IAMPHENOM Session Recap: TA Leaders Talk Talent Marketing

There was no shortage of amazing speaking sessions from this year’s IAMPHENOM conference. Earlier this month, we shared a recap of Ed Newman’s panel discussion with the Intact team. This week, I’m happy to recap one of the panel discussions with top talent leaders talking all about candidate experience and talent marketing.

Phenom People’s VP of Customer Experience, Nancy Gray-Starkebaum, moderated the panel of top talent leaders. The panel line-up included Brad Cook, VP of Global Talent Acquisition at Teradata; Susan Slater, former Head of Talent Acquisition North America at MedImmune and AstraZeneca; Katherine Dahlke former Global Director of Talent Acquisition at Analog Devices; and Alexis Trigo, Senior Director of Organizational Capability at Foot Locker.

Coming from different industries and perspectives on the candidate experience and talent marketing, this panel discussion was highly engaging.

Here’s a look at a few of the questions and top takeaways from the session.

QUESTION 1: What are some of the very best things that you’ve done to market your talent brand?

Brad: It's not just about getting the brand out there. It's about capturing the data [about your candidate pool] once and using it many times.

Susan: When the req drops, you should have already started your brand months ago. Build your brand ambassadors and this includes your hiring managers. They need skin in the game. Start inside so you can go out.

Alexis: The same experience people have as consumers should be the experience they have as a candidate and as an employee. Leverage stuff you already have.

QUESTION 2: What’s the secret to using a really great employee testimonial?

Brad: When you don’t have budget to do a whole lot of videos or testimonials, we did something through our HCM to congratulate employees on their one year and encourage them to go out to Glassdoor and write a review. We also did this for birthdays.

Susan: Right before one of the largest oncology conferences in Chicago, we did a human postcard. In the video, you see a kid playing with Legos or some kind of kids toy. Then, you hear a man’s voice in the background. He talks about what he does at home, his family life, and what he likes to do. At the very end, he says, “I’m a Senior Scientist in Oncology at AstraZeneca.” This drove tons of leads at the conference for us.

Katherine: We wanted to show not only a day in the life but a day in the lifecycle of an engineer. We grabbed 30-second sound bites from several engineers in our company to show the evolution of a career from different tenure perspectives.

QUESTION 3: What do you feel you need to do in the next couple of years to make sure you stay on top of the candidate experience from a communication standpoint?

Katherine: We need a combination of customization and automation for responding to candidates. As a talent leader you need to sit down and think about what does that end-to-end experience look like, set expectations for communication, and pitch those expectations accordingly.

Brad: It’s moving from pure talent attraction to talent engagement. It’s that multi-dimensional candidate engagement. If they aren’t ready to have a conversation, because it’s the middle of the night, they can at least gain information from a conversation with a chatbot.

Alexis: We always have a need for the junior level associates in our stores. Most people are going to be disappointed. We have millions of applicants for thousands of jobs annually. I see it becoming more of a community for people to opt-in to hear about opportunities. I don’t see it as a singular req anymore.

This is just a glimpse into the panel discussion. Check back in with us next week for more highlights from IAMPHENOM.