Hiring isn’t getting any easier. Today’s talent acquisition teams must do everything they can to attract candidates, convince them to apply, and keep them engaged until they show up on the job. In a competitive marketplace for talent, a strong employer brand is an essential component in your talent acquisition strategy – and that includes your career site.

Here at SmartRecruiters, we have a team of employer branding experts who work on our SmartRecruiters Attrax career site product. I sat down with Warren Davidson, Client Services Director, to get the scoop on how companies can improve their employer brands on their career sites. 

“You can have the most beautiful employer brand in the world, but if your career site is dreadful, it’s going to undermine your employer brand,” Warren said. As an expert in career sites and with deep experience in marketing, Warren believes in a candidate-centric approach. The candidate, after all, is your prospective customer. “Your employer brand is intrinsically linked to the candidate experience,” he explained. Warren identified the key aspects of ideal candidate experience.

Personalized, Contextually Relevant Content

“First, they should land on a job that’s relevant to them,” Warren said. “And then they should see a piece of content that reassures them that the company is DEI-friendly, or has great benefits.” He recommends content that brings the workplace to life, such as employee stories that focus on topics relevant to candidates of all kinds, whether they’re parents or from diverse backgrounds. The SmartRecruiters Attrax system uses automation to ensure relevance and personalization. “Relevant, personalized content drives better quality candidates,” he said. “It should also improve your hiring velocity.” 

Organic Traffic from Google

Google visibility is a key piece of the candidate experience that many companies miss. Google is one of the most popular places to look for jobs – and it’s free to get your jobs listed there. By adding structured data to your career website, job seekers automatically find your listings when they search. If your career site is hidden behind the wrong URL and lacks structured data, you end up paying aggregators to get listed on Google. Organic traffic from search engines to an SEO-optimized career site and job listings is a gift that keeps on giving.

Easy Application Process

Many companies lose candidates to a difficult application process. “If they get presented with a login screen, application rates drop off right there,” Warren said. A one-page application with a resume/CV upload from the cloud increases the number of applications. For jobs that are particularly hard to fill, “we have some customers who don’t even ask for a CV anymore,” he said. Candidates can indicate their experience by answering a series of pre-configured questions, which is effective for many types of roles. 

The Power of Branded Experiences

These elements add up to a big impact. “If you have Google visibility, personalization on your career site, deliver contextually relevant content, and a good application process, the ultimate upshot is that when a candidate hits the website, they feel like they belong to your organization. They can see themselves working there,” Warren said. That relevancy drives self-selection, and the ease of the application process prevents the right candidates from dropping out.

Sounds amazing, right? I took a look at some of the results from SmartRecruiters Attrax implementations. All of them had stats such as:

• Increased career site traffic
• Increased candidate engagement (more pages viewed)
• Increased number of applications
• Decrease in abandoned applications
• Increased organic traffic from Google
• Increased traffic to employer brand content
• Decrease in the source of hire  from job boards and recruitment agencies
• Increase in the source of hire from organic career site visits

The Art of What’s Possible on a Career Site

Like a lot of things companies struggle with, legacy technology holds them back from addressing the needs of the current marketplace. Updating a career site may require the work of an agency or IT team. The application process required by the current ATS may be turning candidates away. Warren said, “When it comes to career sites, a lot of companies don’t know what’s possible.”

What is possible? An SEO-optimized career site that delivers personalized, relevant jobs and content to candidates, integrates seamlessly with an ATS, and can be updated by anyone, not just website specialists. Not only is a career site a place where the visual and creative aspects of your employer brand can shine, but also it’s a place where your employer brand comes to life by facilitating a stellar candidate experience.

Both concepts are candidate-facing, but your company won’t reach top talent unless you integrate them with your overall TA strategy.

Today’s job seekers have more employment options that ever before, empowering them to choose the right company based on fit. In response, businesses are moving away from traditional methods of candidate attraction (public job boards, cold outreach) in favor of more employer brand-focused efforts that target talent before they apply. With this shift, two key elements—employer branding and recruitment marketing—work to achieve a common goal: attract and hire the best possible candidates.

Companies that don’t understand the difference between employer branding and recruitment marketing risk misrepresentation and brand inconsistency, which in turn creates a poor candidate experience. Creating a positive, candidate-facing company image means your company is primed to attract the 75 percent of job seekers who consider an employer’s brand before even applying for a job.

What is Employer Branding?

More than just a marketing tool, employer branding is the external image that attracts active candidates and converts passive candidates, as well as the internal image that retains employees. Employer branding also encompasses your company’s impact on customers, employees, and society at large.

To define your company’s employer branding, you need to look at the core elements of the company’s mission, values, and vision. From there, you can define other important factors such as your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) and candidate personas, which are essential to answering the question of what makes your company a great employer.

The best employer brands are consistent across all communication channels—social media, word of mouth, company pages, and job descriptions. These brands find ways to take the internal narrative of satisfied employees and turn it into the external narrative that attracts candidates. With 52 percent of today’s job seekers combing through company websites and social media pages to find out more about an employer, a positive and clearly defined employer brand is your company’s “first impression”.

