DE Talk | Employment Branding Trends & Tactics in the Midst of a Pandemic

In this special edition episode of the DE Talk podcast, Recruit Rooster’s Ruth Toombs and Rob Cox are taking over! Listen in on this lively conversation as they dive in to current industry trends related to unemployment, labor shortages, remote work and budgeting tactics, and how these ultimately affect your employer brand to make you the employer of choice for candidates. They also share how they’ve helped employers with specific hiring needs during the pandemic to help them fill urgent positions, and how they’ve helped companies use their current employees to find their next great talent.

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About DE Talk

For DirectEmployers, it’s all about valuable connections and meaningful conversations. This monthly podcast features honest and open dialogue between powerhouse industry experts on a variety of HR topics ranging from OFCCP compliance advice to emerging recruitment marketing trends, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and insightful solutions that help infuse new life into your HR strategies.

Hosted by Candee Chambers, Executive Director of DirectEmployers Association.

Episode Guests

Episode Transcript

Ruth Toombs:
Hello and welcome to the DE Talk podcast. We have a special rooster takeover episode for you today with me, Ruth Toombs, and Rob Cox, both from Recruit Rooster. We hope you enjoy this mini episode of the DE Talk podcast. Hey everybody. So welcome to some, well, it’s going to be our podcast. We’re going to do what we want, right? So my name is Ruth Toombs, I’m here at Recruit Rooster, and we’re going to be talking about employment branding. So think trends and tactics and, of course, in the midst of a pandemic.

Rob Cox:
Yeah. So nobody knows what’s going on ever and everything is constantly changing. So just keep that in your head.

Ruth Toombs:
Oh, yeah. I mean, over the past three years now, we really don’t know.

Rob Cox:
No, nobody knows.

Ruth Toombs:
Okay. We know some things.

Rob Cox:
We know some things, yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
We are recruitment experts.

Rob Cox:
Oh yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
Consultants.

Rob Cox:
Well, yeah. Ruth is. She’s basically the Bill Gates of recruitment marketing technology. She’s been the industry for, I don’t know, what, 37 years?

Ruth Toombs:
I mean 49, but whose counting?

Rob Cox:
Sine the dawn of the computer.

Ruth Toombs:
In all seriousness here, yeah, I’ve been in, gosh, recruitment marketing technology for about 14 years. Here at Recruit Rooster for eight. And Rob Cox here has been here, what, over two years? Are we at two years now?

Rob Cox:
Almost. Just under two years, yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
Oh my gosh.

Rob Cox:
I know.

Ruth Toombs:
So we always like to do fun facts about each other. I’ve really enjoyed working with Rob. Rob is from the east coast, and if you’re around him long enough, you will definitely hear that accent come out. So Rob is a veteran and he brings a lot to the table here, in all seriousness, here at Recruit Rooster to really help us just be more proactive in our technology and ways to reach veterans and their families. You just told me recently what that position was in the military, what were you again?

Rob Cox:
Yeah. I’m sorry.

Ruth Toombs:
It’s a mouthful.

Rob Cox:
Well, yeah. I joined to be a rescue swimmer and I ended up being a door gunner.

Ruth Toombs:
Wait, you were are … I didn’t know that.

Rob Cox:
Yeah, right. It’s different. It’s different. So I was a helicopter air crewman crew chief, rescue swimmer, door gunner.

Ruth Toombs:
Okay. And so that’s a lot. And just take into account for a minute here, so Rob’s afraid of heights.

Rob Cox:
I am, yeah. And flying.

Ruth Toombs:
And flying.

Rob Cox:
And flying. Yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
So yeah, that’s our fun fact from Rob for the day. Who decides to go on a helicopter?

Rob Cox:
No, no one. No one, I don’t think. I like to face my fears head on.

Ruth Toombs:
Well, I’m not near as interesting as that. Sorry.

Rob Cox:
Well, you have an interesting dog.

Ruth Toombs:
Yes, I do have an interesting dog.

Rob Cox:
Bubbles, who I’ve never met, but I might as well have.

Ruth Toombs:
Oh, Bubbles is amazing.

Rob Cox:
I know, I’ve heard.

