1. EMPLOYER BRANDING
IN THE E-WORLD
HCI EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2. INTRODUCTION
T he e-world presents new opportunities for
Online recruits are less patient, often more
employer branding previously unimaginable
with traditional recruitment methods of print discerning, and more inclined to interact with
and onsite visits. Online employer branding potential employers.
now offers candidates dynamic, spontaneous,
24/7, two-way communication instead of the The e-world, employer branding and talent
previous flat, time-delayed, 9-to-5, one-way recruitment merge, mix and blend to create
communication. Innovative, multimedia tools, an online employment campaign. When these
such as video clips or social networks, are three ingredients blend successfully, online
adding a touch-and-feel reality and candidates respond favorably and engage in
authenticity to employers’ brands. Moreover, the recruitment process. Once engaged in the
due to worldwide online connectivity, both process, the user’s conscious and unconscious
employment career sites and employer experience on the career site will become
feedback are now widely available and very their employer brand experience.
rapidly disseminated.
In this webcast, Shelley Rees, Director of
Interactive Strategy for JWT INSIDE, a
subsidiary of JWT, the largest advertising
agency in the United States, presents a
foundation to understanding online employer
branding. Rees shares user statistics for
employer Web sites, essential features for
a positive user experience, and critical Web
site mistakes to avoid based on her extensive
knowledge and experience.
Warren Ashton, Group Marketing Manager for
Microsoft Corporation and Kerry Antezana,
Creative Director for JWT INSIDE, also
present Microsoft’s recent experience
launching their new and exciting employer
brand, the View<myWorld> campaign.
Webcast participants benefit from Ashton’s and
Antezana’s perspective on employment market
research, their campaign design process, and
the fresh, online tools rolled out for
View<myWorld> by the JWT INSIDE/Microsoft
marketing team.
Rees concludes the webcast by encouraging
participants to have the courage to try new
ideas and to keep in mind the candidate’s
user experience when developing employer
branding sites. Although the brand needs to be
consistent in offline and online presentation,
the audience and the dynamics differ.
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3. EMPLOYER WEB SITE USER STATISTICS
Understanding the behavior and psychology
of job seekers is fundamental to sponsoring a • Too much text scrolling or the text is
successful employer Web site. Career Web site not structured for easy online reading
success improves by:
The goal of employer Web sites is different from
• Preventing negative user experiences commercial Web sites that drive consumers
• Increasing job candidates’ Web site toward a product purchase. Instead, the goal of
time and return rate employer Web sites is to attract well-matched
• Producing great user experiences talent, excite them and motivate them to
apply for employment, initiating the employer’s
Online users typically move quickly from one recruitment process. Employer Web sites now
Web site to another. If a job seeker enters a generate half of job applications. While
career Web site and has a negative initial consumers generallycomplete their online
impression, the employer’s image is damaged purchases during their first or second Web site
and the prospective employee may cross off visit, employment candidates rarely apply until
the employer from further consideration. they have made multiple Web site visits,
According to user statistics, 25 percent of job statistically about six to eight visits prior to an
seekers have dropped a company from online employment application.
consideration after visiting the Web site. Rees
added that these 25 percent are more likely to Rees recommended increasing job candidates’
be discerning people with greater desirability Web site time and return rate. Average visit
as hires. Audit of Fortune 500 Web sites, a time to career sites is between six to twelve
research publication by Forrester, concluded: minutes. Visit times typically increase slightly
when Web sites contain video links. Building
A poor user experience on your Web site career sites with links to a variety of
erodes the brand identity of your company — informative media and tools draws job seekers
people who have a bad experience with a site further into the Web site, more fully engaging
associate it with the company’s brand. them, which in turn increases their time on the
Web site and the likelihood of their return to
To prevent a negative user experience on a the site.
career Web site, guard against making these
mistakes: Warren Ashton, Group Marketing Manager for
• Difficult to navigate with lots of dead Microsoft Corporation, tells recruiters:
ends and hard-to-find careers link
• Navigation reflects the company’s You don’t have to do ALL the talking. You don’t
internal structure rather than being have to be the one doing all the selling all the
designed for an outsider’s ease time ... Let the Web site do the talking for
• Navigation constantly links the user you. Let some of the experiences and some of
out of the career site and into the the things they’re going to see online do some
corporate site or sends the user to the of the work for you and make your job a little
online application too quickly bit easier.
• Technically ‘glitchy’ or incomplete
• Fails to be informative or contains too
much irrelevant or outdated content
• Flat content without video, audio or
first-first person profiles
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4. PRODUCING GREAT ONLINE CANDIDATE
EXPERIENCE
Knowing that the online candidate experience More than information sources, career Web
becomes their employer brand experience, sites are integral segments in the recruitment
successful career sites must deliver a great process. Recognizing the greater process, Rees
experience. What is a great online candidate cautions employers not to push job seekers
experience for talented, tech savvy recruits? toward the online Applicant Tracking System
(ATS) too soon.
