Ever since my earliest of days in this industry I’ve be fascinated by Corporate Career Sites. It’s also become very clear to me in recent years that career sites should absolutely be the focal point of the new approaches we are seeing in recruitment marketing. Unfortunately I don’t think many employers have realised just how critical their career site is to their recruiting success.
One person who does understand this though is my guest this week. Adam Templeman is Head of Commercial Staffing at QuintilesIMS. He has recently helped launched a new careers site for the organization and has some great insights to share.
In the interview we discuss:
• How recruitment marketing challenges have stayed the same but the answers have changed
• The vital importance of engaging with target audiences
• Using rich, dynamic and targeted content on career sites
• Getting ATS integration right to increase conversions and improve candidate experience
• Matching employer brand to employee experience
Adam also gives us his views on the importance of automation and talks about what is next for QuintilesIMS
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Format. Format are the market leaders in providing award winning career sites to employers such as npower, View, Atkins and Muller. The secret to the great results Format delivers for its clients is complete focus on the candidate experience, including long term passive candidate engagement, while at the same time ensuring rock solid and completely seamless integration with the ags. To download Format’s free ebook on planning and implementing a new careers website, go to www.bit.lycareers website or to find out more about their services go to www. Format.com and format is spelt with the number 4 then M A T.
Matt Alder [00:01:10]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 96 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Ever since my earliest of days working in this industry, I’ve had a fascination for corporate career sites. It’s also become very clear to me in the last few years that career sites should absolutely be the focal point of the new approaches we’re seeing in recruitment marketing. Unfortunately, I don’t think many employers have realised just how critical their career site is to their recruiting success. One person who does understand this though is my guest this week. Adam Templeman is head of Commercial staffing at QuintilesIMS. He’s recently helped launch a new career site for the organization and has some great insights to share. Hi Adam and welcome to the podcast.
Adam Templeman [00:02:05]:
Hi.
Matt Alder [00:02:06]:
So great to have you on the show. Could you tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Adam Templeman [00:02:14]:
Yeah, sure. So I’m currently the director for staffing at QuintilesIMS. So we run a, or I look after an organization of about 50 people across EMEA where we predominantly provide outsourced solutions for medical sales reps. And being here now just a year looking at rolling out some new technology, having spent, gosh, too many years in recruitment, starting off in agency world and then moving to outsourced and then in house and as I say, yeah, moved here to Quinton’s IMs just over a year ago.
Matt Alder [00:02:52]:
Now. One of the things that we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast in the last 12 months or so is recruitment marketing and I’m just kind of really interested to get the perspective of, you know, someone who’s actually working in house and sort of running this on the, running this on the ground in terms of how recruitment marketing is working in practice. So could you sort of tell us a little bit about some of the challenges that you have and how you’re sort of using recruitment marketing to solve them.
Adam Templeman [00:03:24]:
Yeah, sure. I mean, I think, I think from quite a generic perspective, in a few organizations I’ve worked in now, you know, there’s been a different sort of level of maturity from a recruitment marketing perspective and that’s, I guess, given me an opportunity in those organisations to really develop some sort of methodology around, you know, what we need to do. But as the years have passed, obviously the challenges remain the same, but perhaps the answer has been a little different in terms of some of the things that we can use and what we need to do. I do believe now candidates are quite savvy in the marketplace, you know, pretty much at all levels. And I think it’s very much for us now to be able to identify target groups of individuals and really do our homework and research around where these people are in order to, you know, in order to fish in that what could be a relatively small pond. And it’s using lots of different channels, I guess, to be able to go out and identify those individuals. I do think that the age of the candidate, the consumer, for want of a better term, wanting to engage with an organization and sort of browse its content before it buys is really important. So I think any opportunity where we can get a good level of engagement, be it through social media, be it through career sites, alumni, classic email marketing, those sorts of engagements where an individual has somewhere that they can go and see what we offer as an organization and then give them that opportunity to effectively buy. So apply. But there’s lots of good technology out there that can help support us in, in saying that, hey, we know that you looked at our organisation, but come on, why don’t you now apply? So I think that engagement for me is the key and moving forward, certainly the organisation I’m with now, that’s something that we’re working very hard to capitalise on and to get that pull. I also think alongside that, it’s very important for the organization to have a very strong message, brand, recruit a brand that the potential candidate can engage with, but then also that needs to follow through the organisation. So once the individual has joined, they still need to get that sense of continuity, the way that they flow through the organisation via internal moves or promotions. And sometimes I think that the external face of recruitment marketing isn’t always as joined up with the internal piece around communication as it could be. Does that answer your question?
