Getting your new hires up to speed takes time, but without a positive onboarding experience, many employees lose interest. Here are five ways to keep up the momentum—and engagement—in those first few days.

So, you sent an offer letter, the candidate accepted, and now you’re ready to sit back and congratulate yourself for a job well done. Your bit isn’t over just yet. You’ve still got to onboard. For new hires, the first few days are hugely important to their future work performance, their job retention, and their overall satisfaction. Research conducted by IBM found that when employees have regrets about accepting a new job, they are three times as likely to leave. However, positive employee onboarding experiences can be a crucial first step for everyone you welcome into your organization.

But before you drop a payload of paperwork on your new hire all at once, here are five ways to maximize your onboarding, and keep new employees happy and excited about their career decision.

1. Start Onboarding Before Day One

This one sounds like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many companies wait until the last minute—or the day of—to start onboarding a new hire. The fact is, the sooner you begin, the more up to speed your new employee will be before he or she starts. It’s important to consider your employer branding—if you’re giving new hires the silent treatment between the offer letter and their first day, you’re already sending them the wrong message. Personal touches like an email that walks them through their first day, a welcome pack with a personal note or card, or even a phone call from a manager, can help ease anxieties.

More pragmatically, the time before a new hire starts is prime to begin the dreaded paperwork process. No one wants to spend their first few hours, or days, sitting in HR working their way through a mountain of forms, so send them important documents such as employee handbooks, I-9s, payroll forms, and non-disclosure agreements beforehand. Even better, set up a portal that contains digital versions of important documents that employees can complete during downtime, or throughout the week, rather than in one long sitting.

2. Make the Process Cross-Departmental with Collaborative Onboarding

Pairing up your new hire with a seasoned employee to teach them the ropes is a tried-and-true method, but maybe it’s time to try a collaborative approach, which builds rapport with other teams much faster than one-on-one onboarding. It’s a challenge for any one department to know the answer to every question to arise during onboarding, so it makes sense to rely on each team for their area of expertise—HR knows compliance; management knows performance expectations; coworkers know the day-to-day, and IT knows how to get equipment up and running.

Social-media-manager app Buffer assigns every new employee three buddies during their onboarding—leader buddy, role buddy, and culture buddy—as a way to give “a variety of interactions within and outside of their core areas”. This allows them to see how their new role fits in with the larger company structure, and can lead the way to future collaborations between departments, especially if your new hire comes in with strong ideas for projects or improvement.

3. Arrange One-on-One Time with Direct Managers

According to a recent LinkedIn survey, which polled 14,000 global professionals about preferred onboarding techniques, 96 percent responded that spending one-to-one time with their direct manager is the most important aspect of their onboarding experience. Entry-level and veteran hires benefit from learning about their responsibilities and expectations, and it gives them an opportunity to lay a solid foundation for a key work relationship. Studies show that greater supervisor support in a new hire’s first 6–21 months result in greater job satisfaction, higher engagement, and quicker salary increase over time.

4. Set Expectations and Goals Early

Uncertainty about job expectations and performance goals is a new hire’s worst enemy, which is why steps like establishing a relationship between new employees and direct managers are crucial to a new employee’s success. According to LinkedIn’s survey, understanding performance goals was the second most important aspect of onboarding. Setting goals and communicating them at the outset allows new hires to evaluate their own progress during their first few months. A formal performance review will help keep new employees on target, and allow for any course correction early on.

It’s also important you listen to new hires’ understanding of the goals and expectations. Maintaining communication will encourage even the most timid of new hires to voice honest feedback about what is or isn’t working for them—and may point out problems in your organization you didn’t know were there. SHRM reports that 38 percent of employees felt that when leaders dismiss their ideas without entertaining them, they tend to lack initiative. Don’t underestimate or waste a fresh perspective by discouraging open communication and feedback.

5. Double-Down on Company Culture, Values, and Principles

Eighty-one percent of new hires fail due to a lack of cultural fit, so proactively broadcast your company’s culture by sharing content on the company’s social media channels, include new hires in meetings or events, or feature the company history in the employee welcome packet. Be sure that your company’s Employee Value Proposition, mission statement, and guiding principles are all aligned.

