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Welcome to the CXR channel, our premier podcast for talent acquisition and talent management listen in as the CXR community discusses a wide range of topics focused on attracting, engaging and retaining the best talent, we’re glad you’re here.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 0:22
Welcome to another CareerXroads Podcast. I’m Chris Hoyt, President at CXR and your host for today we’re doing a recap show. I’m super excited. We just wrapped up one of my favorite topics. I know I say that all the meetings, but one of my favorite topics is recruitment, marketing and branding. And we always have such a great group, we had about 30 some odd companies that were at the meeting today, where we talked about a couple of case studies that were shared. But first, before we jump in and sort of talk about big takeaways, I want to introduce our guests. We have two and I’m just going to go in the order that you are on my screen in the Brady Bunch fashion, why don’t you guys introduce who you are, what you do, and maybe how long you’ve been at your employer. So Kourtnee, let’s start with you.
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 1:04
Hi, everybody, Kourtnee Kaauwai. I with Gallo. I’ve been with Gallo for seven years now. It’s flown by, you know, time flies when you’re having fun. I am the employment branding, program manager so newly in this role, and covering everything from employment branding, recruitment, marketing, reputation management, social media, a little bit of DE&I sprinkled throughout that.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:25
Well, so you’re not busy at all. There’s nothing going
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 1:28
Yeah, no, I’m just you know, hanging out drinking my coffee.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:31
Yeah, for sure. All right. And Thomas, welcome. This is your first podcast show with us. You want to introduce yourself?
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 1:38
Thank you. Yeah. Thomas Tiernan here. I work for Intuitive based out of Sunnyvale, California. I’m the recruitment marketing lead at Intuitive. So you know, anything that has to do with marketing and recruiting. I’m your guy. So excited to be here and looking forward to, to speak on this podcast.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 1:57
Great. Well, I don’t want to steal anybody’s thunder. So I won’t I won’t go first. But we had two really great. I mean, a great conversation afterwards amongst all the members, but we had two really great sort of case studies that were shared one by Assurant and the other by Disney. Kourtnee, did you have a big wow moment? Or an aha moment? Or oh, that’s cool moment from either of those.
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 2:17
Yes. So of course, Disney’s always impressing. So I really enjoyed the the Grace Hopper conference, you know, the page that they created. I think that that’s very cool. Of course, DE&I is on top of our minds. We’re also working on our end to kind of bring through those stories of our employees and really telling those stories and sharing them with the external candidates so they can see themselves working at Gallo so just love that they created that microsite we have a handful but we’d love to do something very similar. You know, for maybe a national black or another type of recruiting conference. I thought that it was really cool.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 2:54
Yeah, super cool that we have some organizations that get to do some really fun stuff.
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 2:59
We were both chatting, Carrie and I were chatting back and forth like oh, we’re jealous about this one. Okay.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:03
Back back channel chatter.
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 3:05
Yes.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 3:06
Nice. Thomas, how about you?
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 3:07
Disney was amazing. You know, their creative is always on the top when it comes to looking and feeling and staying on brand. That’s one thing that I always love about Disney. Before me the wow moment was with Assurant with with with Nicki. There’s one thing in her when she was talking in her presentation about how she she didn’t really or her team also didn’t go with the standard approach of you know, getting approval, waiting 18 months or so to get this employee story out there to the public that kind of just went with it and rolled with it. And for me at Intuitive, I feel almost the same way where are being humbled as something that’s really important to the company. So marketing, externally especially, is difficult. So after seeing the successes that they had from the the stories, the employee stories, specifically around women, and diversity at their company, and the success that and the results that they got from that, to me that was the wild moment and I said hey, if you know if they can do it, I can do it too.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:17
Yeah, it’s funny the the affinity those of us who love that marketing brand space have for the forgiveness over permission approach.
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 4:25
Yeah,
Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:26
Trying to get some stuff done, right.
