Marketing builds corporate brands but too many in HR destroy it by unprofessional behaviour and lack of attention from their CEO. Shooting yourself in the foot comes to mind.
Did your mom not tell you about the moral principle known as the Golden Rule:
You should treat others the way you want to be treated yourself
Try going to Glassdoor or other web sites where candidates, applicants, current and former employees anonymously review companies. Think TripAdvisor for candidates and employees – and you got it.
One of the biggest complaints you can read about is feedback from candidates on the recruitment and hiring process.
Judging from this feedback, it seems that many HR and/or TA (Talent Acquisition) departments are in the doghouse for forgetting how to treat and how to communicate with people seeking employment.
Personnel was in Finance; where should HR be?
If you are old enough, you will remember that the Personnel Department was typically reporting to the Head of Finance.
Back then, we talked about headcounts, people were considered a cost, and the Personnel Department was busy calculating salaries and overtime.
Over the past 20 to 30 years, I’m pleased to acknowledge, many companies have changed the department name from Personnel to Human Resources, People & Culture, or HR Business Partner.
The focus nowadays has primarily become hiring, training, retention, and motivating the workforce.
Very appropriately, many business leaders have seen the importance of moving HR away from Finance and with a direct report to the CEO.
It’s all about people, yes. Hiring talent and retention have become a strategic challenge.
Why do CEOs ignore how HR manage hiring?
Why do many CEOs let this happen?
The lack of empathy towards candidates, the lack of communication, and the lack of ISO-type recruitment procedures create negative reviews on the internet and “negative goodwill”.
Only 1 person will walk away happy i.e. the candidate who landed the job.
What if the other 99% would walk away praising the hiring process and your company even if they were not successful in getting the job?
Great ambassadors for your brand if getting it right.
Why is candidate experience important?
If your product or service would receive bad reviews from your customers, again and again, this would likely be at the top of your agenda to correct. Right?
You must think about candidate experience in the same way that you think of your customers’ experience.
I don’t have to remind you about the power of social media.
A candidate who is in your hiring process but not impressed – or worst case very frustrated and angry – can instantly recount an experience and share their feelings on the internet to a large audience.
Warning! Among the audience will likely be future candidates but also potential customers of your products or services.
This has the potential to lead to far more damage to the brand than it did before the social media and internet era.
3 reasons why Talent Acquisition should be in Marketing?
(a) Marketing executives are trained and educated in the practice of increasing awareness, creating preferences for a product or service through market-driven benefits, communicating, building value propositions, PR, and promotions.
(b) Marketing understands the importance of corporate branding, customer segmentation, and how one rotten apple will spoil the rest of the barrel – meaning how one unhappy candidate on Facebook and Twitter can easily risk ruining your brand.
(c) Perception is reality and that is what Marketing is working on day in and day out. Attracting an audience to products and services or attracting talented candidates to your organization is just better managed by Marketing experts than by activity-driven Talent Acquisition recruiters.