Ruth Toombs:
So yeah, Bubbles is a 15 year old dachshund. Now, I did read Guinness Book of World Records, 21 year old dachshund. Bubbles is in the running. She’s super healthy. She still has five teeth.

Rob Cox:
Five whole teeth?

Ruth Toombs:
Maybe five.

Rob Cox:
Wow.

Ruth Toombs:
And she’s vicious. She likes to use them.

Rob Cox:
I like that.

Ruth Toombs:
Yeah. She’s pretty awesome.

Rob Cox:
She’s got some spunk in her.

Ruth Toombs:
All right, so I guess we’ll get serious now. Obviously, the landscape has been very different and unique over the past three years for just about every industry, every employer. And what we wanted to dive into today is taking a closer look at what is necessary now in the world of recruitment marketing. How do we reach candidates? How do we reach diverse candidates? And of course, how do we make you an employer of choice? Now, we don’t have all the ingredients to the secret sauce. We’re not going to lie there.

Rob Cox:
No, yeah, we’re going to help. We’re going to try to help. And I think that what’s great about what we do is, in these times, obviously we have these numbers and everything that we’ll share with you. We’ll go through everything, we’ll talk about the statistics and everything like that, but what you’ll see is this trend of everything changing. Going from the opposite and flip flopping constantly. And what’s cool about us is, we’re here to change with you, with the environment, and all of that stuff. So we want to be able to create this ever flowing recruitment, marketing environment with our tools and solutions that help you adapt and adjust to whatever’s going on next.

Ruth Toombs:
Whatever surprise is coming next year.

Rob Cox:
Right, yeah, and we’ll give you all the statistics and we have the numbers and we can talk about the ROI and everything like that. But what I think is most important in this conversation is how quickly things change and how easily we can change with you.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely. So just like every company evolves, so do we. We’ve been doing a lot of changing, obviously I’m the veteran here at Recruit Rooster, getting dated over here, and we’ve changed and added to our suite of solution, our technology, our offerings. And really, our consultative services, which is huge. We’re actually in a place where we’re able to work with companies in helping them to make the best decisions for what their recruitment challenges are. Yeah, we’re scalable. That’s a big one. We’re scalable. That’s a big area.

So for those of you who don’t know who we are, we got to do this quick blurb, so Recruit Rooster is a recruitment marketing organization. So we really focus on a few things. So one would be, think of it like pillars. One would be career site hosting, so search engine optimized, mobile responsive platforms. They compliment every ATS you can imagine, really flexible design, very unique in the space. Creative services, think images and videography. And of course, employee testimonials, even some cool drone footage. Our creative team is awesome with that. And our third pillar … You know what, Rob, you know this. This is a big one.

Rob Cox:
Oh yeah, this is The most important one I think. So the DE&I hiring technology. So obviously we talked about the veteran stuff, and I can get on my soapbox, I don’t think we have nearly enough time for me to talk about that. But creating an environment where you’re not only accessible, but you’re reaching specific demographics and hiring marginalized groups and things like that. So obviously that’s super important. And I think the most important part, for me, particularly coming from a larger competitor in the space, is that we’re way cheaper.

Ruth Toombs:
I never lead with that. I know you never lead with that. But let’s be honest, cost matters. Budget matters. If anything, the last few years have taught us to just be prepared for the unexpected. So being cost conscious and budget conscious is absolutely paramount.

Rob Cox:
Well, yeah, and I think that when you’re talking about not only budget slashing and things like that, because of the pandemic, we’re talking about organizations that don’t necessarily have budget for these types of things. Or they’re pulling from marketing, who doesn’t want to give them the money, so we want to make sure that we’re giving these people a chance. These organizations that aren’t, I don’t know, these giant organizations that have unlimited budget. We want to give the smaller organizations that want to dive into the recruitment marketing field as well. We want to be able to make sure that they’re getting the same kind of resources that anybody else is at a good price.

Ruth Toombs:
Absolutely. That’s a big thing for us. It’s a big takeaway. And it’s a pleasure having the opportunity to not only be able to work with companies in the Fortune 500 realm, but help those small, mid-level organizations that get to have their career websites fueled by the same technology.