The career site inspires recruits.
Recruits find the Web site’s content honest and
credible. The site’s information,
organization, ease of use and presentation
impress them. Talented potential hires are
able to relate themselves and their future with
this employer.
Potential hires interact on the career site with
peers and recruiters within the company.
Web 2.0 tools woven into the career site
encourage potential hires to stay longer and
frequently return to the site. Interactive
dialogue is readily available with company
personnel, both career peers and employment
recruiters. Links to podcasts, video clips, chat
rooms or blogs engage potential hires and
demystify the company’s history, culture and
future opportunities.
The employer’s online brand builds confidence
in well-matched job seekers and filters out
poorly matched prospects.
Effective career sites not only answer job
seekers questions about job openings, but
they also guide prospects toward personal
discernment and taking action. Well-matched
job seekers that are likely to fit in and thrive
within the company are encouraged to apply
and initiate the match making. Preferably, the
career site also filters out unsuitable prospects
through self-realization of the mismatch and
discouraging their applications.
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5. EMPLOYER BRANDING AND THE WEB 2.0
POWER SHIFT
Company marketing departments, talent
recruiters, advertising agencies, creative
directors and IT consultants brainstorm,
research, design, develop, test, tweak, launch
and troubleshoot for online employer
branding. Meanwhile, the public comments,
discusses and reviews every move of these
companies in open, online forums with Web
2.0 tools, such as blogs, social networks, chat
rooms and wikis.
Public online postings on corporate businesses
are easily accessible with basic skills and great
online search engines, such as Google. The
impact of online postings should not be
underestimated. Employers need to respect
the power gained by applicants through their
online connections. Whether companies like it
or not, people are talking about them online
and forming their opinions through dialogue Figure 1
with others. For this reason, Rees advises
companies to recognize their lack of control of
online generated opinion (Figure 1). Instead,
she suggests that companies actively influence
public opinion by observing, listening and
joining the live, online forum.
A great example of what NOT to do involves
the major British bookseller, Waterstone, the
UK equivalent of Borders Books. A Waterstone
employee wrote something negative about
their employer on a blog, and the company
fired the employee. News of the critical blog
and the termination became an enormous
online backlash for Waterstone. Overnight,
they became well known for censoring their
employees in their private lives (Figure 2).
Now, when a prospective Waterstone hire
googles the company, one of the top hits will
be the censored and fired employee — not
good PR for employee recruitment. Figure 2
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6. MICROSOFT’S ONLINE EMPLOYER BRAND
Ask a young, talented techie to describe
Microsoft as an employer — their descriptors • Turned off or tuned out by marketing
are likely to include: spin
• Want to talk with fellow technical staff
• Giant and stable on a peer-to-peer level, such as one
• Corporate and bureaucratic game tester talking to another game
• Old school and not cutting edge or tester
creative • Demand transparency and online inter
actions
When Microsoft recruiters courted these
techies, they would sometimes ask recruiters, Their research also found that Microsoft’s online
“Why would I want to work for Microsoft, for employer branding needed the following criteria:
such a large corporation, or move to
Washington State?” • Eliminate “marketing”
• Embrace authenticity
Although Microsoft’s company brand is • Ensure technical proficiency
recognized worldwide, they sought a new • Demonstrate innovation
employer brand expressing an image of • Utilize Web 2.0 features and ideas
surprise, freshness and creativity for use in • Engage and excite an extremely savvy
today’s hot, competitive market for core-tech audience
technical talent. The creative team of JWT
INSIDE and Microsoft Corporation set out to The creative team defined “Getting Real” as
develop a cohesive employer brand focused the campaign’s tone and arrived at three core
on recruiting the best and brightest available ideas for technical employment branding to be
people with rich technical backgrounds. contained in all Microsoft technical recruitment
communications, online and offline.
The team focused on the needs of core
technical talent, such as: 1. Work with smart and interesting
people.
• Developers 2. Create technology that truly impacts
• Software testers the world.
• System architects 3. Experience unparalleled career
• Program managers opportunity.
Using focus groups and surveys of Microsoft’s Next, they developed a concise summary statement:
technical candidates and new hires, the
creative team conducted research and mes- Come join a unique community of smart and
sage testing. Their research identified the fol- passionate people who truly enjoy the
lowing traits of core techies: challenge of creating future technology that
makes a real impact on how the world lives,
• Very interested in being informed and works and plays.
less interested in being entertained
• Highly passionate about being real
• Street smart in their technical skills
• Very skeptical and savvy
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7. MICROSOFT’S ONLINE EMPLOYER BRAND
To communicate the tone and core ideas of the
new employer brand, Microsoft decided to have
core techs tell their stories of what it is really
like to work at Microsoft. This novel strategy is
explained by Gretchen Ledgard, Marketing
Manager, Microsoft Staffing & Jobs Blogger:
Our best evangelists are authentic. A candidate
can spot marketing spin from a mile away. It’s
the passionate, heart-felt conversations that
help a company come to life through their
employees. Our goal is to help as many of
those conversations take place as possible.
