Questions that Clarify Your Company Brand

Adapted from the book Finding Keepers: The Monster Guide to Hiring and Holding the World’s Best Employees by Steve Pogorzelski, Jesse Harriott, Ph.D., and Doug Hardy. Published January 2008 by McGraw-Hill.

People recognize culture, and it can be a powerful attraction to highly talented candidates. Good employer branding incorporates culture because it's one of the intangible benefits that make an impression on the poised candidate.

Furthermore, branding only matters if it reaches your target audience — so describe your employer brand for the poised worker. Since your job is to articulate the employer brand that already exists, in reality and in aspiration, start with your employees. Solicit candid input from your current workforce because, as we’ve seen, a large section of them are poised workers. Your current employees are the experts; if you start anywhere other than their experience, you are writing fiction.

Ask your employees these questions:

Values Questions

What do we as an organization believe?
How do we choose which projects get done?
On what criteria is your performance judged?
Are we fair?
How do we treat customers?
Which customers deserve the most attention?
Culture Questions

Why are you here?
What is unique about us?
What is your relationship to the customer?
Why would your customer do business with you?
What outcomes do you want from your work?
How do we achieve our goals?
Describe the kind of person who succeeds here.
What do we want people who work here to feel for this place?
What, other than money, would tempt you to leave?
Would you recommend this organization to a close friend?
You should also develop a more detailed list of “features and benefits” of working at your organization. These are the details that HR professionals and recruiters love to discuss, because they’re more concrete than mission and culture:

Job description
Compensation details (salary, bonuses, hourly rate, profit sharing)
Benefits of all kinds—medical, 401(k) and pension plans, savings
Business line—your products and services
Business opportunity—the upside of working for you, the chance to advance a career
Lifestyle—“work-life balance” or “intense atmosphere;” a job’s travel requirements, etc.
Location
Positioning in the industry (best products, “employer of choice” status)
Community service and other outward expressions of culture
Recognition from the outside
You don’t advertise with this list because, frankly, these features and benefits play backup in the employer brand. A list is just not as compelling as a statement (or better, a narrative). The features and benefits of a job might help you close a deal with a talented individual, or tip the balance against a competitor, but they aren’t effective in getting attention.

Details help, and it’s important to accentuate all the positive things that go on in a company. Monster’s Lori Erickson remembers that “when I took this job at Monster there were benefits we offer that I didn’t even know about.We have an adoption assistance program and nursing rooms for new mothers in every single facility across the United States. We have a work-life person whose sole job is to put programs in place that make it easier for employees to balance the challenges of having a life and a job.We had to learn to push that message into the recruiting story.”

Your first attempt to define an employer brand doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to satisfy a few rules:

Is it authentic? Does your statement reflect reality? Do employees recognize the values and the culture you describe?
Is it unique? Would an employee know that this describes your organization and not a similar one?
Is it compelling? Does it demand action? Does it describe the meaning of working at your organization?
Is it relevant? Is your statement meaningful to the people you’re trying to attract?
Does it describe an experience? As far as candidates, potential candidates, and employees are concerned, your employer brand is an experience. It’s not a slogan, and it’s not a logo, and it’s not a press release. It’s the good or bad deal of investing another day of their one-and-only lives in your organization.
The answers to each of these questions must be yes, because otherwise you’ll miss your audience. Rigorous questioning of the statement worked for Laura Stanley, who leads the Talent Acquisition and Employment Branding team at EarthLink in Atlanta. She started her work with a reality check: “When I joined, the first thing I did was to ask my team, ‘Okay, why do people join, and that you articulate pretty clearly what they’re going to get when they come, and also what they’ve got to give, too, and to make sure that we’re attracting the right people in the right jobs at the right time.”

The Key to Hiring and Keeping the Best

Of course, you want to attract and keep great people. Here are four steps you can take to recruit the best and keep them:

1. Define What Your New Hire Needs to Do
Take the time to define what you need the person in this job to accomplish. Believe it or not, this critical step is often overlooked. By first defining exactly what you need accomplished and then hiring to those requirements, you may well open your eyes to an ideal candidate you would otherwise not have considered.

