While talking about customer service on a radio program, I shared a customer service nightmare story last week that also happens to be a perfect analogy for the mistake so many employers make. More specifically, the way the business allocated resources to advertising vs. customer service mirrored the costly mistake employers make when it comes to recruiting, employer branding, and onboarding.

It’s a mistake you want to ask yourself if you’re making.

The story speaks to how often employers waste time, money, and creative horsepower when it comes to attracting and retaining talent because they put their attention in the wrong place.

So here’s the story … 

Years ago a friend of mine was telling me how much he loved his Audi. In the same “I love my Audi” story, he mentioned that he will never buy another one again … ever. Before I could ask how Statement A leads to Statement B, he told me that the one and only Audi dealer in the area was a nightmare to deal with. The car-buying experience felt sleazy and the service experience after the sale continued to be a horror show.

He then went on to tell me about another customer of he had met. That customer had brought his car to a dealership out of state for the very same reason my friend disliked this particular dealership.

I knew the name of the dealership, but never had an opinion of them prior to his story.

Fast forward two weeks.

I hear this dealership’s ad on the radio. It is incredibly creative and clever.

When it’s over, I think:

“Isn’t this classic. They spend all this money and creativity coming up with clever ways to get people through the door, only to drive them back out the door by the experience they deliver.”

Since I love analogies and tend to see them everywhere, I then found myself thinking:

“Isn’t this a perfect analogy for what employers do? They spend all kinds of time and money trying to get the best and brightest through their doors, only to drive them back out — or drive them crazy — by the frustrating, disrespectful, and spirit-crushing work experience they deliver.”

Wouldn’t it make sense to invest just as much time, money, and creative horsepower delivering the work experience you promise as you do making a compelling promise to job prospects?

Doesn’t it make sense to invest as much in making sure talent stays once they come through the door, rather than creating a revolving door experience?

Doesn’t it make sense to create a work experience that makes your employees not only happy to stay, but also want to tell their talented friends: “This is an awesome place to work. When there’s an opening, I’ll let you know”?

Think of how much money you could help your employer save in recruiting costs if you helped them create a work experience that turned your employees into a volunteer recruiting firm.

If all this makes sense to you, here’s what you can do about it.

Share this article with your leadership team and suggest that you, as a team, examine:

• Whether you truly deliver the work experience your recruiting campaign promises.
• Whether you really know what kind of work experience you deliver.
• Whether you truly understand the key components of an inspiring, commitment-generating work experience … and how to deliver them.
• Whether your managers know how to manage in ways that inspire loyalty, passion, and pride.
• How much you are investing in telling the world you are a great place to work, and how much you are investing in actually being a great place to work.
• If you are doing the things Todd described in the comment here that are the things that make a workplace a good workplace: appreciation, interesting work, the chance to make a difference, opportunities for new skills, work/life balance, recognition, flexibility, health and retirement benefits, nice co-workers, smart co-workers, good managers but not micromanagers, training, a good location, money, promotions, and raises.

Share this article with your employees as a conversation starter. Find out from them whether they would recommend you as an employer, and why … or why not. Don’t just do this as a survey. I have found over the years that interviews and focus groups provide much richer, more actionable information. I don’t recommend replacing surveys with them, but combining the two.

Invest in helping your managers learn:

• What key practices create an inspiring work experience where employees feel not only valued and respected, but they also have the resources, support, and training to do great work.
• What key human needs drive employee performance and engagement, and how to create a work experience that satisfies these human needs. Here are just a few: the need for meaning and purpose, the need to learn and grow, and the need to feel a sense of control over one’s experience.
• How to become more mindful of critical Managerial Moments of Truth that affect employee engagement and morale. Examples of such critical Managerial Moments of Truth include: 1) Onboarding a new employee, and whether it’s a “sink or swim” experience or new hires get the message: “We’re glad you’re here, here’s how we are going to help you succeed”; 2) Giving employees feedback and doing performance reviews; 3) Communicating to employees about major changes; 4) How you ask employees for input, and what you do with that input.
• The critical communication skills that make it comfortable for people with less power — i.e. their direct reports — to speak honestly and openly about difficult issues.
• The myriad of other skills and the managerial practices that bring out the best in employees.

If you are serious about not just getting talent “through the door,” but also keeping them and bringing out the best in them, forward this article to your management team and your direct reports, and get the process rolling.

Like the Giants and the Patriots, CareerBuilder and its controversial band of chimpanzees will be making a return appearance at this year’s Super Bowl in Indianapolis.