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 4:29
Definitely.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 4:30
I did like you know, Thomas, your point, I really appreciated the shift away from stock photography. But then as some folks on the call sort of called out that comes with risks, right when you move to the more authentic approach with your, your employees and showcasing them as assurance has done really wonderfully in the portal and in the blog, but show Have you run the risk of like, well, what happens when the employee leaves, right and I spent we’re in this great resignation. I don’t know Not so sure what’s so great about it, but we’re in this great resignation, and the employees leave, and I thought it was really well done and that they, they’re, they’re conscious of the ability for those employees to leave, and for them to have to continually move that around, but also that they were beginning to sort of bubble up this new program of photography collection, internally, which I think is pretty ambitious,
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 5:21
Super important, you know, obviously, 2020 put a dent in those plans. But definitely, I think we, Thomas, we are the kind of in the same, you know, realm with the humbleness, right, so how do we feature Gallo and our employees without feeling braggadocious. So we implemented employee features a couple years back, and it’s, you know, taken off, and it’s wonderful, because, you know, our employees are our greatest asset. So I think as long as you focus on the employee, and what is, you know, what their job is, or what really makes them who they are, and kind of just tells the story tells itself in a sense, and it really helps with candidates, we’ve gotten a lot of anecdotal. You know, the big issue is, what does, you know, the employee feature do or the social media do for hiring, like the direct hire, that’s always been kind of an issue, right, tying those those types of features and things to the direct hire. But I’ve heard a ton of anecdotal stories, right, I saw X feature and, you know, you guys reached out to me, I wasn’t a passive candidate, I saw X feature, and it really spoke to me. So I think that at least for us, it’s been, you know, worth the risk. And we’ve kind of, you know, settled on, hey, if it’s a digital asset, that’s pretty easy to take down. You know, if we put a lot of work into something, it’s a bummer if somebody leaves and we have to take it down. But it, it’s, again, risk risk is worth or, you know, the reward for this, especially with the digital stuff, because you can easily pull it down when you come to print stuff that’s a little bit tougher, but you know, candidates recognize the authenticity of actual employees stock photography is so no go anymore.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 6:56
Yeah. I don’t think the numbers lay there. I think they said they had 30 Women who shared stories, the brief stories, they had 76,000 LinkedIn users who saw that I combined 218,000 LinkedIn users across the multi channel approach that they had and I think it was about 13% higher engagement on that program than was generated from their previous highest benchmark. So the numbers are there and tracking is there but I think you know, Thomas, you raise a really good point, I think it has to be done with some level of of humility.
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 7:32
People love to see you know, someone that’s working in the same field as them or at the same company, you know, someone that something where you can create that emotional connection to and that’s why I feel like stock photography you know, you can use it in places but having that actual human touch and that connection with the photo is where you can really get the most impact and and although COVID has been very difficult for a lot of people especially on our brand and creative team going in taking photos and videos and intuitive at the location one thing that I do see a benefit is within video. You know, everyone is so used to having meetings on Zoom or recording videos through their iPhone now where now when people see a video testimonial, for example have recorded on a Zoom meeting or recorded on their phone they’re not automatically thinking oh wow, the quality is not as great and more because they’re so used to it. So there’s been a positive there that I’ve noticed that I think that you know, we should definitely utilize more of this this that more raw footage but it still has just as much impact as a you know, professionally done one.
Chris Hoyt, CXR 8:43
Yeah, I think for sure as long as there’s a level of authenticity and it’s not just too polished. So it’s nice guys, I want to thank both of you for jumping on the podcast after the call and just do a quick recap with us it’s always great to have you you’re gonna get you’re gonna I know you’re excited I know this is why you did it. You’re gonna get your podcast coin, your podcast CXR challenge when you’re excited Thomas’s like what’s a podcast coin? Don’t worry. We’re sending it. But I just want to thank you guys both for your time and of course your contributions to the meetings today. We love you being part of the community appreciate you.
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 9:14
Thank you.
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 9:15
Thank you guys so much.
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 9:16
I thought you were talking about a crypto coin or something for a second I’m excited about that then
Chris Hoyt, CXR 9:21
Everybody’s got a budget Thomas we don’t all have big corporate money.
Kourtnee Kaauwai, Gallo 9:26
We only take Bitcoin now.
Thomas Tiernan, Intuitive Surgical 9:27
Yeah, Bitcoin only please.
Announcer 9:32
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