A marketing services firm I worked with typically hired salespeople from within its industry. But the company’s two top salespeople previously sold in completely unrelated industries. Defining what made these two successful -- their ability to open doors and be hands-on in the delivery of solutions -- was the key to hiring more similar salespeople. Industry experience was helpful, but only when added to these two fundamental skills.

2. Have Candidates Describe Individual Accomplishments in Detail
Now that you have defined who you are looking for and have begun interviewing, here is a simple but powerful rule that will reduce your hiring mistakes: Focus on understanding the candidate’s individual accomplishments. Someone who has accomplished something can describe in great detail how he did it. Ask all candidates to give details in the first person on what they have accomplished in past roles and jobs.

This is not always easy. Many people want to describe things in the plural, saying, “We did this; we did that.” This does not necessarily mean they are trying to fool you, but neither does it help you understand what a candidate accomplished personally. Lay the ground rules early, and keep people on track throughout the interview. If someone cannot describe in detail how he accomplished something, the candidate may be overstating his involvement in the accomplishment.

3. Ask Your Top Candidates What They Want
If you are genuinely interested in a job seeker, communicate that interest by taking the time to understand what the candidate is really looking for in his next role. Take the time to ask questions that will help you learn about the person’s goals and desires. And then listen carefully to the answers. Ask follow-up questions.

What you learn may help you shape the job description for the people you ultimately hire. You’ll also be conveying that you take a genuine interest in these people, and few executives do that during the interview process. As a result, you will stand out in their minds. If your interest is sincere, this is one of the most effective recruiting tools at your disposal.

After college, I had 20 to 30 interviews with different people and companies. By far, the best interview was with an executive of one particular company. He did not aggressively try to sell the company to me or offer me a lot of money. He just asked me what I really wanted out of a job, and then he listened intently to my answers -- something no other interviewer had done. He paraphrased back to me what I had said, and asked, “Do I have it? Is that what you are saying?” I walked out of the interview sky high. I ultimately chose to work for that company.

4. You Are the Key to Getting and Keeping the Best
The best people want opportunities to do the best projects, to work with the best clients, and to develop personally and professionally. These people can always get a job (even in a down economy), but they have a hard time finding an organization (and a boss) that is actively interested in helping them develop and achieve. Simply put, good people want good bosses.

Write down the name of the best boss you ever had. Why did you love working for this person? Chances are, it wasn’t his intelligence or technical ability. More likely, confidence was the key. The best bosses believe in themselves and their people, and this translates into a work environment compelling enough to entice a talented person to take a job and stay with it.

Five Essentials for Every Job Description

Create a crystal-clear picture


This article is from The Small Business Hiring Guide

As a recruiter, you want to hire the right person. That means you need a crystal-clear picture of the type of employee you’re looking for. Your job description has to go beyond just experience and education to include work and character traits that can impact a person’s ability to thrive in your organization.

Your online job posting will serve multiple purposes.

It forms the foundation of your recruitment ad and can entice the right people to apply
It serves as your first opportunity to make a good impression of your company
It helps focus your resume screening process, helping you choose only the most qualified candidates
It lets you develop high-impact interview questions that can help you select the employees you need
Your recruitment strategy should be based on these five features:

1. Job duties: What will the person do?

Take the time to spell out the specifics of the open job. Start with the job title -- it should be descriptive (“western regional sales rep – industrial products” is better than just “sales rep”), conform to standards for your industry, and mesh with your own company’s job hierarchy (terms like “junior,” “associate” or “senior” can differentiate levels of proficiency).

Then come up with a summary of the job’s responsibilities as well as a list of the key duties that will be performed. Think this through thoroughly. A hazy or incorrect description will make it harder for you to match a candidate and a job because you’re not sure what the job actually entails.