In this year’s 30-second commercial airing during the fourth quarter on Feb 5, the chimps wreak havoc with their human co-worker during a business trip, ordering 46 banana daiquiris, while brainstorming a poison ivy shampoo.

The chimps have proven to be an audience pleaser since making their debut in CareerBuilder’s first Super Bowl ad in 2005. The company’s three ads all made it into the top 10 in most of the popularity polls. The company reprised the monkey concept the following year, then tried a variety of other concepts, including viewer-conceived ads.

Last year, the chimps returned in an ad called “Parking Lot.” It ranked sixth in the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter poll, but prompted a complaint from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, over the use of chimpanzees. The organization, once monitored by FBI counterterrorism investigators, released a letter from Angelica Huston calling on CareerBuilder not to air the commercial and to never again use chimps.

CareerBuilder explained that it’s again using chimps, despite the complaints of PETA and other animal-rights groups, for the simple reason people like them. “The chimpanzees were brought back by popular demand. It’s been a very successful campaign that job seekers identify with and act upon,” CareerBuilder VP of Communications Jennifer Grasz told Forbes.

Monster, whose 1999 “When I Grow Up” commercial is considered one of the best Super Bowl commercials of all time, has yet to appear on any list of this year’s advertisers. The company last ran a Super Bowl commercial in 2010.

At a per ad cost approaching $3.5 million, the Super Bowl is the most expensive TV buy in the world. CareerBuilder says it’s worth it and sent along these data points:

• Revenue – Over the last seven years, on average, CareerBuilder’s invoicing increased 36% year-over-year in the month following the Super Bowl.  This consistently outpaced year-over-year growth in other months.
• Applications – Over the last seven years, on average, CareerBuilder saw a 24% year-over-year increase in applications to our employers’ jobs in the month of the Super Bowl.
• Traffic - CareerBuilder’s traffic grew 43% year-over-year during the month of the Super Bowl when we first debuted as a Super Bowl advertiser. CareerBuilder has seen continued gains and, in 2011, the company had an 18% year-over-year increase in traffic in the month of the Super Bowl.
• Brand Awareness – Per a Millward Brown awareness tracking study, from 2004 to 2011, CareerBuilder’s unaided awareness grew 29%. Total awareness of CareerBuilder’s TV ads doubled in the week following our first appearance at the Super Bowl.

Tomorrow we will be releasing the newest edition of The NonProfit Times, so today we will be looking at an article that also came out in one of our September 15th issues.  The year was 2008, and the article was about a controversial ad campaign by The United Way of Greater Milwaukee (UWGM).  The campaign was for statutory rape awareness, and the proposed ads contained imagery that caused a frenzy: The faces of adolescent girls were superimposed onto the bodies of full-figured, adult bodies.  This particular campaign was eventually scrapped when it was leaked on the internet.

Although this particular campign was scrapped, UWGM moved onto other campaigns, including one that showed images of pregnant teenage boys to shed light on teenage pregnancy.  Here’s an excerpt from the article:

A poster featuring a busty, D-cup model will turn heads. Couple it with a precocious, pig-tailed face of a little girl and it will stir an Internet frenzy.


That’s what happened to The United Way of Greater Milwaukee’s (UWGM) statutory rape awareness campaign when the faces of adolescent girls were imposed on full-figured, adult female bodies. But before the campaign could launch, the ad images leaked on the Internet and the campaign was tossed, even though the ads tested well in focus groups.


“It was obvious that the ads were being misconstrued,” said Nicole Angresano, the community impact associate director for UWGM. Angresano said that changes were made to the images and text and the leaked versions represented earlier design prototypes.


“If we were to move forward, those were not the versions they would have seen,” said Angresano, who explained that the ads were created to discourage adult men from having sex with under-aged girls.


Some 71 percent of babies born to teen girls in Wisconsin are fathered by adult males older than 20. In 20 percent of those cases, the fathers are at least six years older than the mothers, according to the Wisconsin Subcommittee on Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention study. The UWGM assumes that the statistics have stayed relatively the same since 1998, through case studies and anecdotal evidence from law enforcement, said Angresano. A new study is under way but results have not yet been released.

Whether you disagree with this form of advertising or not, there’s one thing that’s can’t be argued: It generates a lot of publicity.  To read the full article, head on over to our website.

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?

