship, actually. And. And the truth is, is that we need each other. I don’t think that anyone was happy having to create their own content before our team existed, but they did it out of necessity. But, yeah, no, the relationship is great. And I would say we got a global team. And so it’s really important to be able to. For us to be able to work really closely with them, to understand the state of, I guess, the state of the business when it comes to candidates. What are they saying when they either choose to work for us or choose not to work for us? What are some of the roadblocks they have and then how can we best support them? I kind of like our organization to be in similar to marketing for sales and the need for those two organizations to. To be able to understand each other, what role they play, and how to best work with each other. And so we’ve got. My team meets with our various talent teams around the world often, I would say even almost weekly sometimes, to really talk about, here’s the latest things that we’ve created for you. Whether it’s just, again, a variety of different content assets. We talk about the latest technology we might have invested in that we want them to leverage, you know, so, yeah, I would say that it’s very close, close relationship.
Matt Alder [00:15:30]:
You mentioned you had a specialist digital marketer. What skills does that person have? And why did you feel you needed a specialist in that role?
Anthony Jones [00:15:40]:
Yeah, so I would say that. That the skills they have is that of a modern marketer. So they. This person, her name is Caitlin on my team, she’s. She’s worked at other companies as well, where she was doing social media, for example. She was well versed in understanding how to leverage those different channels. She stays on top of the latest trends and the latest, I guess, advertising opportunities and marketing opportunities. But, yeah, so her skills span everything from social media to our Digital footprint. So websites understanding how, I guess consumers or end users, when they end up on your landing page, what do they do with this? So she understands, you know, copywriting for those different channels, which I think is actually one of the most critical, by the way, critical skills that you can have is the ability to be able to write for the different channels. I can’t stress that enough. That is so important. There is. It takes a. It takes someone well versed in that to be able to do it in a way that will resonate with your audience. And so I would say that that’s another skill set that she has is, is the ability to copyright for those different channels. And then I guess the other skill is really just technical skills, the ability to be able to go into those different platforms and be able to set up a campaign. And we’re not even talking just social media campaigns, but even one thing that we are very focused on is nurturing candidates. So we’ve built out in partnership with the broader talent team, a talent network. So a database of candidates that have expressed an interest in working for us and have applied and we communicate with them. And she understands how to build out a campaign and a marketing automation platform that nurtures someone through their journey.
Matt Alder [00:17:25]:
You mentioned marketing automation platform there. What role does technology play in all of this? What kind of tools and technologies do you use?
Anthony Jones [00:17:34]:
Yeah, I mean, technology is so critical, is a critical component to being able to effectively reach your audience. And so, you know, in addition to having, you know, agreements with some of these different platforms of being able to run campaigns to targeted audiences, which is obviously a critical, critical component to different hiring initiatives and paid media campaigns. But yeah, marketing automation technology, we happen to leverage, you know, our marketing team’s platform. We happen to use Eloqua, which is an Oracle technology. And so anyway, that’s how we communicate with our candidates. But we’ve also got an event platform that our talent team uses, that we use at events to access information about different people that express an interest in working with us. I would say that we are at a point right now though, where we are re evaluating our tech stack and we’re taking a look at what is going to be our best investments, the best ROI that we can get out of these investments in this tech stack that’s going to be able to get us to help us meet some of our goals. Right. And so we’re looking at, we’re looking at technology around, well, really a CRM. So that’s a little bit out of scope for what my team is responsible for, but the ability to be able to get our recruiters onto a CRM where they can. And for our team as well. To be able to have access and to be able to understand how people are interacting with our digital assets and where they’re at in their journey is critical as well. One thing that I am prioritizing is technology around our website. Our website right now is fine, but it’s not, I would say it’s not as competitive as it could be. It’s very static. I want it to be more dynamic. So I’m looking and evaluating technology right now to be able to help us do that. And then the other thing is also technology around scaling video content. I mentioned I’ve got a filmmaker and we will continue to produce high quality content with him. But then we also have opportunities around being able to create videos, especially in this new virtual world where that type of video is more accepted, where we could have employees anywhere around the world be able to film a video of themselves talking about either answering a question that we have or talking about their experience so that we can then leverage it as a means of enticing other people to want to come work for us in a very authentic way. You know, so, yeah, so technology plays a absolutely critical role in, in what we do.