For companies, a strong employer brand has a positive, bottom-line impact on three major recruiting metrics: time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and quality-of-hire. According to LinkedIn, companies with great employer branding see 50 percent more qualified applicants, hire at a rate of 1–2x faster, and reduce cost per hire by 50 percent.

It’s important to note that employer branding serves as the foundation upon which an effective recruitment marketing strategy can be built.

What is Recruitment Marketing?

Recruitment marketing is employer branding in action, most commonly via social media campaigns and intelligent advertising spending. These methods are specific and targeted promotion designed to get your company message in front of the right candidate at the right time.

Being proactive in the pre-application phase of the recruitment process allows recruiters and hiring managers to build an inbound pipeline of qualified applicants, rather than the “spray and pray” method used with conventional job board postings.

Much like employer branding, great communication is essential to a recruitment marketing strategy. It’s important to think about how a candidate interacts with your brand—through paid media (job advertising); SEO traffic and company reviews (Glassdoor); and internal channels (company career sites, blog posts, live events, social media). A strong talent acquisition suite gives companies access to post on a variety of job boards, and allows recruiters to make data-driven decisions about where ad spend yields the highest ROI.

Another recruitment marketing strategy that goes largely underused is employee referrals. Compared to previous years, hires resulting from employee referrals is declining, thanks in part to the rise of recruiter marketing, but that doesn’t mean organizations should abandon their referral strategies, which still account for 27 percent of all company hires.

For most companies, their own employees are their biggest advocates, and tapping into your existing employee’s social networks to make and track referrals expands your sourcing efforts without any additional work. A robust talent acquisition suite leverages your company’s internal network to discover talent within your organization that may be the right fit for an open role.

Know the Difference and How to Use Both When Recruiting

As we’ve seen, competition among organizations to attract and hire top talent is fierce, and maintaining an edge over competitors means taking a proactive and forward-thinking approach to recruiting. Establishing employer brand across all channels should be your company’s first priority, as your company’s reputation as an employer should remain consistent over time while the tactics and methods of recruiter marketing should be adapted in response to industry trends. While both employer branding and recruiter marketing rely on each other to work optimally, recruitment marketing cannot work without an established employer brand. Once your organization has a strong understanding of what makes each of these concepts different, you can use them to ensure the right talent discovers your company before discovering your competitors.

Companies have no greater brand advocates than employees, whose role in sourcing top-quality talent should not be overlooked.

Compared to previous years, hires resulting from employee referrals is declining, thanks in part to the rise of custom, targeted campaigns and social media outreach to build talent pools. As a result, referrals are no longer the top method for sourcing high quality candidates. But that doesn’t mean organizations should abandon their referral strategies. Recent studies report that referral and recruiter-sourced applicants account for 27 percent of all company hires.

The appeal of employee referrals is multifaceted: they typically draw a higher volume of qualified candidates who—by the virtue of already being an employee—are more likely to be a better company fit and often cost less than a non-referral candidate. Crowdsourcing your candidates through referrals is not only an effective method for finding great talent, it can align with a larger TA strategy emphasizing company branding and employee engagement.

1. Referrals Improve Quality of Candidates and Hires

In a competitive market, hiring top candidates quickly is the difference between success or failure. By leveraging your entire employee network to source both active and passive candidates, your candidate pool is already much wider and more diverse without additional effort. Fast-tracking vetted candidates cuts down on the need for several steps in the recruitment process, including job description writing, ad posting, resume collection, and candidate screening.

In Tech, where specialized skills are in high demand, referrals and custom campaigns are better at attracting the right talent than job boards or other traditional recruitment methods. When sourcing for specific roles, many employees only refer candidates they think are qualified for the role, as their recommendation reflects on their judgment. Recruiters are more likely to see an increased number of quality applicants that not only cost less than non-referral candidates, but are faster to hire and onboard.

2. Company Branding is the Focus of Recruiter Marketing

Today, recruiters and hiring managers are doubling down on their efforts to maintain a marketing-focused strategy in their talent acquisition, with brand values being pushed to the frontlines of these efforts. When marketing company brand to candidates, companies have no greater advocates than their own employees. Social media posts and other positive promotion can be effective tools to this end.

Websites like Glassdoor offer current and past employees a platform to express their opinions about companies, and this transparency directly affects candidate decisions. A 2016 study found that 75 percent of job seekers consider the employer’s brand and reputation before even applying for a position, so it’s important for companies to engage with their employees and, in turn, prospective candidates.

3. Referrals Impact Employee Engagement

Organizations often create incentives for referrals through employee referral programs (ERPs) that encourage current employees to think about and emphasize the positives that make the organization one worth working for, and to spread the news throughout their network. Employees have stakes in the company’s success, so if they are engaged and active in building out the team with top performers, they will feel more valued and appreciated. Additionally, recognizing the actions of your employees, rewarding quality efforts, and creating friendly competition to achieve a team goal will also boost employee appreciation, which helps raise motivation.