2. Work experience: What background is required to get the job done?

Industry familiarity... job knowledge... educational background... professional certification... these may all be crucial to helping you screen candidates you recruit. Clarify ahead of time the specific experience and background a qualified candidate should have. For example, does the job require experience in your industry, or are the skills transferable from other lines of work?

Determine whether the person’s education level will have a bearing on how he or she executes the job. Industry -- or job -- specific certification may also be vital, as may visa requirements in some industries.

Relocation may be another concern; will you be willing to pay to recruit someone from another geographic region? Finally, consider your willingness to invest time and resources in training. This can create flexibility in your experience requirements.

3. Skills: What unique skills must the person possess?

Look at the duties the person will perform and assess what skills are required to complete those tasks. A call center representative, for example, will need good phone manners and may also need to be a good listener.

A front-line manager may need to be a solid executer with a history of keeping to deadlines, whereas a group head may need proven leadership skills. Your list should include hard skills (what the person knows) and soft skills (how the person applies that knowledge).

4. Style: How will the person get the job done?

In a small business, the way a person works can be as important as what they do. They’ll need to mesh with your corporate culture and the team you currently have in place. For instance, a person who thrives off the energy of others won’t succeed in a company where everyone works solo.

5. Temperament: What kind of personality succeeds in your organization?

Take work style a step further to consider the attitudes and manners (the candidate's soft skills) that you want in a job candidate. Your goal will be to find the type of person that is most productive in the work environment you’ve created and who can complement your current workforce. Develop a list of the character traits you most value -- it can include things like sense of humor, honesty, compassion and the like. You might not list these in your recruitment ad, but they can help you choose between candidates as you conduct interviews and screen candidates.

The Employer Brand Experience

Diverse group at computer

Adapted from the book Finding Keepers: The Monster Guide to Hiring and Holding the World’s Best Employees by Steve Pogorzelski, Jesse Harriott, Ph.D., and Doug Hardy. Published January 2008 by McGraw-Hill.
An employer brand is the full physical, intellectual, and emotional experience of people who work there, and the anticipated experience of candidates who might work there. It is both the vision and the reality of what it means to be employed there. It is both the promise and the fulfillment of that promise. The employer brand radiating out of your organization’s name inspires loyalty, productivity, and a sense of pride... or it doesn’t.

In marketing terms, a brand’s image is grounded in three dimensions:

Functional benefits. What the product does, for example: “this Canon digital camera takes good pictures” and “this particular model is great for portraits, video, and long-distance shots.”


Emotional benefits. How a product makes the customer feel, for example: “I feel happy when I see this beautiful shot of my kids” and “I feel loving and fun when I e-mail these pictures to their grandparents.”


Reasons to believe. Validation of the product’s claims, for example: “Canon means reliability and ease of use” and “reviewers on CNET.com rate the Canon digital camera as excellent.”
A solid employer brand is grounded in the same dimensions:

Functional benefits. Tangible rewards of working at the employer: salary, health care, a clean, safe workplace, and a convenient location; for example: “XYZ Co. has great compensation and has a beautiful office near my home.”


Emotional benefits. Intangible rewards: mission, pride, status, job satisfaction, companionship/collegiality, belonging to a “winning team,” and so on; for example: “I’m proud to work for XYZ Co.—my pals and I make the best widgets in the world.”


Reasons to believe. Validation of the employer’s claims; for example: “my friend says XYZ Co. is a great place to work” and “the local news station calls XYZ Co. a hot company for talented people.”
Note that functional and emotional benefits are used for “positioning,” which means defining the unique combination of attributes that define the product (or employer). XYZ Co.’s positioning says that it has a winning culture combined with strong tangible rewards, which in combination with other attributes creates a unique identity. XYZ’s competitors will have different cultures, locations, compensation packages, and so on.

