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Inside this modest, even nondescript brick building is the Conspiracy. I capitalize it because I’m playing along with the preposterous notion that it was selected because of grammatical significance to be part of the official name of the organization that inhabits suite 200 here on Fort Worth’s Magnolia Avenue.

“Conspiracy,” explains the man whose name is also part of the title, “is a collective noun. It represents the whole.” At another point he tells me, “The intellectual power of the organization comes from the whole.”

I do not question his explanation. It has the ring of HR about it.

Maintaining his own name as part of the title of what once was called Starr Tincup signals continuity; a heritage name, he adds. I do not question this either. It has the ring of marketing wisdom about it.

Thus was Starr Tincup rechristened The Starr Conspiracy, says the man. His name is Starr, Bret Starr. A year ago he bought out his partner Bill Tincup, then promptly made partners of four of his long-time associates.

Documents that have come into my possession (and which I share with the world here) more fully detail the name change. The word “conspiracy,” says a document bearing the cryptic seal of the organization — a be-tentacled octopus with an all seeing eye – ”denotes a group of persons working in secret to influence perceptions and outcomes.” keep reading…

Our brand has taken an absolute battering over the last 18 months. -Jon Tait, of BP

That’s for sure. (You’ve seen the coffee video.) Tait’s the head of global attraction at BP, talking about the aftermath of the colossal oil spill that killed 11 people and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The company is launching its first “people-based” recruiting campaign; more on that in a minute.

Tait says that in the fall of 2010, BP researched what people thought of BP, and how that compared to what they thought of competitors. It used LinkedIn for the surveys; the company’s user conference in Las Vegas today is where Tait talked about this effort.

BP found out that a lot of people — about 80% — didn’t know BP was hiring. They didn’t know other Big Oil companies were hiring either, but they knew tech companies were adding headcount. BP learned that 60% of people it wanted to hire are passive candidates, a target market it hadn’t been targeting much.

The good news it got was that more than 50% of people still had an interest in working for BP, and rated the quality of its workforce high, and its technology at least on par with competitors’.

People’s biggest concerns were the company’s financial sturdiness; its safety record; and their own long-term career goals, and whether they fit in BP.

BP’s brand — the perception it’s going for — is about bringing brilliant minds together with technology at a massive scale to meet the world’s energy needs.

Its recruitment advertising has changed, consistent with that brand, but using employees to describe it in human terms.  keep reading…

Contingent workers, consultants, and independent contractors will make up as much as 35% of the total U.S. workforce within a decade. You’ve got new challenges in attracting, and retaining this diverse type of workforce to your organization. Freelancers and free agents are different from the traditional full-time workforce in many ways, which I get into more in a longer version of this post, in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

For now, let me just take one challenge organizations will have in increasing their internal hiring of independent contractors, consultants, and free agents: branding. keep reading…

The Canada division of KPMG is using a job-simulation tool to assess managerial candidates in its tax, audit, and advisory practice areas, and will soon use it in campus recruiting. As much as it is about finding the best person, the company says it’s about branding and trying to engage passive candidates, not bore with them with a long test that leaves them scratching their heads, wondering if they’re giving the right answer to a question they don’t know why they’re being asked.

“The line is now blurring between assessment and branding,” says Moses Bar-Yoseph, the national director, talent attraction, for KPMG in Canada.

The Canada division has 5,400 employees, 32 offices, and about 46 people working on recruiting and employment branding. About three years ago, Bar-Yoseph and others started to look at where recruiting was going: more social media, more LinkedIn, more tools, and just generally, he says, “change on the horizon.” Bar-Yoseph felt that recruiting was going to change, away from simple job listings to pipelines and passives and all the things you’ve been reading about in recent years. KPMG wanted to be more proactive in attracting passive candidates.