By illustration, Singer’s article cites efforts from three American Eagle student marketers who solicited 50 volunteers to take part in a move-in event at the University of North Carolina. Wearing A.E. Move-In Crew T-shirts, they helped with lifting boxes, handing out swag, and creating a welcoming branded experience for new arrivals, as just one of AE’s 50-campus events.

Target opened up its wallets for a freshman welcome dinner, and its doors for a private late-night shopping experience, complete with DJs and dancing through the aisles.

Mr. Youth, a youth marketing agency, published its list of brands who were best at communicating with freshmen. They included Nike (design your own shoes), Xbox (engage, connect and compete with your friends), and of course Apple (‘nuf said.)

So advice to the campus recruiting teams: Plan together and plan ahead.

1. Check in with your marketing department and find out if they are launching any guerilla marketing events on the college campuses. If yes, get in on it. If no, this is where you can shine. Help them plan something and then work together (isn’t that a great concept) to promote a seamless brand experience from consumer through employee. Give them the list of your target schools (you have that right?) and start there.
2. Work to infuse an employer value proposition that is aligned with the consumer value proposition into all your messages, and don’t sound like anyone else.
3. Make sure you’re careers site has been recently refreshed, is up-to-date and mobile friendly (QR tags are optional), and your social media sites are integrated with your career/jobs information.

Remember: the brands that swim together, win together.

With The Library section of The NonProfit Times website, nonprofits will be able to fulfill all of their white paper needs.  The Library is an advertiser driven page in which white pages, videos, webinars are uploaded and are searchable by subject and category. Right now we have three white paper pdfs that tackle various subjects like donor prospecting and financial software. We hope to add plenty more white papers in the months ahead.

When you get a chance, check out our Library page and see how it can help your nonprofit organization!

What does a nonprofit created to defend indigenous Mayan culture have in common with a sugary cereal?  According to Kellogg Co., a toucan.

In a report in The Battle Creek Inquirer, the cereal company is requesting that Maya Archaelogy Initiative (MAI) stops using an image of a toucan in their logo, claiming it infringes on Toucan Sam, the mascot that promotes their Fruit Loops cereal.  MAI has denied the charge, saying that the image in their logo is made up of “iconic images.” 

It does seem slightly strange that this would even be an issue.  Kellogg and MAI have absolutely nothing in common, so there is really no competition there.  What do you think?  Battle Creek Inquirer has both images posted in their article, so check it out and decide for yourself.

For this week’s Retro Article, we go back to September 15th, 2008.  On this day in history, the largest bankruptcy filing in US history occured when Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  This was one of the many financial institutions that fell because of the impact of the Great Recession.  In happier news, The NonProfit Times published their September 15th issue, which contained the following article about controversial ad campaigns:

A poster featuring a busty, D-cup model will turn heads. Couple it with a precocious, pig-tailed face of a little girl and it will stir an Internet frenzy.


That’s what happened to The United Way of Greater Milwaukee’s (UWGM) statutory rape awareness campaign when the faces of adolescent girls were imposed on full-figured, adult female bodies. But before the campaign could launch, the ad images leaked on the Internet and the campaign was tossed, even though the ads tested well in focus groups.


“It was obvious that the ads were being misconstrued,” said Nicole Angresano, the community impact associate director for UWGM. Angresano said that changes were made to the images and text and the leaked versions represented earlier design prototypes.


“If we were to move forward, those were not the versions they would have seen,” said Angresano, who explained that the ads were created to discourage adult men from having sex with under-aged girls.


Some 71 percent of babies born to teen girls in Wisconsin are fathered by adult males older than 20. In 20 percent of those cases, the fathers are at least six years older than the mothers, according to the Wisconsin Subcommittee on Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention study. The UWGM assumes that the statistics have stayed relatively the same since 1998, through case studies and anecdotal evidence from law enforcement, said Angresano. A new study is under way but results have not yet been released.


If you wish to read the full article, simply head on over to NPT’s back-issue archive.

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.

MarketingProfs.com has a dozen pictures on its list, which it put together as much in fun as to make the point that imagery is not immune to cliche. The images are all stock photos, available at little or no cost, which is one reason they’ve become so ubiquitous.  They are a cheap way to spice up a site.

The downside for recruitment marketers is that like elevator music, no one pays much attention. And when they do, instead of thinking “diversity” (in the case of our suspect picture), they think, “Now where did I see that photo before?”

I found it on the internship page of a company that boasts of being the “best of the best.” It may be, but consider the message communicated by the picture  (and, oh dear, the site has several more offenders). The message it sends is more along the lines of, “We’re just like everyone else.”

