The Recruiting Reel Episode 10: How to Promote Your Company Culture to Recruit Top Talent

In the 10th episode of The Recruiting Reel, China Gorman provides some excellent advice on how to promote your company culture to recruit top talent — remember, culture is everything!

Here’s the transcript of the episode:

Josh Tolan: Hey everyone! My name is Josh Tolan and I’m the CEO of Spark Hire, the leading video interviewing platform used by thousands of organizations around the world.

And this is The Recruiting Reel, a video series in which we discuss real recruiting challenges with prominent recruiting experts so you walk away with actionable tips you can apply to your own recruiting.

Today’s episode focuses on How to Promote Your Company Culture to Recruit Top Talent and our featured expert is China Gorman.

Now, if you’re in HR or recruiting, the odds are pretty high that you’ve already heard of China.

She’s the former Chief Operating Officer at SHRM, an amazing keynote speaker, and a high-profile global executive. We’re absolutely thrilled to have China on the show today and I’ll let her take it from here!

China Gorman: Hi! I’m China Gorman. I’m a consultant and author of the Data Point Tuesday blog at chinagorman.com. I’m also Chair of the WorkHuman Advisory Board powered by Globoforce.

Today, we’re talking about culture and recruiting; and what role does company culture play in recruiting.

Well, in many ways, culture is everything in recruiting. Culture is the employee experience brand that you take out to your talent pool. Just as with other types of brands, there’s what’s disseminated in to the market and then there’s reality.

Magic happens when those two are one in the same, but we all know that doesn’t happen all the time; especially in the recruiting game. It gets hard when the message and the reality don’t match so the most important thing for recruiters to keep in mind is that current employees talk and they share.

They talk to each other, they talk to the market, and they share. Boy, oh boy, do they share. If what you describe to candidates about your employee experience is real, your candidates will know. If it isn’t, they’ll know that too and not only will you have to overpay market rates to close the deal and get the talent you want, but your personal and professional reputation could also take a hit.

We all know big, famous brands whose cultures are awful though. They don’t show appreciation, they give their values lip service, and leaders don’t follow through behaviorally. They work their employees into the ground. They aren’t very good corporate citizens. They aren’t honest with their employees and yet, their brands are bright and shiny in the marketplace. Those organizations can and do hire people, but they overpay and they have tough retention challenges.

People go there to get that brand on their resume as a kind of professional purple heart and after 18-24 months, if the company is lucky, they are gone. So culture is critical in both attracting and retaining talent as well as repelling talent.

How can companies best promote company culture in order to attract and hire today’s top talent? Well, it’s kind of simple and it’s really kind of organic. Create and maintain a human, people focused culture that is led by leaders who are trustworthy, who appreciate their colleagues, who are fair, and who are competent.

If every leader in your organization lives up to those principles, recruiters will have no problem attracting the best talent because employees share. Boy, oh boy, do they share.

Josh Tolan: That’s a very engaging and very spot on answer from China on how to promote your company culture to recruit top talent.

In a previous episode, we spoke with Alison Hadden from Glassdoor about building a successful recruitment brand and she emphasized how organizations must start to embrace transparency.

China brings this full circle by pointing out that your employment brand is going to be transparent; whether you like it or not. So your company culture is going to be promoted organically and that’s going to have a really positive or really negative impact on your recruiting.

So, if you’re not already, make 2016 the year when your executive team cultivates a “golden rule” culture and sets the example for the core values that are expected in the workplace. This will lay the proper foundation for a strong company culture that will without a doubt, help your recruiting team attract top talent.

I really want to thank China Gorman for being the featured expert on today’s show. I encourage you guys to check out her website at chinagorman.com to learn more about her background and some of the amazing work she has done. Also, follow China on Twitter @ChinaGorman and connect with her on LinkedIn.

Thank you for watching The Recruiting Reel and stay tuned for more episodes. For additional HR and recruiting content, head over to hr.sparkhire.com and subscribe. Also, follow us on Twitter, @sparkhire. And subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to know about the newest episodes of The Recruiting Reel.

Thanks again for watching and happy recruiting!