Th e best-practice organizations also emphasize their employment
brands to recruit and source technical talent effectively. Th e employment
brand, which encompasses the positive feelings a candidate may
have toward an employer either due to the work that the employer may
be doing there or the company’s good standing in society, is an important
influence for candidates that cannot be readily duplicated by a company’s
competitors for technical talent. Consequently, the best-practice organizations
not only have practices in place to recruit talent (such as where
and when and who to recruit) but also have practices to ensure their
employment brand is as strong and exciting as possible to candidates.
General Mills leverages its marketing brand as a recruiting tool,
because the organization makes some of the most familiar and recognizable
food products in America. When visiting campuses, employees will
often recruit in bright Cheerios T-shirts, making them instantly familiar
to students. The company also participates in community relationship
building. General Mills’ technical community, under the program
“Inspiring Students, Nourishing Minds,” volunteers at local schools and
encourages students to concentrate on the scientific, technical, and math
areas of their studies.
The research also found that, when it comes to technical talent
recruiting, best-practice organizations focus their resources on key universities
with a record of supplying successful technical talent. For example,
Schlumberger focuses on certain schools in its recruiting efforts,
based on criteria such as past student hiring, performance success, and
subsequent attrition rates. Recruiting is handled by assigned recruiters,
and the overall university relationship is partially managed by volunteer
Schlumberger technical employees. Schlumberger has an extensive
internship program including short internships that it calls “field camps.”
The one-week field camps involve a greater number of students at a lower
cost to the organization than more traditional internships. Like internships,
the field camps introduce the organization’s work to interested
students and provide an opportunity to evaluate possible candidates.
Finally, social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn play an important
role in the recruiting of technical talent at best-practice organizations.
For example, Schlumberger developed an iPhone application for campus
visits. On YouTube, Schlumberger interns post videos about their experiences.
Capturing their experiences in this way helps interns connect
with the company, and the enthusiasm in these videos also helps burnish
Schlumberger’s employment brand.