Meanwhile, it came to believe that the basic psychometric tests that candidates have come to know and in some cases not love were not the way he wanted to go. Bar-Yoseph didn’t want people to answer a question and think, “I like the color blue so I don’t fit. That wasn’t what we were after. We were after something there was an actual exchange of information so the passive candidate would go through this and look more at what the job would look like. The job posting was not enough.” keep reading…

I bet you are having an ongoing conversation about the ongoing conversation. Are you listening to the conversation? Joining the conversation? Guiding the conversation? Tired of the conversation yet? You know, the conversation about the conversation that current and former employees, prospective candidates, and other interested parties are having about YOU as an employer. That conversation. Without a doubt, there are many ongoing conversations about the conversation and differing opinions as to how employers should/can/must engage in the conversation. These conversations have been going on for hundreds of years. The Internet, social media, and other tools are just exponentially connecting, expanding, amplifying and fanning the flames of the conversation.

When I interviewed for my position at TMP almost 14 years ago, I really knew nothing about the company, nor did I have an obvious route to learn more. Had I been privy to the TMP work experience conversation, I might have injected some of those nuggets and questions into the interview conversation. Without those gems I was relegated to closing the interview with “I really believe I can make an impact at TPM.” Thankfully, I still got the job. We had a good conversation despite my verbal typo.

Yes, the conversation about the conversation about the conversation can be exhausting. But, there are definitely valid reasons for an employer to be aware of the conversation. While there may not be a finite right or wrong way to determine when, if, and how to engage and guide the conversation, there are some common sense ideas to be considered.

(For those of you who have lost count, I’ve used the word “conversation” 25 times already.)

First of all, think about the conversation from this perspective: anyone can quickly and easily find well-indexed opinions about the workplace of most employers via search engines, message boards, blogs, social media, employee testimonial sites, etc. That’s a given and we should all stipulate that.

Now think about this fact: keep reading…

In case you’re looking to apply for this open HR job, be aware that the snow starts in October and melts in May.

OK, so Yukon would like you to know that there’s more to its territory than a six- to eight-month long winter.

In 2008, it began looking at a new strategy for recruiting, retention, branding, and marketing the new brand. It wanted to better attract youth, Yukon First Nation (aboriginal) candidates, people with disabilities, and others, and do a better job at staffing hard-to-fill jobs. keep reading…

The Facebook changes announced last week at the developers conference, and those in the weeks before, have major implications for the way employers use the site to brand themselves and build relationships with potential candidates and future hires.

Recruiters who now use Facebook exclusively or mostly to push out jobs will become even more marginalized by the increasing emphasis the social site is placing on engagement. Those who actively invest in courting their Facebook “fans,” offering content of value, and real conversations, will reap even greater rewards than they do now, earning their brand a place on user’s forthcoming Timelines, and the ability to broaden and measure their reach as visitors “Share” content with their own FB friends.

One of the consequence of these and the other changes Facebook is rolling out, is that it will be harder than ever for employers to compete for attention. Even before last week’s f8 conference, when the company’s most profound changes in years were announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, routine updates such as a “like” or a me-too comment, and job postings, were being moved to a ticker-style activity window on the profile page. Even more is likely to appear there as Facebook’s standards of what’s worthy of being a top post, and thus rising to the top of a person’s wall, become more stringent. (A good summary of the announced changes is available here.) keep reading…

"Why join the Navy, if you can be a pirate?"

Want to impress your CEO? Few CEOs wouldn’t mind having the innovation track record of Apple, so there is probably no quicker way to become an “instant hero” then by learning how Apple’s talent management practices have contributed to its success and applying those practices relevant to your organization. In this installment of the case study, we’ll look at internal branding, employer branding, and recruiting.

Internal Brand Encourages Fighting the Status Quo

Steve Jobs and the management team at Apple have worked tirelessly to build a unique internal brand image at Apple that positions employees (at least mentally) as revolutionaries and rebels. Many years ago the organization influenced this internal brand by challenging employees to think how much more exciting it would be to be a pirate, rather than someone who followed the formal protocol of the regular Navy. It even flew a pirate flag over its corporate headquarters. The tradition of being revolutionaries is upheld even today with many supportive slogans including “Part career, part revolution.”