To avoid spamming your employees with all open positions, nurture a pool of specific referrers who have connections for the type of role that needs to be filled. This personal and targeted approach will significantly boost your response rates, as well as the quality of referrals. Targeting the company’s top-performing employees is a good first step.

4. Highlighting the Power of Inter-Org Relationships

Depending on your organization and industry, relationships can be a major factor in the company’s daily operations, and can play a role in how your employee referral program works. Often, the quality of the personal connection to the candidate is the top motivator for an employee referral, and can directly influence factors such as job satisfaction. Incidentally, referral employees tend to experience higher job satisfaction than non-referred. Referring employees often reciprocate these positive motivators, leading to a greater personal investment in the company and longer tenure, thanks in part to the implicit commitment to the referring friend.

With the right sourcing tools, businesses can build more strategic relationships within personalized talent communities, allowing hiring teams to organize and manage high-quality talent before the demand hits. Modern recruiting software or ATSs are designed to communicate directly with targeted talent communities and send branded messaging that drives impact and conversion.

Employee Referrals are Just One Part of the Strategy

With unemployment in the US dipping below 4 percent in April 2018—a first since the dot-com boom of 2000—recruiting top talent in today’s job market is becoming more difficult than ever. Individuals can afford to be picky, which puts pressure on cost-conscious organizations fighting over talent in a competitive seller’s market, particularly in tech. Thanks to direct sourcing practices, companies are reaching the right talent more directly, but the value of employee referrals should not be discounted as part of a larger TA strategy.

Though recruiters are changing how they source top talent, employee referrals still rank among the top candidate sourcing methods. As we have seen, referrals have a significant impact on your current employees’ engagement, your company brand, and the important relationships that drive business. Understanding these factors when leveraging your employee network for referrals or implementing an employee referral program ensures that your employees will champion the success of the entire company—regardless of their job description—and reach out to share what makes their company worth applying for. In an era where company culture and brand values are one of the top selling points for applicants, nurturing positive relationships with employees and boosting their engagement should be at the top of your company priorities.

In today’s competitive global war for talent, a commitment to diversity hiring could set your company apart. The candidate of today wants to see a commitment to diversity that goes beyond a sentence in the employee handbook. Here are some concrete steps your company can take if they want to walk the walk.

First things first, get on the same page.

1. Create a Diversity Vision and Statement this will help guide all future efforts.
2. Host a diversity training workshop for management so everyone knows how to participate in your company’s vision for diversity.

Now, take a moment to assess where your company is at today. Is it completely in line with your vision? Probably not. Identify where the company is at now through a Diversity Brand review to determine how to proceed towards the statement your company has outlined.  From there, you can begin to work on a unified “Diversity Recruiting Strategy.”

When I led a diversity effort in global staffing at Monsanto my strategy included 7 points.

1. Certify all recruiters as diversity recruiters. You can do this through programs like AIR.
2. passive diverse candidate pipeline development
3. Advertise to specific demographics for example on radio stations with shows in languages other than English.
4. Include diverse images on career page, website, pamphlets, and social media.
5. Publish testimonials from minority and women employees from all levels of the company.
6.  Host an open house and invite organizations that are operated by and for minorities.
7. Participate in career fairs targeted at minorities and or women.

This strategy led to some key Recruitment Diversity Metrics for Professional Hires in the US:

POC  (person of color) Applicant Flow increased 79% over the previous year, and the flow increased some 70% in the following year.

POC Applicants interviewed surged above 30+% for several years, reaching 37% of all Applicants.
POC Hires reached 24% of US Professional Hires and in the following year, POC Hires reached 36%.

At Unext.com and Lockheed, I utilized similar strategies. At Unext.com we exceeded overall Diversity Hiring goals for POC (goal 15%, results 22%) and Women (goal 30%, results 50%).  While at Lockheed, I led efforts that increased the flow of women and minorities candidates, achieving a 20% increased in POC hiring–surpassing an internal benchmark.

Obviously, social media can help to improve these results. For example, Facebook can help you recruit more Diverse candidates and also help leverage your Diversity Brand message. It can be used to create Talent Community of Diverse candidates. You can showcase your current on-going Diversity efforts and Programs on your company’s Facebook page, or (as I would highly recommend for larger brands) by creating a “Diversity Careers” brand Facebook page. This page should be as inclusive as possible and should have inclusive imagery from all “walk of life”—all groups should be represented. It could also list the various Diverse group and associations and organizations you have partnerships with for Talent Acquisition purposes, such as Hire Heroes USA (Veterans), HRC advocates on behalf of LGBT Americans, and AsianMBA.org.

Diversity Marketing Plan:

Tailor a diversity marketing plan based on your specific goals. My plan included donating textbooks to inner-city high schools and attending their career fairs, publicizing the accomplishments of our POC and female employees in trade publications, and partnering with the local community organizations to host workshops on successful interviewing tactics.

Consider creating a specific Web page entitled “Minorities in Your Industry,” with its own URL to reach minority job seekers where many employment searches begin – a quick browse on Google.