Rob Cox:
Yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
The same technology that fuels these big companies, they get access to it too. So yes, cost is huge. So I want to take a look at … Let’s just take a stroll down memory lane. So 2020 pandemic stats, which, throw a few out here. [inaudible 00:07:44] Everyone’s having flashbacks right now. They’re like, we don’t want to.

Rob Cox:
We’re back in Vietnam.

Ruth Toombs:
We’re in our PJs. We’re drinking wine on a Zoom call.

Rob Cox:
Everyone thinks they’re going to be back at work in two weeks.

Ruth Toombs:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So when we think about 2020 early on, crazy times, just to recap from a labor standpoint unemployment was as high as almost 15% in 2020. So that’s unbelievable. And we had roughly, in total, 600,000 businesses close. So think about that. That is an incredible amount of businesses, whether it be temporary or permanently closed. So you can imagine a lot of people were looking for labor. So what about now, Rob? What do we look like now?

Rob Cox:
Yeah, bananas. Those are absolutely crazy. So now it’s different. It’s completely different. We’re talking about labor shortages and remote work and things like that. So in terms of remote work … So I’m from the Northeast, we’re here in Indianapolis but I work remotely most of the time, and I think a lot of organizations are starting to see that as not only viable but necessary.

Ruth Toombs:
Think About the cost that they get to save. If you have the opportunity to have your staff remote, why wouldn’t you?

Rob Cox:
Right. Yeah. Yeah, it’s one of those things, you’re also opening your talent pool to the nation rather than just wherever you’re regionally located. So especially for people like us here, located specifically in Indianapolis, this is the only location that we have that, if we weren’t hiring remote, our town pool is Indianapolis.

Ruth Toombs:
I will tell you, a side note for this is, I was talking to a very large organization located pretty close to us, outside of Chicago. And their issue, of course, like everybody, you’re trying to find talent, trying to find candidates. Their issue was having west and east coast companies essentially poach talent in the Midwest because they can pay them less and they can work remotely.

Rob Cox:
Yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
And I mean, it makes sense. So the Midwest is getting hit extra hard. But then you also have people on east and west coast that like the idea, now that it’s a remote world, they can move to a lower cost of living place like the Midwest. So I guess it might balance out eventually.

Rob Cox:
Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s interesting. But yeah, I mean the whole point is, we’re looking at 25% of people in North America working remotely now. And that number’s expected to grow within the next year.

Ruth Toombs:
Rob, I was going to ask you too.

Rob Cox:
Yeah.

Ruth Toombs:
Some of the conversations I’ve had with employers, and I wonder, and I’m pretty sure you’re probably on the same page is, I hear some maybe mid-level even up to executive level leadership and they’re saying, “Some of our higher ups, like CFO, COOs, are saying we want everybody back in the office.” And they are getting serious pushback. Have you had those conversations too?

Rob Cox:
Oh yeah. Well I think it, yeah, it depends on who they are. So I have a lot of conversations with mid-level managers and stuff like that, that some are stuck in the middle. So they’re talking with the people who are boots on the ground, for lack of a better word, their employees, and a lot of their employees don’t want to come into work. Whether that’s because they’re uncomfortable or they don’t want to move closer to the area or something like that. So it’s super interesting and I think, when you look at a lot of these statistics, I mean, it shows you that … I mean, you’re not losing any productivity with remote workers. So I think that everyone really needs to … This whole podcast is about adaptability, right?

Ruth Toombs:
Yes.

Rob Cox:
So everyone needs to adjust and adapt to the way we are now. And I think that means hiring more remote workers and being okay with it.

Ruth Toombs:
Rob, I think that’s our next podcast. Because I was reading a lot of different stuff on why companies are looking to bring their staff back and why a lot of times they shouldn’t. So that’s our next podcast. All right, sorry, I totally interrupted. [inaudible 00:11:25] 2022 pandemic stats.

Rob Cox:
Yeah, now we’re talking about labor shortages. So we were talking about unemployment before, now we can’t find anyone to work.

Ruth Toombs:
That’s it. That’s everybody.

Rob Cox:
It’s not. So overall in 2021 alone, employers ended up adding 3.8 million jobs. So at the same time, millions of Americans left the labor force since the pandemic, and no one’s really sure where they went.