At Zappos, employees who complete the five-week course focused on the company’s culture and values are offered around $4,000 to quit if they feel like the culture is not the right fit for them. Why? The company knows that poor cultural fit will impact employee engagement and performance.

Turning new hires into lasting employees isn’t rocket science, but with a thoughtful approach to how you onboard, you can set up your organization—and your new coworkers—for both short- and long-term success

With candidates viewing a job ad for less than a minute on average, recruiters can’t waste time with these common mistakes.

Picture this. It’s Friday morning. You’re ready for another great day of recruiting, a steaming coffee sits on the desk next to you. This is your zen place.

You fire up your laptop, ready to write a stellar job ad, when it hits you – this seemingly simple copy is actually super important! You can’t just write a ‘whatever’  job ad. This post will be the first point of contact for candidates to the open role, and maybe even your company.

You start downing your coffee and typing furiously. ‘This ad has to be perfect!’ you think. ‘Unless I want to have as much impact as a fly has on a windshield.’

Well, not to alarm you further, but according to a recent study, most job seekers spend a measly 49.7 seconds reviewing a job ad before clicking away.

So, it’s clear the stakes are high, but let’s return to our calm place… put down the coffee, give your keyboard a break, and let’s go over the hallmarks of a successful job ad, and the terrible, no-good, please-don’t-do-thats to avoid at all costs.

1. Sugar-Coating the Company Culture

When writing a job posting, you want to reflect your organization’s culture and connect back to your core values. Now, what you don’t want to do is sugarcoat things and mention values your company doesn’t actually live.  Make sure you are being upfront in your job ads to attract top talent with the right mix of hard and soft skills that would make a great cultural fit.

Why?

If you say your company is ‘all about work-life balance’ when really you expect workers to pull long nights and be reachable at all times, the charade will be up once the new hire starts. Ultimately, the reality will hit them that they were sold a false bill of goods. When that happens, be prepared to see them leave and don’t be surprised when the negative Glassdoor review follows.

Here’s an example of how to be real about your company culture:

We are looking for a Social Media Marketing Specialist who thrives on teamwork and accountability. If you are not OK with hard startup culture, this place might not be a good fit for you…

2. Staying Silent on Benefits and Perks

Lean on your strengths. If your company has great benefits or perks be sure to flaunt them — remote work options, dog-friendly environment, stellar dental plan, public transit passes, whatever it is, candidates will be interested.

Why?

Having selling points in your job ads that showcase how different you are, sets you apart from the competition. Creating these positive differentiators is important, especially if your brand is relatively unknown.

Here is an example of how to showcase benefits:

If you join our team, you won’t have to leave your furry friend alone at home all day, here at our company we have a dog-friendly office. Speaking of friendly, we are also eco-friendly, we encourage our employees to make use of public transit by offering free monthly passes.

3. Using Meaningless Buzzwords

We all want to hire someone who is: A laser-focused self-starter who can hit the ground running with a blue sky thinking to join our team.

So while you might think that cramming your job advert with buzzwords and fancy wording can make you sound more knowledgeable, it actually comes off as vague and lazy; it may even negatively affect your application rate.

Why?

Did you know that 64 percent of job seekers will not apply for a position if they do not understand what it is about? So, make sure to use specific and simple language that actually resonates with your audience. (If you don’t know who your audience is, this article can help you define your candidate persona.)

Here’s an example of a job ad with specific language:

“The ideal candidate is a product manager with a deep understanding of programmatic advertising and machine learning algorithms as they relate to job boards, advertising, and overall job distribution.” – SmartRecruiters, Product Manager Job Post.

4. Not Going Mobile Friendly

Here is some food for thought: Only 42 percent of recruitment sites are mobile friendly, yet 50 percent of candidates use their smartphones to look for and apply to jobs.

Why?

Mobile search is easy! People scroll through ads while watching TV, or maybe even at work. If you manage to tick the mobile box, you will be able to tap into a much larger candidate pool.

Here’s an easy checklist:

• Under 700 words
• Optimized for one-click apply
• Formatted to fit mobile screens

(Check out common mistakes of mobile recruiting!)

Final Thoughts

Often, the best candidates are already employed aka ‘passive talent’, but that shouldn’t dissuade your recruiting efforts. In fact, 51percent of those who do have jobs are searching for new ones or watching for openings. So, your job ad still counts!