Conduct feedback sessions/focus group with minority and women employees in order to accurately gauge where your company is and how it can improve in fostering an environment of diversity.

Build an Alumni page on your website or Facebook to stay connected with all high performers (in general) who left as well high performing Minority/Women alumni. And, you could focus on making an employer branding award list, such as Black Enterprise’s list of “40 Best Companies for Diversity” or  Diversity Inc’s “Top Ten Companies for Asians Americans to Work For”, etc.

Gather data. Use metrics to evaluate how well the organization is doing on their diversity and inclusion program. Create goals based on region or country depending on your company’s reach. These numbers help you track your progress over time in target areas.

1. Minority representation overall.
2. Minority representation in certain departments.
3. Retention rate of underrepresented employees.
4. Pay disparity.

I want to point out that most of these initiatives are low or no cost. The benefits are obvious to not only the reputation of your company but to the workplace environment. You will be creating a space where the talent you need can thrive while creating positive partnerships with your community.

How do you measure the power of your employer brand? Is it possible to assess its value in quantifiable terms?

As it turns out, you can evaluate your employer brand by taking a close look at how your employee referral program is performing.

Obviously if your program is weak because you’re not focusing enough effort on creating one with appropriate incentives and transparency in communication, you’ve got work to do there first.

But if you are following most best practices for such programs and you’re not seeing results, it could be that you need to improve your employer brand.

As Georgene Huang’s article at Forbes, “Why Employee Referral Programs Are The Litmus Test For Your Employer Brand,” explains, “every employee has the potential to shape the narrative and brand of her employer for someone else’s job search.”

Absolutely! There is no better employer branding channel than employee stories, word of mouth and reviews.

How employer brand and referrals work hand in hand

Referrals can deliver higher quality candidates at a lower cost with less turnover.

According to Undercover Recruiter, 46 percent of referred employees stay at a company for more than three years compared to only 14 percent of those hired through job boards. And Recruiter.com reports referrals may cost as little as $1,000 per hire compared to up to $18,000 per hire through more traditional sources.

Yet some organizations don’t allocate resources to such programs even though some companies fill 25 to 30 percent of their jobs through employee referrals.

In that Forbes article, Georgene interviewed Jennifer Newbill, director of Global Employer Brand at Dell Computer, who says that the performance of an employee referral program provides “a litmus test” for an organization’s employer brand. If employees express dissatisfaction with their experience, it’s not likely the reflection of excellence in employer branding.

Ms. Newbill also reinforced the importance of leadership for employee referral programs, explaining that at Dell, management recognizes that employees may be far more effective than recruiters in sourcing highly qualified candidates.

I think she explains the essence of this relationship between employer brand and referral programs as she points out, “Brand is a narrative, and our narrative is our people.”

Best practices for success: A symbiotic relationship

A successful employee referral program can be very intricate, especially at a large organization such as Dell, which Ms. Newbill says receives tens of thousands of employee referrals per year. One of her best practices is to embrace transparency and set realistic expectations – that not every referral candidate can expect to be called by a recruiter.

I’ll add a few more best practices to consider:

• Be quick: Don’t delay recognizing and acknowledging referrals and when you hire a referred candidate
• Be personal: Don’t send automated emails. Take the time to write a note to thank a specific employee, an excellent tactic for enhancing morale
• Consider rewards for all qualified candidates: Yes, successful referrals of those hired should be rewarded, but consider rewards for referrals of highly qualified candidates you were not able to hire
• Extend your program: Former employees, retired employees, and even customers can be a rich resource for talent

In the end, there’s a unique symbiotic relationship between employer brand and your employee referral program. The more you improve your employer brand, the more likely it is your employee referral program will generate better results.

And in turn, the more you adopt best practices for incentives, communications, and promoting your employee referral program, the more likely it is that your employer brand will be well respected so you can land top talent more quickly and at a lower cost.

Is working in your organization a dull and dreary chore? The careers section of your website might make it seem so. That’s a shame. I see so many career pages that are so boring and lifeless when I know the company is actually an exciting place to be.

Remember that your main careers page is not just a place to collect information from candidates. It’s your introduction, your chance to make a great first impression. Attracting top talent requires an attractive presentation. Make the most of it.

Here are examples of 10 companies with career pages that are both attractive and communicate the essence of the organization’s mission, values, and employer brand.

These 10 companies, not in any specific order, each offer insights into techniques you might want to consider as you update your career site

10. iAdvize

iAdvize is a leading real-time customer engagement platform in Europe used in 40 different countries, promoting itself as adding a “human touch” to customer service.

The career page makes excellent use of video to show off its team and explain what life at work is really like. Also impressive is that the site has a prominent “our advice” section that demonstrates a level of transparency into the application and evaluation process that candidates appreciate.

9. Oath

Oath is a new subsidiary of Verizon, including brands such as AOL, Yahoo!, and others with a career page making it clear that “opportunity is infinite” to “build brands people love.”

Rebranding for multiple brands is never easy, but this career page displays a minimalist design that’s clean so it’s easy to find those opportunities at specific brands. There’s an attractive global map of job locations and dynamic imagery that makes it clear that “having fun at work isn’t optional.”