Branding includes deliberate messages about the company. For example, PepsiCo, which employs 153,000 employees worldwide, promotes the tag line “PepsiCo—Taste the Success!” to candidates to convey the excitement of working at this global company. On its corporate recruiting Web site, PepsiCo says its workplace experience is a combination of “Powerful Brands, Passion for Growth, Culture of Shared Principles, Commitment to Results, Ability to Make an Impact and Quality People.” At that sales meeting, Sharon embodied those qualities in her behavior.

Candidates form powerful impressions of employers based on what they see and hear. “I work for PepsiCo” means something different from “I work for Microsoft,” “I work for Fox News,” and “I work for the city council.” The employer brands at these organizations are crafted to attract certain kinds of talent, temperament, and values in candidates. Their positioning is unique and distinctive.

Employer branding is not just an initiative of big companies, because everyone can (and does) develop a reputation. Ask a landscaper about three local lawn service companies and he’ll tell you the differences among them -- this one says you’ll work with the best crew chiefs; that one says it pleases every customer every time, and the third one isn’t much fun but pays just a little better. Those are employer brands just as real as Nike’s.

You have an employer brand whether you know it or not. It touches all moments of the candidate and employee experience, from the first time a candidate hears your name until the day he or she retires from your company. It’s your reputation outside and inside the organization. It’s there for you to neglect or manage. And it’s the cornerstone of finding, hiring, and holding keepers up and down the organization. In other words, it’s fundamental to the all stages of the Engagement Cycle.

The idea of an employer brand has gained currency in the last few years among business leaders, but the average manager doesn’t have a developed view of what it is and its importance to the organization. The Economist magazine found that executives defined an employer brand as the expression of a company’s distinctive employment experience. More than 70 percent of respondents in the United States and United Kingdom expected that developing a strong employer brand leads to employees recommending their organization to others as an attractive place to work, and also to higher employee retention.

The employer brand is an authentic description of an experience, similar to a consumer brand. It includes pay, working conditions, culture, job title, intangible rewards, and the emotional connection employees have with the organization and manager. It tells candidates who you are, what you want, and what you stand for. As a marketer attracts customers with a compelling product brand, a company attracts candidates with a compelling employer brand.

We think an employer brand is more than a one-way description of “what it’s like to work there.” It’s a multidimensional conversation among the company’s leadership, its employees, candidates in the marketplace, alumni, and even outsiders such as the press, bloggers, and anyone else who has an opinion. The employer brand includes

The company’s professional reputation

A description of company culture
News reports about the company, both good and bad
Word-of-mouth statements about the company
A description of the company’s future
How the employer’s brand compares to the competition
Beyond conversation, it’s also a set of subjective candidate experiences, such as

Applying for a job on your Web site or via e-mail
Interviewing for a position
Talking to employees and walking through the workplace site(s)
Using products, services, or customer help
The company’s impact in the candidate’s community
What emerges in the candidate’s imagination is a fuller story than any recruiting slogan can capture: it’s an experience.

This might all sound a little esoteric, but in fact it’s simply recognizing reality. Candidates pay attention to an organization’s reputation and compare it to other reputations. They ask employees what it’s like to work there. In the quest for quality, employer branding is the foundation of attracting the right people. This is where the thought you’ve given to the new candidate comes together with the urgent need to bring great talent into your organization. The new candidate, as we’ve noted, is empowered to compare your organization to others, and he’ll start with the employer brand.

Here’s a typical hiring situation in which the employer brand makes a difference: A mortgage broker, already employed at a bank, gets a call from a recruiter. “Come work for this leading financial services firm and make a lot of money,” says the recruiter. Instantly the mortgage broker begins to weigh the reputation of the firm against his current employer... are they prestigious or unknown? Are they thought of as a sweatshop or a fun place to work? Will he be proud to approach customers with that name on his business card? Does he know people at the firm, and are they happy to work there? If the answers aren’t right, he might not even be receptive to the recruiter’s pitch.

He might even think of their advertising, charity affiliations, and location — all relevant factors in trying to judge the experience of working there.

To imagine the power of employer branding, think also of how hard it is for organizations in crisis to attract talent (except for turnaround specialists). A reputation as “a lousy place to work” is part of the death spiral that afflicts failing companies. It’s a grim but true reminder that reputation matters.