If you manage to avoid these job advertisement writing pitfalls, you will max out the odds of sourcing your next Elon Musk.

Sometimes it’s hard to discern which benefits are trendy and which will actually improve employee quality of life. We talk with PayScale to learn the difference.

This year Seattle Business Magazine named PayScale the top place to work in Seattle. No easy feat in the Emerald city with competition from tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon, and the siren call of San Francisco and Silicon Valley constantly ringing up the coast. Tech talent is scarce and flighty, but also most crucial to a company’s success, according to a recent report from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. So how do you not only attract, but keep, this sought-after talent?

The answer for PayScale is work-life balance. “We see our employees as whole people,” says Caitlin Williams, the company’s senior talent acquisition partner. “All our benefits are designed to benefit people as people, not people as workers.”

“Yes!” agrees Chris Stiemert, director of talent acquisition. “Most of what we do is listen to our employees and learn what they need and want.”

For PayScale, employee empowerment is the north star, and they are relentlessly experimenting to see what works. Almost more interesting than the benefits they keep are the ones they leave out – and why!

How do you make sure your programs are meaningful, and not just trendy?

Chris

I’ve worked at companies that had free soda, food, you name it, but you start to realize that the underlying purpose of these perks is to keep people in the office, working. We try to focus on what will actually move the needle in terms of retention and quality of life.

Caitlin

I totally agree. I think a lot of companies focus on things that are really fun to hear about at the outset but, in the end, aren’t about genuine care for employees, or long-term productivity and wellbeing. “We Hire Whole People” isn’t just a tagline for us, and we try to carve out benefits that speak to “a person” rather than an “employee”.

Caitlin, what makes PayScale the top place to work in Seattle?

I’ve worked in several different areas of the tech industry – biotech, ecommerce, software as a service, etc. What stands out to me after three years at PayScale is how it invests in its employees in two essential ways: career/professional development, and overall health/well-being.

• Professional/Career Development: We offer an array of development courses, and we also employ leadership and career coaches that help our employees uplevel both hard and soft skills.
• Health and Wellness: This last year we opened a gym on the basement level of our building for PayScale employees. We host free weekly yoga classes and stock the office with fresh fruits and sparkling waters. The other piece of this health and wellness initiative is “Independence week”, where this year we experimented with shutting down the office for the entire week of July 4th to give folks a great mid-year reset that most workers only get during the winter holidays.  

Chris, why does PayScale take employee happiness so seriously?

We start from a place of believing that happy employees ultimately means better business. All these things—happy hours, decorating the office for Halloween, providing snacks, and offering workout facilities follow naturally from this idea and create an environment where employees feel safe and happy so we can have transparent conversations around all aspects of work.

There’s always going to be a new opportunity in this tech market. We’re competing with Amazon, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Dropbox, and Snapchat, and many others. So, of course, we need something unique, but it’s more than that – we really feel that treating employees well is the right way to run a business. Our ability to source and retain talent just proves that point further.

That makes no sense. But as companies scrap the paid-time-off quota, this eye-popping perk ends up doing more for bottom lines than tan lines.

“The United States is the only advanced economy in the world that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation days and paid holidays,” says John Schmitt, senior economist and co-author of a recent Center for Economic and Policy Research study. The US also lacks legislation defining a work week’s maximum length, has no paid sick leave requirements, and no laws to guarantee maternity or paternity leave.

Without a legally mandated number of paid holidays, workers presume to appear less dedicated—or more, replaceable—if they take a proper vacation, and every year, the majority of US workers leave several paid days unredeemed. And the American state of vacay shows little sign of improvement.

In response—and hoping to seem altruistic—some organizations have implemented unlimited paid time off (PTO), touting the policy as the ultimate work perk. Unlimited vacation? Well, yes. But while attractive in theory, these policies often end up serving company interests more than employees.

As far back as 1983, Americans averaged 20 days off a year. According to Project:Time Off, that number had dropped to 16 days by 2014. Only in the last year has it slightly increased to 17 days. In 2017, 52 percent of American workers did not take any time off, a national tally of 705 million unused days, up from 662 million days the year before. On top of this, 85.8 percent of men and 66.5 percent of women reported working more than 40 hours per week.

Conversely, the European Union guarantees minimum 20 paid days per year, excluding bank holidays, with many specific countries offering even more generous time-off policies.