Is that what you want candidates to remember? Think of another cliche, the one about a picture being worth 1,000 words. Behind that trite expression is an enormous amount of research that all says the same thing: Images evoke a more powerful response, and are more easily recalled than words.

You can probably guess why. We see the image first, then zero in on parts, just the opposite of how we read. In a journal article a few years ago noted market researcher Dr. Alan Braithwaite, managing director of Ignition Marketing Research, explained it more scientifically:

Images have an immediate impact, as they are perceived holistically rather than in the linear-sequential fashion of verbal accounts. Whereas verbal messages are processed rationally and consciously, visual imagery is perceived and partially processed preconsciously.

You don’t have to be a market researcher, however, to appreciate the value of choosing images wisely. The web has plenty of sites with tips on how to select images. Here’s a simple starter from Brand Innovation Group.

Note the first point BIG makes: Fit images to the concept you are looking to communicate. I’ve sat in on enough meetings to know just how tempting it is to edit an idea, a concept, or a message to fit the image. This is especially true with logos, and thematic color choices.

I very clearly remember one heated creative discussion about choosing the “look and feel” for a website. The design team pitched hard one particularly attractive look. It was slick, modern, almost avant garde, with colors that popped. It was also totally inconsistent with the message we wanted to convey.

So here, in addition to the tips and advice from BIG and others you’ll find online, are mine:

1. DO NOT choose images until you have written out the message and impression you want to convey. Writing it out will (literally) ensure everyone is on the same page. And it will keep you from backing down when the design team comes up with the wrong image.
2. Avoid using images that have become Internet cliches. Search Google to see where else that cool, stock image appears. If it shows up more than just a few times, or if it shows up on other recruitment sites, don’t use it.
3. Before going live, invite in employees not involved in the image selection. Instead of asking them what they think of the picture, show it to them in context, and ask about the impression the entire project conveys.
4. Whenever you can, use real people. Have a photo day and engage your employees in shooting photos for the web site. Give them a photo credit online. Mount the best submissions and hang them where everyone can see.
5. Be ruthless in your selection and your photo editing. It may be a great picture, but if it isn’t consistent with your message, it doesn’t get used.
6. Change the imagery periodically. This is especially important to make sure the workers on your site are still your workers and haven’t moved on.
7. Candids are better than posed.

When we last off, UPS said that the candidates who were coming its way via Facebook and Twitter were more likely to convert to actual hires than were any old candidates. But the sample was small: in other words, social media recruiting seemed to pay off in terms of ROI, but not in any large volume.

Things are different now.

As 2010 progressed, TMP’s Mike Vangel says that UPS wanted to know: “What was the ability to scale? Would we be able to continue at the same rate of growth? Would it plateau, or would it accelerate?”

So far: no plateau. UPS attributes 955 hires in 2010 to the social media efforts, breaking down like this: 45 from Twitter (out of 681 people who arrived via Twitter and created applications); 226 from Facebook (out of 3,926 people who created applications); 84 from text-messaging (out of 1,004 who created applications); and 600 from people (out of 7,919 creating applications) going to UPS’s mobile-friendly careers page from a mobile device. That mobile-friendly site had about 510,000 page views in the last 4-5 months of 2010, with people averaging about a minute and a half each on the site.

Matt Lavery, UPS’s Atlanta-based corporate workforce planning manager, says that all these numbers are based on tracking, not from the proverbial drop-down menu asking people, “where’d you hear about us?”

The 955 may even be understated, he says. “There may be more out there. We really believe there are.”

UPS launched its Twitter page in April 2009, and Facebook that October. In 2009, it hired seven people through Twitter, 12 through Facebook, and 10 through text-messaging. Back then, with few social-media hires, its cost per hire was in the $1,000 ballpark. Now, it’s more like $60-70.

What UPS is tracking is the last media used. In other words, the stimulus. Let’s say I’ve been a fan of UPS on Facebook for a year. But I finally decide to apply for a job after seeing a Tweet asking me to send a text message. In that scenario, I’m part of the 84 text-message people mentioned above, not the 226 Facebook people, not the 45 Twitter people.

Speaking of all that: I asked Mike Vangel how these 7,919 people (and 600 hires) were driven to UPS’s mobile site. For example, did UPS put an ad on ESPN.com, telling people there were jobs open at UPS, and that people should check out the careers site or send a text? In short, the answer’s no. UPS didn’t use much paid media; it used social media to spread the word and lure people to visit its jobs pages, or to send a text.