Apple is well known for using T-shirts, parties, and celebrations to build cohesion and to reinforce the internal brand as a ragtag group of revolutionaries. keep reading…

In honor of back to school time, let’s check out what’s new on campus. I’ve long-advised clients who desire to keep ahead of the technology curve to follow the trends in campus student enrollment. Now there’s another reason to head back to school.

If your responsible for your company’s campus recruiting efforts, Natasha Singer’s recent article for the New York Times is a must-read. The story highlights ways companies are using student Brand Ambassadors to promote products and services, and generate loyalty via social media, in-store events, and on-campus buzz.

Traditional marketing efforts like print advertising and TV spots are yielding fewer and fewer tangible results, but did you know that this fall, an estimated 10,000 American college students will be working on hundreds of campuses as Brand Ambassadors? keep reading…

Over the past few years there seems to be a change in the candidate experience, and it isn’t a positive one.

Let’s forget for a moment the hundreds of applicants who apply for a particular position, with a small percentage of them qualified. The candidate experience is not going to be positive for the unqualified applicants, and that’s okay. If they had taken seriously the minimum qualifications listed on the job posting, they would have realized they didn’t have a chance.

And let’s even forget those applicants who are qualified, but don’t have a strong enough background to be considered for an interview.

What we are talking about, however, is the candidate experience for those individuals who get invited to the company for an onsite interview. That’s where we have a problem. And it’s a big one. keep reading…

Over the course of this webinar, Michael Long, Head of Culture Branding at Rackspace Hosting, will explain the theory, practice and results that have been achieved since the launch of rackertalent.com in March of 2010. Through the deployment of employee blogs, a flexible platform and modern web technologies, the Rackspace career site has increased visitors by over 430% in just one year.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Matt Epstein really wants a job at Google. Really.

He wants to work for the company so much he’s launched a silly, almost ridiculous “Hire M.E.” campaign in which a phony mustache plays a supporting role. keep reading…

Have you seen these people? The ones in the picture to the right? If you have, immediately call the marketing police and report their location. They are on the “Most Overused Stock Image Photo” list at MarketingProfs.com.

I’ve personally tracked the photo to eight HR-related sites where it shows up illustrating employee engagement, consulting services, headhunting, and a company’s commitment to diversity recruiting. I know there are more. Google has 19 pages of results.

Is your company among them?

A moment’s digression: Google has a new, handy image search that lets you drag an image into the search box to find where else it appears. You can also upload a picture, search by URL or, with the right extension, right click an image. Google explains it all here. keep reading…

It’s hard to build a world-class corporate recruiting function without a comprehensive list of the principles that define a top function. While tips on being a good recruiter are available in abundance, there is little written that focuses on the undocumented principles that separate merely average functions from those that truly deliver.

Based on my observations in the field over the past 40 years, I’ve compiled the following list of what I have seen that leads to greatness. keep reading…

The extended version of this article will be published in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership.

Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a nuisance at best and often a disaster. –Professor Geert Hofstede, Dutch social psychologist

One of the greatest challenges facing global companies right now is their ability to exploit synergies and efficiencies in their global talent acquisition and retention programs. When considered with the fact we are about to enter an era of unparalleled talent scarcity around the world, the role of the global employer brand manager is set to become one of the most critical roles inside global companies.

Global talent acquisition has become increasingly complex. The need for systems integration, understanding of culture diversity, social and technological changes, jobless, uneven economic recoveries in many countries, the threat of declining fertility rates, inequality in global education standards, and the impact of aging populations in many developed economies has created multiple challenges for global companies which show no signs of easing soon!

Leaders I speak with around the world are saying they are running hard to stand still and where previously they could take 1-2 years to research, develop, and implement talent acquisition and retention strategies, the competitiveness for talent is demanding leaders react quicker and more decisively to stay ahead of the competition.