8. Balsam Brands

Balsam Brands is a home decor and consumer products company best known for their ultra realistic artificial Christmas trees. Their warm and engaging careers page leads with company culture.

Job openings are presented in a simple, clear, yet attractive layout while colorful and expressive photography conveys the company’s fun work environment. The related Team page emphasizes the value they place on their people – highlighting company trips and office games as well as the unique personalities of their employees.

7. Visa

Visa asks visitors to “find your everywhere” with an employer brand that fits the “everywhere you want to be” framework of its overall branding.

At the careers page, it’s easy to find potential roles. Content introduces visitors to people who work at Visa, and explains the company’s mission and commitment to giving back to the community. It also links to various social media networks so everyone can discover their “everywhere.”

6. Square

Square makes it clear that they are “looking for curious, hard-working leaders to join our team” on its page that presents information clearly and concisely, yet also shows specific areas of expertise asking candidates to “see where you fit in.”

The page also includes a section that features teams that are in exceptional need for high-quality talent.

5. PayScale

PayScale, a salary, benefits and compensation information company, displays its core values clearly on its career site: trust, creativity, fun, and community – under an umbrella employer brand of “Important work. Fun play.”

The page also presents its generous benefits in a “pretty sweet deal” section, which include a list of more than a dozen perks to impress potential candidates.

4. Atlassian

Atlassian, a global provider of collaboration technology displays a colorful career page that introduces some of its team members, not only in terms of their job, but also their outside interests ranging from juggling to dancing to knitting.

This approach adds a dynamic personality to the site, which also clearly shows the awards Atlassian has won as a great place to work, the company’s values, plus its many perks.

3. Pluralsight

Pluralsight, a leading enterprise technology learning platform dedicated to “democratize professional technology learning,” makes that mission clear in a video that appears front and center asking candidates, “Are you ready for new challenges and new opportunities?”

In addition, a clearly designed section for searching for opportunities plus two clear links to guides on benefits and corporate culture offers candidates quick access to information they’re looking for.

2. Equinox

Equinox operates 80+ upscale, full-service clubs in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, offering exceptionally designed facilities and specialized training to those who aspire to a high-performance lifestyle.

The career site clearly presents the company’s mission, ambitions, and values with a design that matches its upscale branding and makes it easy to search for opportunities.

1. Scality

Scality, the world leader in object and cloud storage, makes it abundantly clear on its site that the company expects to “revolutionize enterprise storage.” There’s a clear link to the company’s hiring strategy, which makes it process and expectations transparent.

The main career page also features company employees so candidates can find out more about the team with another section showing how the company is committed to recognizing individual excellence.

Your one first impression. Make it count.

You only have one chance to make a great first impression. Today’s candidates are not impressed by a list of job ads, but will engage with you if you demonstrate your culture, your values, the benefits you offer, and potential for career advancement.

Don’t waste these opportunities to make your career brand really shine! It’s not that difficult, but this is an investment that pays off in filling roles in a lot less time at a far lower cost.

Give your company the competitive recruiting-edge and help the world at the same time!

[For the latest in corporate social responsibility, see here for the Top 20 Corporate Social Responsibility Initiatives for 2018.]

As Jennifer Dickey pointed out, a study by NYU and Imperative found that “purpose-oriented employees” tend to remain with employers 20 percent longer than those at other companies and are about 47 percent more likely to be more engaged promoters of the companies they work for.

Corporate social responsibility is becoming increasingly important to today’s candidates. Companies that offer a workplace and corporate culture of caring about essential social issues can be successful at both business and giving back to the wider community.

With that in mind, what are some of the world’s leading socially responsible companies currently doing to make such an impact?

Here are twenty of the top organizations demonstrating a diverse range of social responsibility goals and initiatives:

20. General Electric

The GE Foundation contributed $88 million to community and educational programs in 2016. They also match contributions by employees and retirees through their GE Foundation Matching Gifts Program.

The foundation’s signature Developing Health programs focus on health-care access for communities around the world.

19. Deloitte

This professional consulting firm makes clear its “commitment to driving societal change and promoting environmental sustainability”. Working on innovative solutions along with government and non-profit organizations, Deloitte makes an effort to encourage its employees to donate time to pro bono work.

This pays off for the company as well. In fact, 83 percent of Deloitte employees say that pro bono work has made a positive impact on job satisfaction and 60 percent reported “significant gains in job-relevant skills”.

18. IBM

Citizen IBM embodies the company’s dedication to corporate citizenship. IBM supports a wide range of efforts for education, disaster relief, diversity, economic development, global health, and more. Their approach to corporate citizenship aligns with that of their business — “applied technology, continuous transformation, and sustainable change”.

In 2016, The World Community Grid combined the computing power of idle PCs and mobile devices across a worldwide network for an equivalent of 167,000 years of computing time to support projects such as cancer treatment research.

