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Retail Marketing Meets Corporate Recruiting

By Bryan Johanson, April 19, 2007

Circuit City has taken a lot of heat in the last few weeks for their recent "wage" action. If you didn't hear, they recently fired hundreds of higher paid ($12/ hour) sales people only to replace them with lower paid ($8/hour) entry level sales - translated "they don't know squat" sales people. A bold but very misguided move on their part. So let's imagine that because of their recent actions they want to dramatically boost sales in the short run. They go out and hire a brand new Vice President of Sales to come up with a whole new approach to retailing. After careful thought, a few late nights and way too many "Red Bulls", the new Vice President decides that what they need is a much more structured and focused sales approach.

Read more articles by this author.

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Only one in five people who come into the store actually buy something. The rest are just lookie-loos; people who aren't serious buyers. These people waste a lot of time and cost a lot of money. In fact, according to his calculations, Circuit City could probably reduce sales staff by another 20% if they just focused all their efforts on customers who are ready to buy. So. . . . Starting this Saturday, every Circuit City will have a group of greeters at the front door. (Hey, it works for Wal-Mart.) Their purpose is to understand exactly what you want to purchase. They've installed very nice kiosks with their electronic catalogs right at the entry point of each store. Before any customer can enter the store, they must decide exactly what brand and style of television they want to buy. Once their decision is made they are escorted to their TV of choice and the "sales professional" gives them some details about the model. If the customer decides that this is not the right TV for them, they are escorted back to the catalog where they can choose another one and so it goes. Never mind that the customer happens to notice a particularly sleek model right next to the one he doesn't want to buy. Everybody is directed back to the catalog. In the new world of retailing, only those customers who know what they want are escorted to see the product. Lookie-loos are turned away at the door.

The process is much more efficient, but unfortunately I predict that our hypothetical VP of Sales won't last long in his/her new position. This approach, while efficient, would cause sales to plummet and customer satisfaction would hit an all time low.

Candidate Experience

Of course my completely fabricated hypothetical situation is absolutely absurd. No self respecting retailer would set up their business like that because THAT's NOT HOW CUSTOMERS WANT TO BUY! And yet, for a vast majority of corporations this is exactly how they force feed jobs to candidates on their corporate websites. They offer one landing page (The career home page), where candidates can learn a little about the company and then they ask candidates to pick an exact position from the catalog of available positions. If nothing comes up, then we ask them to return to the catalog and search again and again. Only when they find something that they deem relevant are they allowed to see the specifics about that particular position and asked to apply. Do you see any similarities? If it wouldn't work for retail customer, you've got to wonder if it's really working for candidates looking for new job opportunities.

Talent Hubs

Candidates need to be warmed up before they are ready to buy. They want to browse, see new things, touch the product and get a sense for what they are really buying. They also have lot of questions. Most of these questions are not specific to a particular position, but questions that help them make decisions about which jobs might be right for them. When I bought my new 52 inch flat screen high definition television I visited four stores (Circuit City, Best Buy, Costco and Wal-mart). I also looked online for both information and pricing. I didn't know much about TVs as a category, (We hadn't purchased a new one in over fifteen years), and so I needed to do some home work. Good candidates are in a similar position, companies must give them an opportunity to look at categories of jobs so they can get a feel for the company and the opportunities, not just individual job posting. They need to understand the nature of the work, the culture of the company, and the type of work they will be doing, as well as the opportunities for growth and advancement. By the way, none of that information is related to a specific job in a specific location - that detail comes much later in the buying process as candidates narrow their choices down.

What does a talent hub look like? If you would like to see an example of a talent hub (A work in progress) we are working on right now, send me an email at Bryan@adlerconcepts.com and we'll let you take a quick look. If you've seen or created a talent hub that you think is outstanding, we'd love to hear about it as well. Remember a talent hub is a page totally dedicated to a "Category of jobs", not a specific position in a particular location. In the meantime, here are a few things you'll want to include in your talent hub.

• Pictures of happy people who are working in this category of jobs. If diversity is important you will want to make sure the pictures represent the diverse workforce you are trying to attract.
• Quotations from happy employees. These quotes should not be chosen at random, but should reinforce both the corporate and employment brand with key messages that match the real corporate culture.
• A brief, but compelling description of the types of work someone in this category of job would be engaged in.
• A possible career path. It's great to use examples of people who started in this position who now have much larger and more challenging roles. If you have good examples of people who started as a Teller in the bank, moved to a Personal Banker, and then an assistant Branch Manager and finally a Store Manager. That's a great message to send to a potential applicant.
• Learn, Do and Become. Every great talent hub should describe what someone will DO in the job, what they will learn on the job and what they get to become if they do well in this position.
• Apply now - make it easy to apply
• Links to see available positions in specific locations
• Ability to sign up to receive real time information
• Allow candidates to get real time information on future jobs that match their interests either through email or RSS feeds.
• You might also include a "Most Frequently Asked Questions" page as well as a link to "A Day in the Life ..." page describing what's it's really like to work in this type of position at your company.

By the way, don't hide your talent hubs in frames or pages automatically generated by application tracking systems that can't be easily found. These pages are designed to be the entry point for anyone interested in a career in their particular area. They should be designed to be indexed by the major search engines and aggregation sites. This means that everything from the naming of the URL, the Meta tags, the keywords and the content must be carefully engineered.

Happy Recruitment Marketing