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8. VIEW<myWorld> EMPLOYMENT CAMPAIGN
These Microsoft employee stories are The Web site, viewmyworld.com, features
combined with the tone, core ideas profiles and stories of real Microsoft
and summary statement to produce the employees, such as Hoop, an employee of the
View<myWorld> employment campaign. Zune Group.
Within the theme of the campaign, the slogan,
View<myWorld>, is written in the developer’s These profiles include employees’ photos, full
tribal language of code. The home page of names, position titles, work groups, locations
Microsoft’s career Web site, viewmyworld. and their transcribed, non-edited, interviews
com, contains the following message (Figure 4). Microsoft took the approach of
(Figure 3): complete openness and transparency.
Figure 4
Figure 3 Microsoft’s View<myWorld> Web site also
contains these Web 2.0 features for the
Attention: This site does not have actors pre- profiled employees:
tending to be employees. You won’t find fic-
tional testimonials or mission statements. This • RSS feeds and links to work group blogs
is a candid view of what it’s like to be a techie and personally recommended blogs
at Microsoft, from those of us who (Figure 5)
actually are. Want to know what we’re • A “forward URL” feature
working on, what we’re excited about and • Search jobs @microsoft.com/careers
what we really think of Microsoft? Let’s talk. • Q&A for top candidate needs
It’s all here.
The concept of View<myWorld> includes:
• Real employees
• Real stories
• Nod to code
• Personalized “invitation” headers
• Click-thru to Web site
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9. VIEW<myWorld> EMPLOYMENT CAMPAIGN
Microsoft’s new employer branding
incorporates all the Web 2.0 tools into their
career site. Recruiters can now email
information to a candidate and “pull from
their toolbox” a helpful webcast, blog link or
video file to attach to the email.
All of Microsoft’s recruitment materials for the
View<myWorld> brand are consistent online
and offline. The online materials include:
• Banner ads
• HTML email templates
• Email signatures (Figure 6)
• PowerPoint templates
Figure 6
The offline materials include:
• Print ads
• Event booths
• Posters and banners
• Go cards
• “Zine”/brochure
• Print-ready flyers
The next version, or 2.0 version, of
View<myWorld> is currently being beta tested
for rollout this month. Recruitment content
will expand to highlight specific people
behind individual products and links to
customized pages for specific business groups
within Microsoft, such as:
• Corporate Research & Development
• Entertainment & Devices Division
• Microsoft Business Division
• Platform & Devices Division
• Server & Tools Division
• Microsoft Silicon Valley
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10. CONCLUSION
O nline career Web sites are courting talented
employment prospects who are well matched
with the companies. Businesses are translating
their company or product brands into
analogous online employer brands. Most often,
the employer brand and the company brand
are very consistent with each other, as well as
consistent between offline and online
materials. However, in the case of Microsoft’s
employer brand, the company supplemented
their very recognizable logo, colors and brand
identity with some new visual elements and a
tone that was fresh territory for the company.
This was the driving force behind the launch of
their View<myWorld> recruitment campaign.
As many companies try to defend themselves
from online criticism and live interactive
discussions, Microsoft has decided to step out
front of this force and feature their own
employees linked into the career site and
telling their personal stories. These stories and
associated interactive tools make the office
walls of Microsoft seem transparent so that
technical peers can “drop in” and experience
what it is “really” like to work at Microsoft. In
an effort to hire the best and brightest of both
rising and experienced techies, Microsoft has
focused their employer brand on candid
openness. Computer geeks are no longer
dressed in the IBM uniform of white shirts,
blue suits and ties. Today’s geeks featured on
Microsoft’s career site are dressed in
skateboarder shorts, African locks, Goth
makeup and lots of blue jeans. It is fun and it
is hot to be a geek. Respect their power and
remember them as the user of your career
site, should you try to hire them.
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11. Based on the Human Capital Institute webcast, Employer Branding in the E-World, June 3, 2008.
PRESENTER
Kerry Antezana Warren Ashton Shelley Rees
Creative Director Group Marketing Manager Director, Interactive Strategy
JWT INSIDE Microsoft Corporation JWT INSIDE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This White Paper is made possible by JWT INSIDE, sponsor of HCI’s Employer Branding Learning Track.
ABOUT JWT INSIDE
JWT INSIDE helps organizations advance employee engagement through comprehensive advertising,
marketing and employee communications services. Measurement tools, consulting resources and
strategic approaches are employed to put the right people in the right jobs and keep the workforce
engaged. The agency has 12 offices and 9 satellite locations across North America and internationally.
It is a subsidiary of JWT, the largest advertising agency in the United States and the third full-service
network in the world. Its parent company is WPP (NASDAQ:WPPGY). Visit www.jwtinside.com for
more information. JWT INSIDE helps organizations advance employee engagement through compre-
hensive advertising, marketing and employee
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