John Schmitt’s CEPR study found the current number of paid vacation days for US workers, on average, is 10 days.

Is the American work ethic to blame for such discrepancy, or is it our self-inflicted culture of overwork, and making ourselves constantly available for work? France recently implemented a “right to disconnect” law, which, as of January 2017, prohibits staff from sending or answering emails outside of set work hours. Meanwhile, according to Project:Time Off, job issues had the most influence on why Americans weren’t traveling, be it heavy workloads, lack of colleague support, or fear of being replaced.

Aiming to adopt a more European attitude, organizations like Netflix and LinkedIn implemented unlimited PTO, and they’ve made for happier and healthier employees. At Nav, a business credit management firm, CEO Levi King did so because, “even if it’s just symbolic, it reinforces the fact that we hired you because you seem like the type of person who can handle a little freedom.”

King argues that unlimited PTO “translates into more gratitude for the job and an even stronger, deeper commitment to the company.” However, “unlimited PTO only works if you’ve hired smart, hardworking people who’ve bought into the vision, mission and values of your company.”

Still, 40 percent of employees report being unsure their company wants them to use all the vacation time they earn. Workplace optics precede the beach for many US workers.

To solve this, you need the kind of company culture building nurtured at giants like Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Tech’s big four, known collectively as FANG, have built employer brands that attract talent almost as fast as they generate profit. Not many companies outside Silicon Valley maintain culture where unlimited PTO wouldn’t be seen as antithetical, even blasphemous. Portland, maybe. But with a collective worth valued at more than $1.5 trillion—about the same as the Russian economy—the FANGs are well positioned to reward hard-working employees with these kinds of perks.

But who says unlimited PTO’s a perk, anyway? One of the strongest arguments against is that companies benefit more than employees.

What?

Yep. By nixing holiday totals, businesses are no longer required to pay out unused vacation hours otherwise accrued through traditional policies, saving organizations considerable costs during times of employee turnover.

Last year, Americans forfeited 212 million days, equivalent to $62.2 billion in lost benefits. This means employees effectively donated an individual average of $561 in work time to their employers. That’s not exactly a worker perk.

The solution? Shorter work weeks. New Zealand trust and estate management firm, Perpetual Guardian, experimented with 32-hour work weeks during March and April 2018, while continuing to pay their 240 employees their regular salary. Two researchers studied the effects of this experiment and found that:

• Employees reported a 24 percent improvement in work-life balance.
• Meetings were reduced from two hours to 30 minutes.
• Employees created “do not disturb” signals to notify their colleagues they needed to work without distraction.

Above all, employees remained productive their whole time in the office.

Jarrod Haar, an HR professor at the Auckland University of Technology, and one of the researchers who worked on this project, told the New York Times, “Their actual job performance didn’t change when doing it over four days instead of five … supervisors said staff were more creative, their attendance was better, they were on time, and they didn’t leave early or take long breaks.”

A similar experiment took place in Gothenburg in 2016, when Swedish nursing home Svartedalens mandated a six-hour day without pay cut. City officials saw employees sharply reduce absenteeism, improve health, and complete the same amount of work—or even more.

So far, no US firms have gone in for shorter work-days or -weeks, but both businesses and employees stand to gain from more generous time-off policies.

“Companies encouraging vacation may realize it is a competitive advantage,” Schmitt claims. “Employees who feel supported in taking vacation are happier with their job, company, relationships, and health, allowing them to bring their best selves to the job when they are on the clock.”

Tech has increasingly become a young person’s hustle, but excluding older workers could be hurting tech companies’ futures.

In Silicon Valley, the median age of employees at titans such as Facebook and Google is under 30 years old. FB founder Mark Zuckerberg and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla opine that “young people are just smarter”, and “people over 45 die in terms of new ideas”. It’s no wonder the demand for “digital natives” is leaving older workers at a disadvantage. While it would be hard to fault such logic, we still have to ask: is big tech’s discrimination against an aging workforce hurting its future self?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2030, workers aged 55 and older will constitute nearly 30 percent of the American workforce. This will impact cross-sector industries on a global scale—from e-commerce to financial and business services, even manufacturing. “The whole globe is aging,” says Joyce DeMonnin, Communications & Media Relations Director at AARP. “People have longer lifespans and fewer children, but another consideration is that older people are also your customers.”