People have affinities for brands. People who use Apple computers, iPods, and other devices respond to the brand’s hip image. You feel different driving a BMW than a Hyundai in part because you associate yourself with the brand, and that colors your experience. Don’t you respond in a similar way to the organization where you spend 40 to 60 hours a week?

Your employer brand is a standard against which you can judge whether all the tasks around attracting, acquiring, and advancing talent are working together. If your efforts are unified by the right employer brand, you will look for the right people, create the right employment advertising, do the right networking and other outreach programs, and explain the advantages of working for you versus your competition. You’ll capture the candidates who share your values and will succeed, and take a pass on candidates (even talented ones) who won’t work out.

Furthermore, an authentic employment brand is a challenge to your organization’s management to walk the talk — to manage daily work according to a set of values and standards that identify your company. This means employees know who they’re joining, what they’re expected to do, and how they will be judged.

Do you see that your employment brand is in fact the heart and soul of your company? It’s really an articulation of why you exist, why you work, and why you work here and not some place else. It’s that important.

Resolutions for Industrious Recruiters

Improve your recruitment skills


By: The Client Training Corner

As a recruiter, it’s always a great time to broaden applicant pools and strengthen your industry understanding, regardless of how many requisitions have been fully funded, or which businesses are ramping up or scaling back.

Here are a few ideas to help you get started:

Increase the Impact of Your Job Ad Content

Use this time to ensure that there is consistency in your job ad language. Is your organization being represented the exact same way in every job ad by each recruiter across the organization? Be certain that all general information is up to date. You made need to establish a template to create a consistent message.

Is the layout of your job ads also consistent? Are you using bullets to clearly separate sections of information, allowing job seekers to quickly scan your opportunity and make the decision to apply? Have you separated the required skills from the preferred skills? Is your employment brand well-delineated within the ad, with updated logos, images, and references?

Think of each of your jobs ads as a marketing document. Try using the same voice and tone you use with a candidate on the phone.

Fine-Tune your Search Strings and Saved Searches

Revisit your search strings. Watch a refresher tutorial regarding Boolean logic. Are there core positions or functions that your organization will always be looking for? Focus on those while new budgets and positions are established.

Take a look at the saved searches you have built on the resume database search tool. Fine-tune your search criteria to continue to push qualified job seekers to your mailbox each morning. Your goal is to keep the qualified applicant stream coming. Use this time to build relationships with those qualified seekers.

Innovate with New Recruiting Methods and Sources

Now is the time to investigate sources that have piqued your curiosity.  Are there diversity sources you’ve been meaning to research? How about building a recruiting strategy with Military.com? Are your campus relationships strong? Are there local sources and relationships that you haven’t had time to cultivate?

Use this time to look at your communication strategy from a job seeker perspective. Could you be using IM or text messages to cultivate relationships with seekers? Do you have ways to keep candidates warm in a recruiting cycle? What helpful links and information are provided in your electronic communications? Has your organization recently been noted in the press? If so, send that link to job seekers. Is there great information for candidates on your company website? Send that link, too. In other words, reach out!

Familiarize Yourself with Market Data

Take time to study the markets you support. Read competitor websites and press releases. What are they offering? How does that compare with the messages you’re giving job seekers about your organization? Use search engines to set up news alerts about your competitors. Read their postings on Monster. Some of the best competitor information can be found right on Monster!

Dive into the powerful data from Monster Intelligence to better understand local hiring statistics and new areas of the country that you could be asked to recruit.  Use this time to familiarize yourself with the newly redesigned Monster Resource Center and explore the depth of information available to you about hiring and staffing best practices.

Establish Consistent Networking Habits

Networking can seem overwhelming and time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. Devote 30 minutes a day to reach out to potential candidates who could lead you to the next candidate. Are they on your alumni website? Are they on a local networking site? Is there a name that keeps coming up in interviews that you meant to follow up on?  Is it that person who you met on a plane in July? Have you called references from top candidates’ resumes? Have you reached out to placements you made six months ago and asked them for referrals?