Two-way Street

The UPS Twitter feed now has about 4,663 followers, created without reciprocating; UPS doesn’t follow many others, making it a little harder to attract followers. On Facebook it has about 14,365 fans, about 95% U.S.-based.

Like others – Intel, for example — UPS is spending 2011 improving this work in progress. Lavery says that the company doesn’t want to just broadcast jobs through already-created channels. It’s going to have more people work on social media recruiting, making it more interactive, more of a conversation, less one-way. It’ll make more videos, and have more ways for candidates to interact with current employees.

It’s going to redo its careers website. Right now, it’s not so easy to search by a very specific location. People are often sent to the general search page, because that’s how the site’s currently structured, but UPS, as an example, may want to send people from an advertisement to the search results for only some parts of Chicago.

UPS has come far. About five years ago, ad budgets were decentralized, and almost all dollars were spent on things like print, TV, and mailers. About 3-4 years ago, it started centralizing, and now less than 1% is spent on that sort of media. Money and time are now spent on job boards, social media, and search engine optimization.

Monkeys, shirtless men, and come-hither women. What’s HR coming to?

CareerBuilder’s monkeys have the animal rights people in a tizzy, while the latter (from The Ladders) has the (oh, dear. Whatever adjective-noun combination I use will offend someone so let me just say) some people waving the employee handbook, aghast at the overtly provocative nature of the company’s latest TV commercial.

The Ladders’ “More Attractive” spot began airing shortly after the New Year. But the buzz seems to have grown noticeable last week. Set to the song “Desire” by Vassy, the commercial features several provocatively posed and dancing members of The Ladders job seeker community. The tagline is “Be more attractive to $100k+ employers.”

Karla Porter, one of the earliest of the recruitment bloggers to comment, titled her post “WTF are they smoking over at The Ladders?” In case you are in doubt, she didn’t think it appropriate. Nor did those who commented on her post. Among them Laurie Ruettimann of Punk Rock HR fame, and Nick Corcodillos from Ask the Headhunter.

About the same reaction,  if a few degrees down the thermometer,  from Kelly Dingee at Fistful of Talent.

The YouTube community has a way broader range of views, most centered around the overtly provocative nature of the commercial. However, one post caught what I’m told was The Ladders intent: “all this is about is a parody of high-fashion photo shoots but with normal people who are clients of the company instead of super-models.”

Says Alex Douzet, president and co-founder of the company, “We took average people instead of fashion models because we wanted to demonstrate that you can be attractive. Attractive to employers.”

The actors in the ad are all Ladders members who found their current job through the career site. They were chosen from some 700+ volunteers who responded to an email sent by CEO Marc Cenedella last fall. The field was narrowed down to a dozen by the agency, Fallon Minneapolis, who developed the concept and the ad.

Not so much a parody of fashion advertising, as a metaphorical reference, Douzet said the imagery is straight out of Vanity Fair. Indeed, many of the stylists and fashion advisers for the shoot all worked for the magazine at one time or another.

“Yes. Absolutely,” Douzet knew the ad would be provocative and even controversial when the agency proposed it. His first thought, he said, was, “This is different.”

Targeted at job seekers, not recruiters or employers, the ad needed to cut through the clutter to get attention. “You always have to push the envelope,” he says. “We needed to tell a story that is different. The Ladders is different from other places to find jobs.”

While job listings are everywhere on the Internet, the message The Ladders wanted to tell was that its services help make a job seeker more attractive to employers. Simultaneously with the ad launch, paid Ladders members were assigned a Search Advisor. Members can call their advisor for job search help ranging from the general — how to set an automated search — to the specific — resume feedback and help. For detailed assistance, the search advisor may refer the member to a specialist.

Douzet says the agency is monitoring the comments on the social networks and finds them running 3-1 in favor.

CareerBuilder, however, doesn’t need to use any monitoring tools to know there’s a group of activists out there unhappy that it again used chimpanzees in its Super Bowl commercial. A quick look at the company’s Facebook page makes that clear.

And just in case the media hadn’t noticed, the radical animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals issued an advisory calling attention to the Facebook campaign. It also encouraged its members and supporters to post messages to the CareerBuilder page.

For the record: PETA may not have liked the ad, but USA Today‘s Ad Meter panelists did. It ranked it 6th out of the 61 ads aired during Sunday’s game.