And as such, it’s time for tech companies to check their ageist bias, from their job ads to their hiring practices. To speak more about identifying and eliminating ageism in the workplace, we invited Joyce DeMonnin from AARP Oregon; Emilia D’Anzica, founder of Customer Growth Advisors; and Scott Hernandez, Global Head of Recruiting at StubHub; to our Hiring Success Conference in San Francisco. You can watch their full presentation in the video embedded above, or read on for a summary of each presenter’s talk.

Joyce DeMonnin, Communications & Media Relations Director at AARP Oregon

Working in education and policy with AARP, Joyce raises awareness of how older workers are often undervalued as employees. Organizations may wonder if older workers are staying relevant or current, but DeMonnin says businesses need to “understand and judge someone on their passion, purpose, and what they can bring to their organization,” and not just see them as out-of-touch or ready for the glue factory.

“Older workers have a lot of knowledge, skill, ability, and talent,” she argues. “They also have lots of connections, they’re great mentors, and stay passionate about being engaged.”

What’s more, businesses that fail to eliminate ageist biases may face legal ramifications under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), which protects applicants and employees 40 years or older from discrimination during the hiring process, promotions, and job terminations. As DeMonnin points out, even the language used in job descriptions can be enough to violate the ADEA, making writing analysis tools like Textio invaluable when creating job ads with truly neutral language.

Emilia D’Anzica, Founder at Customer Growth Advisors

Having spent over a decade working in tech, Emilia D’Anzica was shocked to find she was being replaced because company leadership wanted “fresh blood”. Her next task was to select and train her replacement before her unceremonious departure. Rather than give into anger and disappointment, Emilia found a job that enabled her to mentor and inspire other business leaders about biases in the workplace.

“Ageism is a social construct that we can all combat,” she says. “We can work towards changing how people look towards that experience.”

A more holistic approach might be what big tech needs to address the industry’s widening skills gap. “Why would you exclude a workforce that is educated, experienced, and can bring so much to the table,” Emilia asks, “especially as your consumers are getting older?”

Scott Hernandez, Global Head of Recruiting at StubHub

Hernandez sees ageism as a bias recruiters should actively keep in check, looking at experience as “a more holistic skillset.” At StubHub, Hernandez and his team construct the recruiting process around a set of company values—diversity being high on the list—and look to hire candidates the company views as a competitive advantage. “There is a strength in diversity,” says Hernandez. “More unique experience bring more unique ideas bring more unique perspectives and more unique output.”

Most forward-thinking companies would agree, and we’re already seeing a shift in recruiting practices that place more value on experience and skills that will amplify the performance of a team. For StubHub, reflecting the company’s expanded reach and commitment to diversity—including changes to company logos, brand colors, even the typography—is a top priority. When recruiting new talent, Hernandez claims Stubhub “doesn’t constrain itself to the jobs of yesterday, but the needs of tomorrow.”

Unlike other workplace biases that have active communities who rally in support of inclusion, ageism remains largely ignored. While most older workers say they have seen or experienced age discrimination, only 3 percent report having made a formal complaint.

Creating workplace cultures of inclusion didn’t happen overnight, and we’re far from done, which is why we’re revisiting “Ageism in the workplace” at our upcoming Hiring Success Conference in Berlin.

For Emilia D’Anzica, eliminating the ageism bias begins with the question: “Do you hold yourself to your values and your company mission without a bias? That is a question you have to constantly ask yourself, and conferences will refresh your mind and will educate you on the shifting workforce and how you can rewire your biases.”

When a young business analyst decided management consulting wasn’t her calling, she found it difficult to find career advice that spoke to her as a millennial job-seeker.

Given the average adult in the US changes jobs around 12 times between the ages 18-48, with the majority of those transitions happening in the first six years of their career –  it seemed strange that no one had created a platform to locate expert career advice, surface unexpected opportunities, and guide young people to success.

In 2011, former business analyst Kathryn Minshew became a founder and CEO when she made her dream resource a reality with The Muse website, a non-traditional job board focused on fit, culture and career advice for job seekers.

And 50 million millennial professionals visiting the site to date says ‘job well done!’