Matt Alder [00:20:15]:
What advice would you give to someone who was looking to really kind of scale up their approach to branding and marketing and really sort of be more strategic about the way they produce content?
Anthony Jones [00:20:25]:
Yeah, and I think, I think you have to look, I guess my advice is to look uniquely at your situation. Do you have budget limitations? Do you have skill limitations? So maybe you’ve got someone on your team, but maybe they’re not. So you just gotta look at your unique situation to be able to really understand how to best go about it. And in our situation, it was, we need to be able to create content very quickly. And so my advice is, once you understand what your situation is. So if you’ve got, if you have budget and buy in from leadership to spend that budget on content, but you don’t have in house resources, then find an agency that truly understands not only the space, but even your industry. So that would work for us. It was a little bit different. We knew we were going to have challenges around budget and we were going to be spending a lot of time educating leaders on the investments that need to be made in order to attract talent. This is very new to the company and I would say that I spent my first year doing a tremendous amount of pitching and convincing leaders that this would work if we make these investments in whether it’s paid media content, whatever, that you will reap benefits based on that. And this was new to them, so they were putting a lot of trust in us and saying that we were going to do that. And so the other piece of it was that I wanted it to be in house. And so when you do that, there’s benefits to obviously doing that, is that you could hire someone that has those capabilities and be able to churn content out very quickly. And in our case, we’ve probably produced over the past two years over 300 videos. And by the way, that’s not 300, just employer branding videos. We’ve offered support to internal comms to produce a lot of videos for our leaders. Again, because people are seeing that they get higher levels of engagement when the quality of the video is better. Right. And so anyway, we’ve been able to justify the ROI around that because we’ve been able to produce so quickly. And so, yeah, so the in house was an important thing. So I think, I just think that my advice is just before you go and make any drastic decision of either hiring an agency or making a pitch to build your team in house, really try to understand what’s going to garner the most success and where will you be able to understanding the perception of your role and the benefit that you can bring to the organization, across your senior leadership team, across the talent team, and that sort of stuff.
Matt Alder [00:23:04]:
So final question. What’s next? What’s your focus for the next 12 to 18 months?
Anthony Jones [00:23:10]:
Great question, because actually I’m having a lot of discussions right now with leadership about that. I would say that we are going to probably spend a lot more time trying to create what I refer to as employer brand content. Content that showcases our culture, our people, and, you know, and what it’s like to work for Rockwell. Right now, a lot of our focus, especially as we, you know, as we are a new team and we’re. And we were building credibility, which I can say that we definitely have. As we were doing that, in order to secure a lot of the funding we needed to create whatever we needed to create, it was all wrapped around different hiring initiatives. Right? And so those hiring initiatives typically had, you know, there was goals around those different hiring initiatives. And so a lot of what we created was for the benefit of that hiring initiative. And so while we created a lot of those assets for those different hiring initiatives, we’ve been missing out on creating things that really just showcase our culture and our people. And so that’s what we’re going to be spending a lot of time doing. We’ve been having a lot of conversations with our ergs to figure out, okay, how, how are we going to prioritize some of this work? How are we going to showcase our people in ways that are going to be meaningful for our existing employees? But then it’s also going to resonate for the different communities that might be taking an interest in working working for Rockwell.
Matt Alder [00:24:35]:
Anthony, thank you very much for talking to me.
Anthony Jones [00:24:37]:
Hey, no problem. Thanks for having me. I am such a huge fan of your show. When I took on this role, I came across your podcast and so when you had reached out with an interest in talking to me, it was a no brainer. So it’s an honor and I really appreciate joining you today.
Matt Alder [00:24:54]:
My thanks to Anthony Jones. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also make sure you follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can also listen and subscribe to the show on Spotify. You can find and search all the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