17. 3M

With 90,000 employees, 3M has adopted “science applied to life” as a trademark. It’s 3MGives program — with $67 million funded in 2016 — focuses on community and the environment, plus educational initiatives that help boost student interest in science and technology.

One program, the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, asks students from grades 5 to 8 to find innovative solutions to everyday problems, with ten finalists offered the opportunity to work with a 3M scientist during a summer mentorship.

16. Zappos

Zappos’ core values include “Embrace and Drive Change” and “Be Humble”. Their charitable group, Zappos for Good, works with charitable organizations to donate goods such as shoes, books, and school supplies to those in need.

15. Cisco

Cisco’s CSR programs make use of the company’s technology and resources to aid underserved communities with education, healthcare, economic empowerment, and disaster relief.

They have set a goal to impact 1 billion people by 2025 positively.

14. TOMS

TOMS was founded on the concept of sustainable giving through a for-profit business model. “One for One” started with the promise of donating one pair of shoes for every pair purchased, but has since expanded to programs supporting a wide range of services for people in need.

They also invest in jobs, social entrepreneurship, and integration with other charitable organizations through their Giving Partners program.

13. Apple

As one of the world’s leading technology companies, Apple takes its global responsibility seriously. One aspect of its social initiatives is the environment, adopting a mission to “ask less of the planet”.

Greenpeace has named Apple the “greenest tech company in the world” for three consecutive years. Not only does the company encourage its IT partners to take full advantage of renewable energy, Apple packaging is now manufactured with 99 percent recycled paper products.

12. LinkedIn

LinkedIn’s non-profit initiative, LinkedIn for Good, works with various organizations to connect underserved communities to economic opportunity. They partner with youth training organizations, veterans career services, refugee resource networks, and more.

Being a social networking service, they also utilize their platform to provide LinkedIn members with channels to participate in mentorships, donate time, and find volunteering opportunities through their Volunteer Marketplace.

11. Walt Disney Company

Disney, the number one company in the entertainment industry, has been ranked one of the “World’s Most Admired Companies” by Fortune for two years in a row. The company’s social mission is to strengthen communities “by providing hope, happiness, and comfort to kids and families who need it most” and gave more than $400 million to nonprofit organizations in 2016.

The company’s “VoluntEARS” program encourages employees to donate time, which has totaled to 2.9 million hours of service since 2012 with a goal of reaching five million hours of employee community service by 2020.

10. Alphabet (Google)

Regularly ranked as one of the most valuable brands in the world, and well-known for treating its employees well, Google supports a wide range of initiatives based on innovative use of technology to achieve social goals.

One of its goals is “Data-driven, human-focused philanthropy—powered by Google”. This takes the form of programs such as using data to uncover racial injustice, translating books through an open-sourced platform to improve education, and — one close to our heart at SmartRecruiters — connecting people with jobs to enhance economic mobility worldwide.

9. BMW

Just finished celebrating its 100th year in business, The BMW Group has maintained its rank as one of the world’s most sustainable automotive company as rated in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes.

This aspect of BMW’s operations is only one of the company’s social responsibility programs, which include education, wellness, and inter-cultural understanding as key tenets of a commitment to “social peace” and “stable economic development”.

8. Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic’s Change is in the Air sustainability initiative has three main pillars: environment, sustainable design and buying, and community investment.

Since 2007, they have reduced total aircraft carbon emissions by 22% and have partnered with LanzaTech to develop low carbon fuels for the future. Virgin Holidays donates £200,000 annually to the Brandon Center for Entrepreneurship Caribbean to support young entrepreneurs in Jamaica. In 2016, through onboard collection of spare foreign currency from customers, they raised over £500,000 for charity partner WE.

7. Levi Strauss & Co.

Like many companies on this list, Levi Strauss & Co. demonstrates social responsibility to a large extent through sustainability initiatives that are “sewn into the fabric” of the company.

One trademarked campaign, Water<Less, significantly reduces water use in manufacturing, by up to 96 percent for some styles. Since launching the process in 2011, the company has saved more than one billion liters of water. By 2020, the company expects to manufacture 80 percent of its products through this process, up from 25 percent today.

6. Dell

Dell has implemented the 2020 Legacy of Good Plan as their commitment to “drive human progress” through environmental sustainability, addressing community challenges, global supply chain responsibility, hiring diversity, and, ultimately, a dedication to putting more back than they take out.

The Net Positive Project goal is, by 2020, to contribute 10x the good that it takes to create and use their technology.

5. Salesforce

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce sums up corporate social responsibility quite clearly when he says “The business of business Is improving the state of the World.”

The company has adopted an integrated philanthropic approach called the 1-1-1 model. This means that one percent of the company’s equity is set aside for grants in communities where employees live and work, one percent of the company’s product is donated to non-profit organizations, and one percent of each employee’s time is donated to community initiatives. It’s a simple model that’s easily understood.

4. IKEA

The IKEA Foundation focuses on the Circle of Prosperity — funding home, health, education, and sustainable income for communities in need. As stated by the founder, their mission is to “create a better everyday life for as many people as possible around the world”.