Kathryn has become something of a career guru for millennials, authoring the Wall Street Journal bestseller “The New Rules of Work,” and acting as an operating partner at XFactor Ventures, a venture capital fund investing in the next generation of female founders.

Kathryn recently spoke at the Hiring Success Conference in San Francisco about the effect of candidate experience on employer brand in an era of full transparency.

What does the concept of Hiring Success mean to you?

Hiring Success is about creating meaningful fits between companies and candidates. At The Muse, we think more about experiences than jobs because jobs can box people in, whereas experiences set people on a path for learning and growth. But, in order to build a satisfying career—or a progression of experiences over time—both companies and candidates have to be more aware of making considerate and purposeful choices. When that happens, a meaningful fit is made, which leads to quality hires and better retention.

Where on a CEO’s list of priorities should ‘recruitment’ be?

I’ve always felt that recruitment should be a top priority because it’s so intrinsic to company culture. You have to know who you are as a whole so you can hire people who will add value and keep your culture strong as you grow.

We hired The Muse’s first internal talent acquisition manager when we had just 25 people because we knew were going to grow pretty quickly and we wanted to make sure our culture never faltered. Bringing the right people on board is imperative when it comes to reaching your growth goals, and recruiters can help you attract and engage the best-fit talent.  

What do you think will be the defining feature of recruitment in five years?

Work is about connections and it’s full of commitments. The best companies understand this and create a work experience that’s centered around some of the most fundamental relationship dynamics (values, trust, vision, effort, and selflessness). Ideally, recruiting in five years will no longer be transactional, with applicants applying through a job board and hiring managers sifting through stacks of resumes. Hopefully, companies and candidates will feel empowered to make intentional decisions about what makes a meaningful fit.

You have traveled the world extensively. Did you gain any insights which have played into your approach to employer branding and recruitment?

I’ve traveled or lived in over 60 countries in the last 15 years, and I’ll say this about both travel and employment: they’re highly subjective. Whether something is a one-star or five-star experience depends on whether your expectations and needs match with reality: what were you looking for, and did you receive it?

Travel rating sites work because we can assess the type of environment we’re seeking, and then we can rate a property or experience based on those expectations and parameters. It’s unbelievable to me that we have no common language to talk about types of company cultures. I’d like The Muse to change that.

You speak often about millennials and job branding. What do you find millennials want to see?

Authenticity. Millennials want to see that your employees’ experiences are in sync with the message your employer brand is putting out there. So if you say you support learning and development, or value work-life balance, they want to see those statements reflected in company reviews or validated by employee testimonials. They want to know that what they see is the real thing.

How can companies better appeal to millennial candidates?

Millennials want to feel like their career has real purpose, so when they look at potential employers, they’re looking for a place where the mission and values match their own, or where the learning opportunities are substantial.

For companies, this means using your employer brand to authentically show candidates what you’re committed to as an organization. It’s also an opportunity to encourage employee advocacy by asking your workforce to share their stories—even if it’s something as small as posting about an exciting work event on social media.

In terms of company culture, what are the most common mistakes companies make?

Trying to be everything to everyone. When companies aren’t being authentic, it creates a ripple effect in the culture, so this really goes back to hiring, because every new person who joins your team has the power to change your culture.

It’s OK if your company and culture aren’t for everyone. Know your audience and appeal to those best-fit candidates.

Your company may come across plenty of candidates that meet your qualifications, but will they really be the best fit? Will they share your philosophy, adding value and promoting growth? It’s hard to say, but there is one sure way to increase your chances of finding “the one.” Attract your potential hires by showing your company culture. If they identify with it, chances are there’s a good match. A great way to do this is with recruiting videos.

In fact, that’s how SmartRecruiters stood out to me when I applied to be an intern. From the passionate coworkers I’d be working with, to the green and white office I’d sit in, and to its “Hiring Made Easy” philosophy, they got me. Here are the 8 Company Culture Videos that scream the personality of 8 very different types of companies:

Recruiting Videos

8. Twitter expresses its company quirkiness by making a cheesy recruiting video about making a recruiting video. It’s funny, showcases its workers and office space, and even features CEO Dick Costollo.

7. R/GA London presents its culture well through it’s two-day “Make Day” event, where the whole agency is encouraged to make things they want to make. This video reflects the company’s belief in collaboration, innovation, and finding new ways to work.