Matt Alder [00:06:21]:
Yes, it does. And I kind of want to talk a little bit more about the engagement stuff and some of the tools and technologies that you’re using or that you’re seeing in a minute. But before we do that, just interesting, you know, thoughts that you said about how the challenges of the challenges are similar but the tools and techniques may have changed from a. From a kind of a. Right, the sort of top of the funnel attention advertising perspective. What do you think’s changed in terms of how you initially get the attention of the potential candidates that you want to engage with?
Adam Templeman [00:07:03]:
I mean, I think years and years ago, you know, it used to be show age now, but print media and that’s relatively static I think now my point was identifying your target audience, knowing what your target audience looks at. And unfortunately for us, it’s a multitude of many different types of media. So from a recruitment marketing perspective, we need to be in as many different places, I think as we can, but in order then to channel that communication to 1.1 focus where they can browse content about us as an organization. So, you know, an example might be that we would do some advertising on Facebook, but that would always push them back to the Careers website. And the Careers website now is not just a portal to apply, of course, it is that which is very important, but it’s also a focal point where the external applicant can get rich content and engagement to inform them whether they would want to work for our organisation. So I think there’s so many different channels now that we need to be in. Some of them are relatively cheap, which is good. So you can get some digital media which is not that expensive and you can use it in lots of different ways and in lots of different places. But for me it’s always pointing that individual back to like a central hub, which I would call the career site, in order to inform, engage and hopefully convert to an application in terms of.
Matt Alder [00:08:41]:
The Careersite, can we sort of talk a little bit more about that? What sort of tools and technologies do you see available within the Career site space that are sort of particularly useful for engaging and converting this interest?
Adam Templeman [00:08:56]:
Yeah, I mean, we’ve literally just launched a new Careers website for our commercial business across Europe, actually went live yesterday in the UK and it’s been rolled out across commerce Europe within the next two or three weeks. One of the, I guess, smart pieces within the website is that it is very personalized, so it gives a very personalized experience to the user. So as an example, and one that’s probably used quite widely now, this is that sort of Amazon shopping experience. So when an individual lands on the site and starts to look at content that’s relevant to them. The site will remember that the next time they visit and only show content that is relevant to that individual. You looked at a job like this, perhaps you’re interested in a job like this, which is obviously similar content. So it’s very much a sort of a shopping experience and each journey for that user is different to the next person. It’s all self contained on that site. The site also allows us to change content quite rapidly. And you know, that can be quite challenging when you’re in a large corporate because of the control, because of the governance that’s required around some of the things that you want to put externally. But if you put those controls in place at a lower level than, you know, maybe the corporate marketing function, I think you can start to get what is quite a dynamic and engaging site, which means the user would want to return to it. Because as I say, it’s not just a portal for application, it’s an area where somebody can actually browse and find out interesting information. That information is changing. I mean, our sort of static brochure content on the site is probably only three or four pages. The rest of the site is dynamic content, which is constantly changing, which keeps the customer, which is obviously the candidate, interested in what it is that we do.
Matt Alder [00:11:05]:
And in terms of converting that engagement and that interest into applications, in the past there’s always been a bit of an issue in terms of the sort of handoff between a career site and an ATS and the consistency in that customer service process, if you like. Is that something that you’re seeing being solved with some of the new technologies that are available?
