A Caribbean trip for all L-IPSE employees, a lip dub seen worldwide for Sacré-Cœur hospital in Montreal, an employee referral program for RBC. . . Like the four other organizations presented during the third edition of the Grandes Conférences on innovative recruiting organized by newspaper Les Affaires, these companies stand out for the originality of their recruiting. While the actions taken differ, they also have a number of points in common. Here’s a look at their key success factors.
A strong employer brand
Confidence, balance, simplicity and integrity are the watchwords of information technology consulting firm L-IPSE. Among engineering firm Averna’s five values are self-knowledge, ethics and surpassing oneself. Engineering firm Cima + highlights its fifth-place ranking among Canada’s best employers. All the companies in attendance at the latest edition of Innovative Recruiting have defined a corporate culture, and a strong employer brand on which they relied to launch their operation.
A thoroughly familiar target
All these organizations also took the time to know their target. Young graduates or senior profiles for some, and hard-to-find specialists for others. It’s a must, if you want to have an impact, says Montreal's Sacré-Cœur hospital, which had initially planned on a TV and newspaper recruiting campaign before reaching its target, 18–24-year-olds, on their preferred medium, the web.
Hiring specialists
Some of these companies dealt with an outside communications or advertising firm to develop their recruiting campaigns, from Absolu Communication Marketing for the Sûreté du Québec and Cartier Communication for Montreal’s Sacré-Cœur hospital. The partner was often behind the innovative concept, as was the case for the lip dub suggested by Cartier Communication to Sacré-Cœur.
Authenticity, the common thread
All the companies in attendance chose to play the authenticity card, by showing a day in the life of the company and its employees, and inviting candidates to discover the organization’s reality. And for an approach based on sincerity, the best spokespeople were the employees themselves. Real police officers are featured on the Sûreté du Québec’s ”wanted” recruiting campaign posters, and real nurses and hospital staff in the Sacré-Cœur lip dub. Averna, L-IPSE, Cima +, and RBC also consider their employees their best ambassadors.
HR as agents of change
The HR departments of these companies were persuasive, and able to convince their management to take a risk on being innovative. HR was the driving force behind all of these original operations. In the field, and attentive to the needs of their organizations, HR is a proactive function and today considered management’s business partner. To win them over, HR had to speak the same language by providing specifics. At Averna, Human Resources calculated the cost of hiring the wrong person at $22,000. Indicators such as turnover, absenteeism and career website traffic were put in place to measure the efficiency of their operations.
Being inspired to dare
Innovation and the web go hand-in-hand. All these companies have a dedicated career site or mini-site, as well as a social network presence. Some, like Sacré-Cœur hospital, went even further by exploring the lip dub option.
Others used other methods. L-IPSE attracts its engineers by inviting them for a one-week trip to the Caribbean, but also by offering them rule-free working conditions. It’s a system whereby coaches have replaced managers and in which communication is capital, according to CEO Steven Garneau.
Cima +, which is primarily seeking junior engineers, focuses on flexible, compressed workweeks and professional training. It informs candidates that it spends more than the required 1% of payroll on continuous education.
Faced with urgent and hard-to-fill financial planning jobs, RBC had the brilliant idea of pairing retired employees with young grads. The bank has also set up an employee referral program that it continuously promotes, for the very good reason that this is how its best employees were hired.
Regardless of their strategic choices, these organizations all agreed on the difficulty of being innovative. It’s a road that must be paved with observations and the exchange of best practices, they say.