6. Sculpt, a Social Media Agency in Iowa City, went against the grain of the Harlem Shake. A short opinionated statement on “what’s trending on the internet today for whatever reason” is a clever way to get impressions on your brand.

5. chmedia’s channel shows its fun side with a company-wide lip sync of Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta.”Considering that chmedia’s entities include CollegeHumor.com, Dorkly.com, SportsPickle.com, an entertaining company culture video is to be expected. One continuous shot pans the office and onto the many happy faces of the company. Who wouldn’t want to join in?

4. Sea Breeze, a family-owned manufacturer and distributor of premium beverages on tap, does a wonderful job when it stresses the value of great customer service, quality, and community. Every small and medium sized business has a story. Share yours.

3. Shopify creates an amazing atmosphere by introducing a few company teams in a light matter, offering benefits (like free catered food and open space), and providing genuine testimonials from its employees.

2. Atlassian gives a great inside look onto its employees and products. They even have comedic videos on how to be productive in the workplace, such as the following. Notice how the jokes are targeted at people who who have the agile skills i.e. jokes are for the type of people they are looking to recruit.

1. Rackspace compiled footage of a typical day at the company, jam packed with ongoing events. Lets not forget the tour of it’s huge and active workspace. You have to dig the shot and edited in one day approach.

As these company recruiting videos demonstrate, your company doesn’t need a fancy video camera or team of professionals to make an impressive video covering your company’s culture and attributes. All you need is a video recorder (or even just a phone), team spirit, and determination.

The world of work has changed with the coming of age of Generation Y. The research of organisational psychologists and the life experience of people in business coincide on this point: people these days want more from their jobs than a way to pay the bills. For those of us lucky enough to choose what we do and how we work, there is an increasing focus on the job as a personal identity: an integration between what we do, and who we are.

This is why people move around more than ever before. The rise of the Internet has made the world bigger – not smaller – for most people have access to more opportunities, more examples of how fulfilling life can be, than ever before. We want jobs that reflect our values, satisfy our needs, fit with our priorities. We want to work in a company we can be proud of and feel part of – a workplace that reflects our own unique personality.

This is the essence of cultural fit. If we identify with the organisation we work for, we will be more willing to commit our best efforts to to its success, and we’ll be happier and more fulfilled in the process. Everybody wins.

At Good.co, we highlight the critical importance of cultural fit as a response to the growing desire for people to feel more at home at work. We used a highly concentrated, deceptively simple set of
questions to quickly and accurate assess two things: an individual’s workplace personality, and their ideal organisational culture. We take the pulse of companies – 400 of them in our database so far – based on eight unique archetypes, each constructed from a pattern of factors (such as innovation, competitiveness, and structure).

In our system, companies are assigned to one of our eight archetypes based on their ‘personality’ – derived from crowd sourced consumer attitudes towards each company – layered with functional attributes such as size, age, and behaviour.  Over time, as employees from companies take our surveys, the intelligent algorithm adapts the classification to take account of new information.

Why eight archetypes? Broadly, this was considered to be the most efficient way to reflect the possible variations between companies based on longstanding models of the most crucial elements in defining company culture – competitiveness versus collaboration, innovation versus traditionalism, and flexible versus hierarchical structure.

Consider these personal and company archetype examples:

The case of a highly innovative, scientifically minded, introverted person with an ideological approach (an Inventor-Idealist in Good.co’s language); call her Sparky. Sparky would be happiest in a Space Colony environment – flexible, innovative, and collaborative. She can then seek out companies which fit the Space Colony profile, such as Amazon, Apple, or Google. In this culture Sparky will find a supportive environment which will encourage her creativity and allow her to thrive. Going to work will become a pleasure.

Then consider the case of a highly ambitious, detail-oriented pragmatist who thrives on competition (a Straight-Shooter-Technician). Call him Topgun. Topgun learns that he would work best in a Frontier Settler company – highly competitive, with a traditional, methodical business model – such as Adobe or Samsung. Topgun shoots straight to the top in this ideal culture.

What would happen if, by some misadventure, Sparky ended up working in a Frontier Settler company, and Topgun in a Space Colony? Sparky would feel threatened by the highly competitive environment; her creativity would be stifled. Topgun would find his drive and leadership skills frustrated by the lack of an obvious ladder to climb in a Space Colony; his pragmatic caution would make hyper-creative brainstorming sessions a source of exasperation. Neither Sparky nor Topgun would reach their full potential; their unique contributions would be overlooked, their individuality stifled.