Ruth Toombs:
The Great Resignation. I’ve seen a lot of people on LinkedIn saying, hiatus.

Rob Cox:
Yeah or sabbatical.

Ruth Toombs:
Sabbatical, that’s it. Yeah, sabbatical. I wonder [inaudible 00:11:56] part of my career can I go on a six month sabbatical?

Rob Cox:
Oh yeah. Were they backpacking? No one knows where they went, but they’re gone.

Ruth Toombs:
They’re still checking their email occasionally.

Rob Cox:
Occasionally. Yeah. Right. So there’s still 40.5 million fewer people left in the workforce than there were a year before or two years before. So I thought this was going to be something that would kind of progress slowly, but it just kind of turned around. It’s just like, snap your fingers and there’s a million jobs again. It feels like an over exaggeration, but it’s actually an under exaggeration. There’s actually 3.5 million jobs.

Ruth Toombs:
Oh my gosh. Just even thinking about that. Just even comparing it to three years ago.

Rob Cox:
Yeah. It’s nuts.

Ruth Toombs:
Well, I mean, for us, of course looking at it from more of a flexible solution, which is necessary, there’s all those great stats. We understand where we were, where we are now, and now we’re like, okay, we know the problem, we know the numbers, how do we fix it? So we got to take the economy into account. We got to take into account hiring trends. And we want to make sure here at Recruit Rooster that we are tailoring these solutions. No matter what you’re looking to do. Maybe you want to revamp a career website as a whole. Maybe you’re looking for employer branding. Or maybe creative content. So for me, instead of being like, oh, we’re so pushy salesy, here’s our stuff. But I want to share, okay, so here’s what we’ve done for some companies.

Rob Cox:
Sure. Yeah. I think that’s super important. I think it makes a little bit more sense to be like, hey, check out our stuff. Why don’t we just talk about how we’ve done it before and how we’ve helped people in the past? So we’re going to get started. This first company we’re talking about is a large healthcare organization, for everyone in healthcare I’m sure that you can all empathize right now. And I think that everyone … I’m sorry, if I’m talking fast, I’m from the Northeast.

Ruth Toombs:
He’s had a lot of coffee, too.

Rob Cox:
I have had a lot of coffee and I’m a fan of having more. So yeah, I mean, I think everybody can empathize, sympathize, whatever word you want to use. Whether you’re in that field or you’re not, you can understand that, obviously healthcare was probably affected a little bit more than most places during this health crisis. So not only filling for corporate and tech roles or hospitality roles, but I mean the insane task of finding and hiring qualified nurses.

Ruth Toombs:
Yes.

Rob Cox:
So this company, they started partnering with us back in the summer of 2020, and we all know how that went.

Ruth Toombs:
Yes. And they obviously really trusted us. I mean, just trusting us during that time. Nobody knew what was happening but they knew what they needed.

Rob Cox:
Yeah, so yeah, I’ll talk to you a little bit about the company itself. So the company is a large healthcare organization. They’re long term, acute-

Ruth Toombs:
It’s a mouthful, what they do.

Rob Cox:
Yeah, I probably said this 40 times walking in here, just so I can get it down. It’s long term acute care hospitalization.

Ruth Toombs:
I love the annunciation, you got it now.

Rob Cox:
What gets me is healthcare is somehow spelled out in that description, but it doesn’t say healthcare. So I just want to say healthcare. So long term acute care hospitalization organization. So they have inpatient rehabilitation and that includes behavioral health and contract partnerships with other hospitals. So not just themselves, but contracting out for other hospitals as well. So you’d imagine, even more of a workload. So the original solutions, back in the summer of 2020, they had a flexible career site homepage. So obviously our bread and butter, what we do, giving them the ability, the infrastructure, to own their own branding. Their employer branding. Google talent search, so Ruth, you’ll talk about that in a little bit.

Ruth Toombs:
Oh yeah.

Rob Cox:
Yeah, you’ll talk about that.

Ruth Toombs:
Good stuff.