Make certain that your networking profiles -- whether professional or social -- are up to date. Have you mined these sites to find old colleagues and candidates to bring into your network? Have you looked at the available “groups” functions to find recruiter groups to join? Are there groups established for the core positions you recruit?

Finally, spend time on professional websites for recruiters such as the Society for Human Resource Management and the Electronic Recruiting Exchange. Read blogs about recruiting or the function or industry for which you recruit. Have fun with networking -- it’s really just relationship building!

Best of luck with your recruiting.

Keywords Are the Key to Making your Job Posting Searchable

By: Matt Evans, Monster SEO Manager

By some estimates, over 124 million job-related searches are conducted each month on Google.com. That figure doesn’t even factor in other major search engines. Clearly, job-related searches can have huge implications for your job listing.

Monster is constantly making enhancements to ensure that your job postings are searchable in major search engines. But it’s you, the employer, who has the most influence on whether your job description is returned in the top of search engine results with the correct keyword phrases.

In order for your online job posting to be relevant to search engines, you will need to select the right keyword phrases for your job title and description. This process will also help your listing perform better within Monster’s search engine as well.

Keyword Research is Key
In order to make your job posting search engine optimized, ask yourself the following questions:

What phrases are relevant to your job description?
What terms might a job seeker search for in order to find a job like yours?
To find the answers, brainstorm as many phrases as possible, look at competitor listings and use free keyword research tools on the Web like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool to expand the list of keyword phrases for your listing.

Your keyword phrases in your job posting should be specific, not general (i.e., ‘sales job’ may describe the job generally, but ‘financial services sales job’ would be a better phrase to target.) Also keep in mind that the more general or broad a keyword phrase is, the more competition there will be for it.

Other types of keyword phrases to consider in your brainstorm include:

Company/branded/product terms: Select phrases that you use in your marketing campaigns and are familiar with job seekers.
Location-specific terms: Many seekers search on location + job title (e.g., "product manager job in Boston.")
Industry-specific terms: Are their tools, software or acronyms that are important to the job and your business?
Alternative job titles: Are there alternative job titles that people may use to describe the same job? (e.g., "online marketing manager or Internet marketing manager.")
Abbreviations: Are there abbreviations for the job title? (e.g., Registered Nurse = RN)
Using this ‘pool’ of keyword phrases, you should then select the most popular and relevant phrases to use in the creation of your job listing. Test your keyword phrases by seeing if they you answer “Yes” to the following questions:

Can I determine the intent of a job posting and of the job seeker simply by looking at the keyword phrase?
Will my job listing satisfy the intent of the job seeker if they search this phrase and land on my listing?
The Job Title Rules
The Job Title is the most important part of your job listing for three reasons:

It appears in the body as text. Search engines use it to understand what keyword phrases your job listing is relevant on.
It appears in the browser <title> tag. Search engines weigh the job title heavily when determining what keyword phrases your job listing is relevant on.
The browser <title> tag also appears as the clickable hypertext in search engine results.
Your job title should be compelling, but most importantly, relevant, in order that seekers click on your job listing over others. Here are some guidelines to help you pick your job titles:

The job title you choose should be a simple, concise title that job seekers actually search on, not a creative hook or title that is only known within your organization. ‘Sales Star Needed!’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Sales Representative’.
The job title should be as specific as possible. ‘Sales’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Pharmaceutical Sales Representative’.
Indicate the career level of the job in the title if possible. ‘Online Media’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Director of Online Media’.
If a skill is essential to the job then be sure to include it. ‘Customer Support Representative’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Customer Support Representative – Spanish Speaking’.
Include the job type (Part-time, Temporary, Contract, etc.) if appropriate.  ‘Janitor’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Janitor (Part-time)’.
 Do not abbreviate job titles. ‘Sr. VP’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Senior Vice President’.
Include the full job title as well as the acronym. ‘RN’ is not an effective job title. Instead, choose ‘Register Nurse (RN).’
Avoid the following tactics as they make your listings appear less professional and spam-like:

Deceptive/inaccurate titles
Posing questions in your titles
Keyword “stuffing” in titles
Including the salary or rate of pay in titles
Capitalizing words (unless appropriate) in titles
Mentioning 'No experience required' in titles
The Importance of Keywords in the Job Description
Search engines are only concerned with text, so your job description is your best chance to have your job posting appear in search results is to integrate keyword phrases throughout your job listing.