Adam Templeman [00:11:30]:
Yeah. So, I mean, that’s a very good point. And you know, one of the issues I’ve had, and not just in this organization but in other organisations, this is exactly what you say, the drop off. When somebody goes from, you know, what is predominantly a pretty decent careers website at the front end and then the application suddenly hits an ATS and you know, the drop off rate is significant. And in organizations I’ve worked for in the past, it’s been as much as 70%. And that’s, you know, that’s not good. With the current integration that we’ve got, we use Taleo and the format I’ve provided at the careers website, there’s a very neat integration that effectively allows the applicant to apply on a short form through the website with minimal information. Email is the unique identifier. Then name, address, location, phone number and cv. If it’s from a desktop and no CV is required necessarily if you’re doing it from a mobile device. That information is then pushed into Taleo and the applicant would then receive an email back to say, thank you for completing or partly completing your application. Please now complete the rest into Taleo. So the point is, there is that we’ve already captured the information, so we have name, address, email, telephone number and cd. If they then still go into the Taleo and decide that they don’t want to complete the application, that’s okay because we’ve still captured the data because it’s been pushed into Telayo. The difference is yesterday, before the site went live, they would have just gone straight into Telayo, which is where we were getting a very high drop off. So that integration between CareerSight and ATS for us is really, really important. And, you know, some of the length of, sorry, length of time of applications in ATS is painful. You know, when you, most of us now buy things online or do things online and it’s a few clicks and away you go. So for me, it’s been imperative to ensure that we can get that information from the candidate quickly and easily. I still would like it to be a better process into the ats, but that’s an ATS issue, not a careers website issue and, you know, maybe something that we’ll tackle in the future.
Matt Alder [00:14:01]:
So a bit earlier on in the conversation, you mentioned the importance of having a great employer brand, but you also mentioned the importance of that being consistent with the employee experience. How do you go about sort of achieving that consistency and kind of balancing those two things?
Adam Templeman [00:14:17]:
And it’s very difficult. You know, it’s that golden thread. I mean, in the organization I’m at now, I’m working very closely with the wider HR function, learning and development to make sure that the EVP that we’re developing as well starts to flow through so consistent messaging. And I guess I flipped that a little bit on its head. And we’re working on updating content for the new careers site, which will inform future applicants around what they can, what they will achieve and what they can expect when they work their way through the organisation. So it’s not just about this is how you apply, it’s about once you’re onboarded, this is what you can expect in the future. This is how we measure your performance, this is how we deal with promotion. So actually we’re starting to engage individuals right at the beginning of the journey, before they’ve even joined the organization. So for me, the sort of two work streams is that it’s Taking that message that we already have very strongly internally and starting to use that as a selling point to attract people into the organization. Then it’s also taking what I’m doing from the front end attraction piece to ensure that that messaging is also filtering through to the whole employee life cycle.
Matt Alder [00:15:48]:
So, final question. There’s obviously a huge amount of kind of hype and new technologies arriving almost by the day in the recruitment marketing space. Whether it’s, you know, new CRMs or artificially intelligence driven systems or virtual reality or whatever it might be. From what you’re seeing, what, what looks interesting in terms of the future, what, what, where do you think we’re going and what’s going to sort of what’s going.
Adam Templeman [00:16:17]:
I mean, that’s really interesting because I think I started off this conversation by saying it really depends on the maturity of the organization you work in. So, you know, a lot of the things that you’ve talked about I think, you know, will be very relevant in the future. But the future for one organization I think will be very different to the future for another organisation. And this may sound a little bit old hat and we were talking about video interviewing years and years ago, but you know, for us as an organisation that is absolutely where we need to go. So if I look at sort of my roadmap within this organization, I think, you know, video interviewing automation of that process to take away a lot of the administrative tasks that we would have in that recruitment process, I think is key. And if there are other technologies that allow me to do, in other words, take away a lot of the administrative burden that’s put on some of the recruiters, then that’s something that we would definitely move to in terms of out there technologies. I love my technology, but I’m probably not the right person to answer that question. But as I say, my focus here will definitely be around that automation and actually rolling out video interview.
Matt Alder [00:17:38]:
Adam, thank you very much for talking to me.
Adam Templeman [00:17:40]:
No problem. Thank you, Matt.
Matt Alder [00:17:42]:
My thanks to Adam Templeman. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes on Stitcher or download the show app on your smartphone. Just search for recruiting future in your app store. You can listen to all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about working with me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