Even top employer-branding companies like Google, Adidas, and Deloitte are constantly seeking innovative ways to source, develop, and retain talent. If that’s what is happening with the market leaders, consider the millions of other companies around the world who have similar challenges. At a global level the problem is magnified to unthinkable proportions and the solutions are going to need a mix of short- and long-term initiatives including collaboration between companies, industries, universities, and governments. There is no benefit to global corporations if leadership talent is in high supply in Scandinavia when manufacturing operations are in India and there is a dearth of leaders with the right skills.

The Reality of Globalization and its Impact on Employer Branding

The social and culture integration brought about through globalization can foster broader understanding and co-operation between employees around the world, and potentially economies of scale in the allocation of human resources, but is it really that simple? keep reading…

Home Depot has quietly been expanding its use of Facebook in online games and recruitment advertising on people’s profiles, meanwhile operating with transparency and responsiveness — returning emails in 24 hours — often missing elsewhere in online recruiting.

Miko Covin, who manages the employment marketing group, is one of the key players. She and others in that group — people like Alison Foy — came up from recruitment ad agencies like Bernard Hodes, TMP, and JWT Inside.

Covin arrived in 2008 from JWT, wanting to use the basic marketing and advertising skills she’d learned at agencies and apply them to social media and recruiting. In early 2010 (late in the game, she admits) she opened up a personal Facebook page after a friend invited her to be a Facebook member. She also saw the agency world struggling, social media increasing its role in recruiting, and wanted to move Home Depot in the social media direction.

She spent 2010 on education. There were HR people in Home Depot who didn’t get social media; in fact, some even used the now-awkward word “The” preceding “Facebook.” “I don’t know about The Facebook,” one person said.

Covin kept talking up the importance of social media in recruiting. By the spring of 2010 Home Depot began testing two things on Facebook, targeting people based on the information in their profiles. First, it tried advertising store jobs to females, part of an effort to reverse the perception as a company for male jobs. It casted a “huge net first,” Covin says.

It narrowed after that, targeting people — now both male and female — whose profiles indicated they were in HR, and were based in areas where an HR district manager was needed.

It brought on JWT, the recruitment marketing agency, to help with the Facebook project.

By August, satisfied with the approximately 100 resumes it had received over the summer from these efforts, the recruitment marketing team was feeling that Facebook was a success in recruiting, and it should be expanded. keep reading…

In the installment of our webinar series, we examined the culture and core values that Zappos is committed to which have allowed them to develop one of the most powerful consumer and employer brands on the market.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

McDonald’s is hoping tomorrow’s nationwide hiring push will get it more than the 50,000 workers it figures it needs to keep pace with sales.

As much as it wants to grow its workforce, the company is even more anxious to pump up its street cred as not just the place to go for a paycheck when you can’t find anything else. To combat its image as a provider of minimum-wage, dead-end, burger-flipping jobs, McDonald’s launched an ad blitz a few weeks ago to promote the event and its jobs as a pathway to a career.

Jan Fields, president of McDonald’s USA, told the Chicago Tribune that  company executives will appear at many of the chain’s restaurants to share their own career stories. Fields herself began her career behind a McDonald’s counter when she was in school.

In the interviews Fields is giving, she highlights the numbers of restaurant owners (50 percent) and corporate staff (40 percent) who started their careers working at a McDonald’s.

The company has also been beefing up its social media efforts. It now has a YouTube career channel with eight “Why I Love My McJob” type videos. None have received much traffic, despite being teased from the company’s Facebook page with a post saying, “Working for us can be much more than just a job. It’s a career that starts with you getting all the tools you need to succeed.”

The effort, especially when compared to companies like Starbucks or Hyatt, has a ways to go. For an event of the magnitude of a 50,000 target one-day hiring push, there’s nothing about it listed on the company’s “Events” tab.  Nor is there anything about it on the corporate careers site. keep reading…

The biggest challenge I find for managers responsible for the employer brand strategy is they don’t understand the science of branding and lack knowledge in branding principle and practices which have been informed by decades of research into how brands grow. I’m going to go over that here, and then get to what you can do to grow your company brand.

Common employer branding mistakes

Some of the most common mistakes I see made by companies include: keep reading…