Rob Cox:
And then CRM and talent community beta testing. And one of the main reasons I love working here is this tool itself, because there are so many organizations that are so set with this tool. And that’s what they get. So if you’re buying something, you’re spending a ton of money and you’re getting something that you might not like. So what’s cool about us is, we’re really flexible. So we want to be able to hear your thoughts. So we want take your feedback and implement it into the tool itself so then, it’s a tool for users by the user.

Ruth Toombs:
Yeah. No, no, for sure. And that’s a big … Like you said, a lot of companies, they cement you into solutions. The goal of course, is … Our buzzword of Recruit Rooster, for Recruit Rooster of the day, is flexibility.

Rob Cox:
Flexibility.

Ruth Toombs:
Flexibility.

Rob Cox:
Flexibility.

Ruth Toombs:
Yeah, so obviously they started out really lean. The need just wasn’t there. Nobody knew what was happening, like everybody else in the world. So fast forward to early Spring this year, and I like to say this, but it’s kind of like the Hunger Games for employers. You’re vying for talent, you’re duking it out, you got to find people. So obviously it was time to, in this situation, to scale up. So the issues that this large healthcare company had were, they were dissatisfied with previous CRM, the talent community provider, and they had a shortage of nursing staff. Now our solutions really were, how do we transition 30,000-plus candidates out of their old platform, which we did, CSV files, lots of work there. And then, the other would be, how do we help them test out an automation of their referral program, which used to be a manual process. So we helped design and develop a referral page and it contained information about the referral program, gift cards, and employees. Yes, that’s something that Rob is like, employees?

Rob Cox:
Yeah, weird.

Ruth Toombs:
This is crazy, we’re going to use employees? Of course, yes, use employees. Could help win for referring candidates in a short form.

Rob Cox:
Yeah, you think about using employees to find employees, so it’s one of those things that, we’re talking about … Companies use focus groups all the time within the organization to talk about consumer marketing and everything like that. So why not use your employees to help you find employees? So after running a campaign through March of 2022, they realized that current employees, weird, were a great supplement to their recruiting efforts. That campaign had roughly 1200 referred candidates.

Ruth Toombs:
I love these numbers.

Rob Cox:
I know. And resulted in 250 hires. Not applies, hires.

Ruth Toombs:
That’s actual hires. That’s nurses.

Rob Cox:
Nurses.

Ruth Toombs:
That’s nurses.

Rob Cox:
Is there 250 nurses on the market right now?

Ruth Toombs:
I don’t think so.

Rob Cox:
Right, yeah. Which greatly, and I think this goes without saying, compliments their existing referral program.

Ruth Toombs:
Yes. No, I love that. And when it comes to it, we have tons of these different stories and case studies here. Definitely wanted to bring that to attention. So I guess kind of a wrap up would be, everything that used to be a bell and whistle, definitely taken into consideration as a necessity now. You’ve got to use every possible avenue that you can to make yourself available to candidates, make yourself available to talent, make yourself stand out. Accessibility. Make sure it’s accessible to individuals with disabilities. Make sure there’s a way to capture passive candidates, like a talent community. Obviously the veteran, military spouse friendly. Videos, images, all of those things. Whether it be with us or anyone, just take that into consideration. Everything you need to be putting out there, putting it on blast so everybody can see it from a visible perspective.

Rob Cox:
Yeah. Think outside the box. It’s not just the same solutions that we’ve seen in the past that are working now. We want to make sure that we’re evolving with you so we want to make sure you’re thinking outside the box so you can adapt and overcome this weird talent war.

Ruth Toombs:
All right, well guys, thanks so much for joining us. This is always a blast, Rob, and we’re going to do this again. I’ve got lots of ideas.

Rob Cox:
Probably going to talk for six Hours.

Ruth Toombs:
We could keep going, we’re on a roll, but we probably need lunch.

Rob Cox:
We getting our lights here.

Ruth Toombs:
Oh, they’re kicking us out. All right. All right, thanks everybody.

Rob Cox:
See you.

Ruth Toombs:
Bye. Thank You for tuning in for another episode of the E Talk Podcast. Stay connected with DirectEmployers on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and subscribe to our emails by visiting DirectEmployers.org/subscribe to receive notifications of new episodes each month.

Rob Cox:
And visit us at https://recruitrooster.com if you guys want to learn more.