In 2017, the foundation’s Brighter Lives for Refugees campaign funded a solar farm to bring renewable power to Jordan’s Azraq refugee camp. This is the world’s first solar plant built in a refugee setting and will save $1.5 million, as well as reduce CO₂ emissions by 2,370 tons annually.

3. Starbucks

As a company established in the 1970s, Starbucks has always operated with a sensitivity to social responsibility — committed to sustainability and strengthening communities.

For example, the company has committed to providing one million coffee trees to farmers as a partner in Conservation International’s “Sustainable Coffee Challenge.” In addition, the company plans to hire 10,000 refugees across 75 countries in the next five years, plus, hire 25,000 veterans by 2025.

2. Bosch

The company continues to operate by the values of founder Robert Bosch, who said “I have always acted according to the principle that it is better to lose money than trust.” The credo that “responsibility creates trust” carries through in the company’s efforts around ecological and social improvement.

Bosch invests 50% of its R&D budget in technologies supporting conservation and environmental protection. The Bosch eXchange program remanufactures used car components, generating 23,000 metric tons less CO₂ annually compared to new production.

1. Ben & Jerry’s

This company has a reputation for social responsibility that goes back to its original IPO in 1985. That’s when the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation was created with an initial gift of 50,000 shares and a decision of the company’s Board that 7.5 percent of the company’s pretax profits be allocated to philanthropy.

The foundation now awards more than $1.8 million per year to fund community action, social change, sustainability, and other initiatives in the company’s home state of Vermont and throughout the country.

“Walk the walk”

Senior executives of these companies know that social responsibility requires not just words on paper, but taking action. Their goals may differ and their activities may change over time, but these initiatives demonstrate the commitment each organization has to its local and global community — and that the organization “walks the walk,” not just “talks the talk”.

This year a new generation just started entering the workforce. Generation Z, those born since 1995 are now beginning to graduate from college. Recruitment and hiring will certainly be changing as 23 million Gen Zers takes their place in organizations alongside 71 million older Millennials who range from about 25 to 40 years old.

Is there much difference between the two? You bet. That’s why you’ll need to be making some changes in how you recruit on college campuses and how you engage with today’s students.

What may be most intriguing, even ironic, is that in some ways, Gen Z seems to share more traits with much older Baby Boomers (born between 1945 and 1960) than other generations.

Although Gen Z knows no other world besides one where we’re all surrounded with technology, and prefer imagery and video in sharing stories more than by text or email, today’s young people actually appreciate face-to-face contact, a characteristic shared with Baby Boomers, who grew up in a world without email or smartphones.

That may be because as a generational study by Barclays notes, while Gen Zers are known for short attention spans and preferring digital communications, they aspire to security and stability as Baby Boomers do. That’s a sharp contrast to Millennials who have tended to put more value on freedom and flexibility.

Your employer brand: More important to recruiting than ever.

You’re going to need to pay much closer attention to your employer brand to attract today’s college students into your organization. And you’ll need to make sure it’s delivered engagingly online – not just on some static website, but across Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, and Facebook.

Remember that today’s young people have grown up in a world of “snackable” content, so keep it short and simple. They want to know more about your company than a specific job. What your organization cares about is way more important than how you make money.

Start now. It’s never too early

Some interesting statistics on Gen Z show that this generation focuses on the future in ways not shared by previous generations. For example:

• 55% of high school students say they feel pressure to gain early professional experience
• 72% want to start their own businesses, demonstrating a higher level of entrepreneurship
• 63% of graduating college seniors have held internship or co-op positions

That last point reminds me that internships are an excellent tactic for landing top talent among graduating students. That’s because on average, you’re likely to retain 75 percent of new hires for at least one year if they’ve interned with you.

It’s not just internships that make a difference. Hosting lunch-and-learn events, offering your executives as guest speakers in classes, sponsoring student events, and communicating often across social media all build rapport for future hiring success on college campuses. If all you do is show up at a campus career fair, you’re too late.

Being authentic in a transparent world

Growing up in a world that’s more transparent than ever, this generation is not easily fooled. So be authentic – completely upfront and honest. Introduce them to your team and give them a chance to understand your mission and values.

At SmartRecruiters we know full well that “you are who you hire” because it’s your people who drive success. For Gen Z, that becomes even more relevant because they place a high value on working with others who share their own aspirations.

We recently hosted a webinar on campus recruiting with plenty of additional information on Gen Z. If you didn’t attend, watch it now.

As RecruitingDaily executive editor Matt Charney said during his presentation at our Hiring Success 17 conference last month, “employer branding” comes off as just a cliché buzzword. True enough if all it amounts to is including a set of cheesy photos and trite slogans on your career site.

But paying close attention to how you present your organization is critical if you expect to fill thousands of positions each year.

One SmartRecruiters client, Indigo — Canada’s largest book, gift, and specialty retailer — takes extraordinary pride in bringing joy to its customers, and just as importantly, its employees. A case study we published noted that 99 percent of Indigo employees would refer others for jobs there.

I don’t know what Matt would say, but 99 percent? That’s one powerful brand!

