Marketing’s Role in Recruiting Talent

By Chris Warren

When new college graduates interview for a job at Kimberly-Clark, the discussion often veers into topics that would never show up on a typical resume. As part of the multinational consumer goods company’s “Original Thinkers” marketing campaign to attract the young talented workers all companies need in order to thrive over the long-term, each candidate is encouraged to take an informal 3-minute quiz designed to probe what kind of thinker a person is.

The quiz uses multiple-choice questions to assess whether a candidate is the type of person who eschews conventional thinking and innovates or approaches problem solving with Spock-like rationality. A typical quiz question asks candidates to imagine they are part of a group trying to increase recycling in their neighborhood and then offers up choices such as interviewing neighbors, leading meetings, doing research, or questioning why recycling is necessary. (Full disclosure: this reporter was pegged as a Dreamer, whose mindset is summed up with “do the impossible.”)

Though the quiz is by no means required or used as a tool to screen job candidates, it definitely provides conversation fodder that is potentially more revealing and provocative than a regurgitation of someone’s grade point average or a canned answer about career goals. And in some ways, the quiz provides at least part of the answer to a question all companies are asking: How can we better attract top young workers?

“It’s nice to talk about original thinkers, but how do we talk to millennials?” asks Frans Mahieu, global marketing director of people strategy at Kimberly-Clark, the Wisconsin-based company that makes iconic brands such as Cottonelle, Huggies, and Kleenex. “Instead of just saying, this is how we think about original thinking, we let people first find out what kind of thinker they are and do it in a way that millennials are used to.” In other words, he says, it’s a BuzzFeed-style quiz.

A Pressing Business Priority

The importance of attracting talented young workers has rarely been either as important or as challenging as it is today. In fact, the launch of the Original Thinkers campaign about a year ago was largely driven by the need to lure as many talented young workers to the company as possible. “The general unemployment rate is 4.3 percent and for talented professionals, it’s a buyer’s market,” says Mahieu, who notes that retiring baby boomers and a thriving global business mean that 60 percent of Kimberly-Clark’s new hires are millennials. “We are committed to being No. 1 or No. 2 in our category and to do that you have to have the top engineering, marketing, supply chain, and finance professionals. We can’t settle for anything but the best.”

Marketing campaigns targeting young workers can play an important role in building the awareness and relationships that are necessary to attract new employees to apply for open jobs. Smart companies understand that telling their story — including why they are a great place for young people to work — means creating marketing content that appears on platforms where young people spend their time.
 
Yair Riemer is the CMO at CareerArc, a Los Angeles- and Boston-based human resources technology company that works with clients like Starbucks to tap into the power of social media to recruit young workers. “Organizations like McDonald’s are using Snapchat to hire young workers, while many innovative companies are complementing their traditional recruitment activities by investing in technology and paid ad campaigns on social media — Facebook and Twitter, most specifically — to reach candidates where they are already hanging out.”

For example, Riemer has worked with Starbucks on a recruitment effort that he calls the convergence of marketing and HR. Starbucks leverages its already strong consumer marketing brand and 37 million Facebook fans to get career oriented content in front of the people Starbucks wants to hire. “Instead of just offering up the latest news on coffee flavors and store promotions, it has created a dedicated open jobs tab on its Facebook page, driving millennial traffic to its 20,000-plus open positions online,” he says. “HR leaders now often have to think and act as hybrid marketers to attract millennial talent.”

Branding Still Matters

Attracting top young talent doesn’t necessarily have to be done on social media alone. GE decided a few years ago that educating young workers and others about the reality of work at GE was important enough that it necessitated using the heft of traditional TV advertising. In late 2015, GE launched an ad campaign called “What’s the Matter with Owen,” which had a goal of rebranding the company in the eyes of younger workers. In the ad campaign, a young, bespectacled techie named Owen tries to impress his parents and friends with the fact that he has landed a job at GE.

These initial ads were followed by videos that show young people catching on to the fact that GE is not a stodgy old manufacturing company. This was by design. “One of the things that was important for us to address was the perception among some potential employees about what we actually do as a company,” says Julie Grzeda, director of global leadership programs and university relations at GE. “When young people hear manufacturing, they often think of it as working in a loud, dirty factory when in fact the work we do is on the cutting edge of technology. For us, it was important to show the reality of GE today.”

A 2017 study by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute illustrates GE’s perception problem, noting that only five in 10 participants said “manufacturing was an interesting, rewarding, clean, safe, stable, and secure” career. Less than three in 10 respondents were likely to encourage their children to pursue a career in manufacturing. Still, the Owen ads certainly had an impact for GE. According to Grzeda, the company saw a big increase in applications for open positions and traffic to its career website increased almost 70 percent.

Pairing Marketing and Education

Like GE, Siemens also keenly understands the importance of attracting younger workers to manufacturing. To do that, the company is pursuing a wide range of initiatives, including partnering with schools to expose young people to the sophisticated technology that is instrumental to manufacturing these days and to provide the kind of training they’ll need to fill those positions. “A decade ago, the most important tool on the shop floor might have been a wrench,” says Alisa Coffey, a marketing and communications manager at Siemens. “Today, it is a mobile tablet. Finding the next generation of workers with new skill sets to operate this sophisticated automation hardware and software is a challenge.”

To meet that challenge, Siemens creates a wealth of marketing materials that augment the personal connections and outreach the company fosters by hosting events, hands-on learning opportunities, and partnerships with schools. Just one of many examples is the website for Siemens STEM Day. The website is packed with information and activities that K-12 educators can use when instructing and inspiring students about STEM subjects. Among the hundred-plus activities on the website is one that lets students learn to observe and measure the effects of elasticity by dropping rubber balls. The site also has videos that show STEM-related careers, and schools can sign up for a $10,000 sweepstakes to help them purchase new lab equipment as well as materials to help boost their STEM education efforts.

This combination of tangible support for schools and students with marketing is a way to raise awareness about STEM and careers at Siemens. Coffey says it’s also marketing’s role to contribute to this business imperative. “Addressing the skills gap, supporting STEM initiatives, aligning with universities that are training new engineers on our software and hardware is our way of creating the 21st century workforce,” she says. “It is a key industry topic and a focus for Siemens. As marketers, it is our responsibility to address the issue.”

In crafting messages that resonate with younger workers, Mahieu at Kimberly-Clark says he learned the importance of avoiding any language that might sound like corporate-speak. He also says it’s vital that what is presented in marketing content genuinely reflects the reality of the corporate workplace. For instance, featuring marketing that addresses young prospects’ interest in sustainability and flexible work schedules is grounded in the tangible; Kimberly-Clark employees can opt to take Friday afternoons or Monday mornings off in the summer if they make up the hours at other times. “You have to walk the talk,” he says.

Overall, Kimberly-Clark measures the effectiveness of its recruitment marketing by how many people it attracts per open job. But there are other metrics they track, such as applications per open job, website visitors, and the number of quiz takers who go on to look at open jobs.

The results have been encouraging: The number of applications per open job has doubled, and more than 50 percent of the people who take the quiz go on to search job openings. The company also surveys job applicants for how happy they were with the recruitment process, whether they were offered a job or not. “This is an important measurement,” Mahieu says. “At the end of the day, we can’t hire everyone. These people will still remain consumers of our products. We want to make sure even if they’re not hired they feel good about Kimberly-Clark. It’s also the right thing to do.”