Along with the job title you’ve chosen, select 3-5 related terms to use throughout the copy to increase the relevance of the page. Do not overuse any keyword phrase. To test for overuse, read the description out loud. If it sounds awkward, reduce the number of instances for that phrase.

Here are some additional tips to help you integrate your related keyword phrases:

Use bullet points to make the description easy to read
The length of the job description should be at least 150 words (remember, search engines like text!) but not too long (seekers don’t like to read long descriptions.)
Use brand, industry, and occupation-specific phrases
Avoid using internal company jargon or abbreviations that will confuse the reader
Do not include the location within the description field -- Monster's job listing templates are set up to automatically display the location within the title and meta-tags.
Keywords in the Company Description/Boilerplate
Since you’re company’s description/boilerplate is present on all of your job listings, be sure to optimize the keyword phrases used in this copy in a similar way to your job description. Avoid typical ‘marketing fluff’ and focus on keyword phrases that explain and demonstrate your business and industry and describe your company culture.

Recruiting Strategies: Recruit Large Company Employees

By: John Rossheim, Monster Senior Contributing Writer

With millions of large-company employees pounding the pavement after recession-driven layoffs, small businesses have a recruitment opportunity that few have ever experienced to attract top talent. If you're such an employer, grabbing big-time corporate talent or overqualified candidates can present opportunities that transcend the seat-of-the-pants approach that characterizes many small companies.

Judiciously chosen big-company executives can also be critical to the growth of smaller companies. "We have two main practice areas, finance and tech," says Richard Dukas, CEO of Dukas Public Relations, a 21-person firm. "I want to grow into other verticals like healthcare energy and consumer. To start those, I'll go for folks from larger firms."

But rather than either jumping at the chance to hire corporate talent or rejecting it out of hand as too risky, it makes sense to carefully examine the pros and cons and forge a recruitment strategy that will help your business to succeed.

Hiring Employees from Large Companies
Among their valuable assets, executives and other professionals who have been with large companies often bring with them valuable connections -- to customers, vendors, business partners and others in their profession.

Big-company professionals can also work the kinks out of systems, whether it's on your factory floor or in the realm of corporate governance. "Often, large-company people have deep knowledge of processes," says Duncan Mathison, a consultant and coauthor of Unlock the Hidden Job Market. "This can be a real asset to a smaller company whose lack of process is killing them."

And because they often come with broad and deep experience from the corporate world, these employees often require less mentoring and training. They're able to hit the ground running -- as long as they don't stumble on the laces of their track shoes.

Interviewing Large-Company Candidates
Some corporate expatriates come with biases that should make the small employer wary. "We need to see in these people an entrepreneurial side," say Dean Tozer, a senior vice president at Advanced BioHealing, a biotechnology company with about 185 employees. Former employees of big companies may come with feelings of entitlement that won't go over well in a startup environment.

Those sort of biases can become apparent when interviewing candidates. "In the interview I will bring up that we have a different culture and people tend to do a lot of their own stuff," says Dukas. "People come in early and stay late, make their own copies and get their own coffee."

Large-company refugees may also feel like they're taking a cold shower when they learn about your company's limited resources. "You need to calibrate expectations about budgets," says Mathison. "So ask the candidate, 'What would be the operational budget for project X?' The smart candidate will ask what there is to work with, and go from there."

For small employers, the most common issues with large-company employees are that they aren't hands-on enough, lack a sense of urgency and spend too much time on analysis and not enough on execution, says Mathison.