Whether you call it great employer branding or not, a reputation like that creates joy all around — for Indigo’s customers, their recruiters, and for all of us at SmartRecruiters. We see this joy quite often as organizations discover how a modern talent acquisition suite like ours makes a big difference in attracting better talent and filling roles more quickly.

Headquartered in Toronto, Indigo employs more than 6,000 people, makes more than 4,000 hires per year, and operates under a decentralized hiring model.

In our case study, Indigo’s Director of Talent Acquisition and Performance Management Sarah Wilson explains that the company’s brand promise to “add a little joy to our customers’ lives” may seem simple, but that “we must make sure our entire team embodies that spirit.”

As it turns out, it’s not as simple as it seems unless you’re using the right suite of tools.

Decentralized hiring: Flexibility and agility a must.

Ms. Wilson points out that the older legacy applicant tracking system Indigo had been using made it difficult to integrate other tools and technologies the company adopted and that integration would have been far too costly.

Because we offer easy integrations with virtually any tool, dozens of pre-configured integrations already built into the platform, and an interface far more intuitive than older legacy systems, Indigo store managers across Canada could quickly get up to speed — essential in a decentralized organization. Ms. Wilson says that Indigo can “now be a lot more flexible and agile than previously.”

Meeting hiring goals weeks ahead of schedule

With a more intuitive application experience and transparency during the interviewing and evaluation process, word has spread. Now more than half of employees hired are either referrals from other employees or apply directly from Indigo’s site — substantially reducing costs and making it easier to fill jobs a lot more quickly.

In fact, for the 2016 holiday season, the company met its hiring goals two weeks ahead of schedule.

“After we switched to SmartRecruiters, we definitely see that candidates are far more engaged,” Ms. Wilson says — noting that more than 44 percent of potential candidates who see a posted job click to apply and 82 percent of those who click complete an application.

“Our brand is an exceptional asset, both on a customer level and as an employer,” she explains, “SmartRecruiters has made it really easy for us to showcase that brand.”

Sure, the term “employer brand” may be a trite cliché, but that’s probably because so many companies only pay lip service to the concept. But when 99% of employees would refer others for jobs in your company, you don’t care what it’s called. You take a lot of joy in results like that.

Oh, and congratulations to Sarah Wilson and the entire Indigo hiring team for winning the “Hiring Team of Year” award at Hiring Success 17 last month!

Download the full Indigo case study here.

Let’s say my company has a stellar reputation for being an amazing place to work (and we are!). I’m constantly hounded by people for opportunities, especially from those who know members of my team.

So when a job opens, I already have many candidates to choose from – each really psyched to hear from me and already in the know about our mission and values.

Do you think I’d have to post many jobs? Hardly.

That’s the power of strong employer branding. If A-class candidates aren’t constantly chasing you down, then your employer brand isn’t working hard enough.

But you can change that. A recent webinar I hosted with Lauren Roberts, Talent Acquisition Manager at The Muse, explains how.

An employer brand can be a priceless asset because it gives you so much of an edge over your competition. Its value becomes clear when you see not only more applications, but more coming from better candidates who already seem to fit your profile and culture fit you’re looking for.

That makes my job at SmartRecruiters so much easier – no more “spray and pray.”

Talk to more of the right people. Stop talking to the wrong people

In our webinar, a colleague of mine helped explain how to make your employer brand work harder so you don’t waste time.

The Muse is a career website that offers a behind-the-scenes look at job opportunities at hundreds of companies — attracting 6 million unique visitors per month. Lauren Roberts knows the value of an employer brand quite well, explaining that with an excellent employer brand, you spend less time talking to the wrong people and more time talking to the right people.

But just what is an employer brand?

Employer branding is not just for marketing. It extends beyond customers to encompass your reputation as an employer and how you present your company to others. If you don’t control your employer brand, you’ll still have one, but others will control that reputation, possibly creating needless obstacles on the way to hiring success.

Revving up your employer brand – consistency is essential

The best employer brands are consistent across different channels including word of mouth, social media, job descriptions, and others. Lauren and I presented several strategies and tactics for establishing, maintaining and monitoring your employer brand so it continues to be an asset you can rely on.

One of those tactics is to meet with company founders. So much changes over time as a company grows, which makes it important to regularly review the mission that led them to start the company and bring those values into recruiting activities — taking care to maintain consistency.

The Muse even has a brand book (watch the webinar if you want a copy) that demonstrates this level of consistency. Through a compelling review of the organization’s mission, everyone can understand the passion behind that mission and make sure they do their best to meet it.

Another opportunity is telling stories. When employees get excited in not only learning, but telling the brand story, you get more referrals. That leads to candidates who essentially “self-select.” Those who aren’t a good fit somehow know that, leaving you spending your valuable time on more appropriate candidates.

An ongoing process, not a one-time initiative.

There are five specific tactics that Lauren and I present during the webinar. Follow them and you’ll make big improvements which can bring you hiring success and rev up your employer brand.

What are those five tactics? Watch the webinar and see for yourself.