This kind of frustration shouldn’t happen to anyone! Discover what company culture you would thrive in.

Kerry Schofield is Chief Psychometrics Officer at Good.co and visiting researcher at King London’s College. SmartRecruiters Blog readers can use access code “goodcosmart” to get early access to our private beta. Find out if you’re in Good Company!

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A more prosperous economy, changing social norms, longer lives and technological revolution have each helped change the idea of an American “career” in the past thirty years. Though plenty of individuals still struggle through the workday, our aspirations for and general perspective on why we work no longer mirrors the often-downtrodden subjects of Studs Turkel’s 1974 expose “Working.” We live in an economy with an implicit understanding that if we’re talented, we’re entitled to love our work – to find in work an awe-inspiring purpose than exclusively providing for ourselves and families. Employers, accordingly, are beginning to realize that they’ll need to oblige this sentiment if they want to attract the best and brightest.

Of course, the more valuable a candidate’s skill set and the more competitive the industry in which she operates, the more she is able to demand this be the case. Take the tech sector, for example. In an extremely quickly moving, and often volatile industry, talent is particularly valuable. Sure, salaries are super high in tech, reflecting the demand for quality developers, designers and strategists. But, at a certain tier, marginal salary differences between competing companies become less important than the myriad of those companies’ other qualities. Indeed, companies have to do a lot more than pay to attract the best talent. Creating a more viscerally joyful work experience is a start (hence the profusion of tech startups with ping-pong tables, free booze, and other fun additions to the workplace that have now become almost cliche). But to distinguish themselves, good companies must foster fulfilling work experiences – they must develop an excellent culture and community, provide opportunities for personal growth, and communicate an awe-inspiring purpose to contextualize day to day work functions.

A number of companies serve as good examples here. Take Asana, a software company that basically builds a sophisticated to-do list. Given that description, Asana wouldn’t strike the reader as a company whose purpose motivates its employees. But there are no discrete standards for what makes a company more purposeful than another, or whether one company culture is better than another. How well a company creates a satisfying work environment depends on the lens through which it views its work, the way in which it executes that work, and how that resonates with employees. Back to Asana:

“Asana’s mission is to empower humanity to do great things. Our approach is to build software that makes group communication and coordination effortless, giving teams of like-minded people the tools they need to accomplish dramatically more ambitious goals.”

Asana’s employees don’t believe they’re creating a pretty task list; they believe they’re changing the world. Buildasign.com, Etsy, Airbnb and Zappos are just a few others on a growing list of organizations whose products might not immediately suggest or require a deep connection to social impact or company culture, but whose employees, and often times customers, are acutely aware of and invested in the connection. The data show it’s good business, too. A 2003 University of Michigan study showed that organizations that were perceived by employees to be more virtuous also had significantly higher productivity, quality outputs, and lower employee turnover.

However, you can have an outstanding culture and mission and still fail to attract top talent. Good recruiting depends on successfully communicating those core company elements. Employers need to leverage media to succeed here. Your values, your culture, and the special sauce that makes your company the right place to be for the right candidate are all elements that candidates need to feel. The more relatable you can be, the better fits you’ll identify. Rich media provides the opportunity for candidates to get to know your company and, if they’re the right fit, become attracted to your company (yes, it’s sort of like the dynamics of online dating but for employment).

Try testing this theory. You’ve now spent a couple minutes reading my thoughts on work and recruiting. As passionate as I am about what I’m writing, you only have a cursory sense of who I am. Now go to our site: www.zoomforth.com/about (this is an elegant plug, isn’t it?!) and click on me. Check out a few photos and watch a few seconds of video. Pretty quickly, you get a much better sense of who I am. At Zoomforth, we’re helping companies do the same thing.

Growing organizations use multimedia to describe their people, positions and culture so that they attract the right fits. If companies can both implement measures that generate well-being and also communicate them, the returns are enormous. Beyond the intrinsic good of putting people in the right work environment and making them happy, the happier employees are at your company, the more effective they’ll be and the longer they’ll stay.

Photo Credit Smartup Zoomforth