If you're like most employers, you expect all your workers to be willing to pitch in wherever and whenever you need them to. Employees used to working within the narrow confines of a rigid job description may rebel. "It's not going to work if someone says 'That's not my job,' " says Tozer.

Salary Negotiations
Of course, pay is often an issue for workers making the transition from a publicly traded behemoth to a small concern. "If there's a huge pay disparity, common sense goes against making a hire," says Joel Capperella, a vice president with staffing firm Yoh.

Be warned: You may not be able to take at face value the candidate's insistence that she's comfortable with taking a cut from her large-company compensation when making a job offer.

One way to judge understanding of your position on pay is to ask the candidate an open-ended question. "I ask them, "what kind of compensation do you need?' " says Dukas. "If they tell me what they used to make, that's a problem. People have to be willing to accept lower compensation to start."

Finally, for the future welfare of your business, you've got to consider this: Will that former employee of a major corporation really stick with your small company once the economy is clearly on a positive trajectory? If you do a good enough job of keeping them focused on the career opportunity throughout their tenure at your firm, the answer can be yes.

How to Sell the Small-Company Opportunity
Once you settle on a corporate migrant who is worthy of a job offer, you've still got to sell them on your company -- which comes down to good company branding.

Describe for the candidate how working at your firm can provide the gratification of seeing how their everyday efforts affect the fortunes of the organization and all its employees.

"Small companies offer professionals incredible autonomy and broad influence," says Capperella. "A job with a small company can be a launching pad for exercising skills they haven't used in a while."

How your Business Can Attract Top Talent

By: Eric Herrenkohl

Your company is small but getting bigger. You don’t have a world-wide small company brand -- yet. But you do need to find and hire great people if you want to keep growing. If this describes your business, here are some specific tips for leveraging your current resources to find and hire A-player employees.

Turn every marketing event into a recruiting event. I work with clients to turn every sales and marketing event into a recruiting event. For example, some of my clients are franchisees who operate fitness and running stores. They organize group runs and marathon training programs to attract new customers. We turned these events into recruiting events as well, and make sure that people who attend know about the employment opportunities these companies offer.

What type of marketing programs do you use to find new customers? Make them serve double duty as recruiting events.

Develop a reputation for interviewing all the time. Develop a reputation as a company that is always interviewing job candidates. If your employees know you are always interviewing, they will be more likely to refer people to you. Reward them monetarily if you hire someone they refer.

Develop a referral network. If you interview an individual who has good abilities but is not a fit for your company, refer them to other businesses that are a better fit. This helps you to build a network of small businesses that help one another to recruit good employees.

Network all the time. You have to make time to network if you want to meet A-player employees. Get involved in professional associations. Sit on boards. Teach continuing education classes. Consider using social media. All of these are great ways to rub shoulders with good people and build relationships with them before you need them.

Create a target list. In writing my upcoming book How to Hire A-Players: Finding the Top People for Your Team Even if You Don’t Have a Recruiting Department, I interviewed several executives who have a “target list” of A-players who work for competitors that they are trying to recruit.  Put your own target list together. Call people, ask them to lunch, and tell them that you would be interested in hiring them if and when the time is right. Sometimes the direct approach is the best approach.

Set recruiting goals for your managers. In small businesses, too often recruiting responsibility falls solely on the owners’ shoulders. Set recruiting goals for your managers. Develop a farm team of new potential employees. Require them to have a constantly updated list of potential candidates they can dip into if and when they need to hire someone. Make recruiting their responsibility as well as yours.

Hiring Takeaway: You don’t have to have an internal recruiting department to find and hire A-players. Be smart and leverage the resources you already have to find and hire the talent you need to drive growth and profits.

Author Bio
Eric Herrenkohl is the founder and president of Herrenkohl Consulting, a firm that helps clients build great sales teams. He is the author of the book, How to Hire A-Players (John Wiley & Sons, April 2010.)