The RM Podcast with Debbie Tuel

Summer is right around the corner, May is here and Memorial Day weekend is just weeks away. May also means it is Military Appreciation Month.

In tribute to those who have served and those that have sacrificed so much for our freedom, we are going to focus our episode on how, as Talent Acquisition professionals, we can do our part to support our forces and help our military transition and thrive in the corporate workforce.

So, we’re talking shop on how to embed a military hiring strategy with our client Peraton. This company works with the military in what they do and how they do it—focusing on the importance of understanding how employer brand initiatives are core to the growth and success of their business.

In today’s economy, you have to have an authentic brand to attract talent and reduce turnover. Our guest, Ben Ingham, Director, Brand and Marketing, Peraton, gives us his advice on connecting your employer brand to business outcomes to drive the cross-departmental partnership you need to move forward.

Goldman Sachs reports 2.5 million people left the workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic and won't come back to work. At the same time, we see an average of 4.5 million people quitting their jobs each month. These numbers are daunting and make the job of sourcing for open roles difficult.

The good news is there are other ways to source. Recruitment marketing programs aimed at alumni support your contingent, gig, part-time, and full-time sourcing efforts by allowing you to tap into a large talent network that already knows your organization (and will require less time & money to ramp up).

The key is to hook them back in and lean on them to refer new people. Let’s rethink the talent lifecycle by tapping into alumni talent pools.

Valentine's day has us thinking: what’s the perfect match for recruitment marketing?

About 5 years ago when recruitment marketing really took off, we saw organizations implement new recruitment marketing roles responsible for translating EVP and brand pillars into candidate-facing campaigns. These recruitment marketing and brand associates were responsible for communicating after people began to interact and engage with the brand.

But today these roles are more strategically placed in the marketing department and you may be wondering why?

Well, marketing is the most natural match for RM.

As RM expands to mimic and complement traditional marketing efforts (and as it evolves to meet the current labor market trends) it advances toward brand outreach via targeted communication and engagement strategies.

Bottom line: to win at RM you need to invest in marketing.

RM + Marketing is a match made in heaven.

In the second episode of The RM Podcast season 2, Debbie Tuel chats with Julia Levy, Head of Global Talent Acquisition, CommScope.

The pandemic has changed nearly everything that we do in our lives – from how we interact socially to where we work and how we get our jobs done. In this podcast episode Debbie and Julia discuss the importance of understanding market shifts and keeping pace with candidate, employee and technology needs as those shifts arise.

Changes in the marketplace impact your employer value proposition, employee engagement and surveys, recruitment marketing activities and tactics, internal mobility processes, learning systems, and your TA/RM tech stacks.

Tune in to discover Julia’s tips on building a business case for the right tech and processes when you have a low budget, disparate tools, changing talent landscape, and need to bring it all back to stakeholders for buy-in.

Debbie brings us back to a few of her favorite moments throughout the year where she took away the most substantial recruitment marketing tips and talent acquisition strategies. As a teaser, Debbie brings back tips from the following core topics:

• Talent pipelines and talent shortages
• The great resignation and great rehire
• Women in the workforce
• Recruitment marketing and TA tech adoption
• New HR technology

If you need a refresher or are new to the podcast, this is the best opportunity for you to catch up and gear up for season two!

Debbie Tuel, Symphony Talent’s Chief Joy Officer, joined forces with Brandy Ellis, Head of Transformation. These two power-house ladies took the mic to chat on the power of recruitment marketing agility.

It might seem strange to say, but 2020 was a year of great opportunity for companies — that is, if your strategy was agile enough to act on it. Overall, it was an unprecedented chance to talk to talent in relevant ways and positively connect your brand to their struggles, experiences, and future hopes.

But how does a company create (and maintain) agility? It boils down to building a strong, consistent recruitment marketing strategy and putting foundational tech pieces in place so you can adapt quickly when the unexpected happens.

In this podcast, Debbie and Brandy explain why the strongest tech foundations and most consistent employer brand approaches were the ones agile enough to launch impactful hiring initiatives and brand-first content campaigns. Listen in to learn how to tackle agile recruitment marketing.

Debbie Tuel, Symphony Talent’s Chief Joy Officer, spoke with Gina Alioto, VP of Brand and Transformation at Symphony Talent, to dig into her 2021 qualitative research on the successful pieces of recruitment marketing technology adoption.

Gina interviewed a representative sample of Talent Acquisition and Recruitment Marketing Technology leaders from 15 global organizations, many in the Fortune 500 and ranging from healthcare, retail, hospitality, technology, and sciences.

These are the common themes that the leaders emphasized in describing the successful implementation and adoption. The top six themes are:

1. Planning for the integration and adoption
2. Socializing the adoption within the company
3. Training, then retraining, then retraining
4. Supporting the initiative from the top down - starting with leadership support
5. Making tech mandatory and generating demand for the new tech
6. Ensuring a solid vendor partnership

In this podcast episode, Debbie and Gina dissect the pieces of adoption and share further insights from Sheri Ratliff, Director of Talent Acquisition at T-Mobile.

Debbie Tuel, Symphony Talent’s Chief Joy Officer, joined up with Theo Smith, founder of the “Neurodiversity Eliminating Kryptonite & Enabling Superheroes” podcast, to deep dive into what neurodiversity truly means for your employees and business. 

Debbie and Theo unveil that a strong implementation is key to recruitment marketing and talent acquisition technology adoption. To plan and execute a successful implementation, organizations must have the right people, technology and strategies in place. As a neurodiversity evangelist, Theo argues that a driver to successful technology adoption is understanding different learning curves and learning styles. After all, you can have the best strategy and tech out there, but if your users do not adopt it, then what’s the point? 

In this podcast episode, our practitioners uncover what neurodiversity is; why neurodiversity drives successful business practices; and how implementing neurodiversity as an adoption strategy reduces the technology adoption curve. 

Debbie Tuel, Symphony Talent’s Chief Joy Officer, joined up with Theresia Hermes, Director of Client Services, and Craig Barnett, Head of New Client Strategy, for a candid conversation on how to build a workforce and culture that increases adoption and, in return, drives organizational success and joy.

In previous episodes, we’ve talked to practitioners that shared that technology alone does not drive success. Strategy and activation are equally, if not more important. After all, you can have robust, data-driven recruitment marketing technology, but without a thorough strategy or activation plan, you can bet your user adoption will be low, the adoption curve will be high, and the overall adoption uptake will be endless.

To overcome these adoption challenges, Theresia, Craig, and Debbie deep dive into the three main steps to drive behavior change and make your users want to use your new tech. Together, they share insights on properly introducing and launching a CRM into your organization through a layering approach.

Listen to DJ Vitale's second JOY Playlist that premiered at the NYC stop of The JOY Roadshow.

Debbie Tuel, Symphony Talent’s Chief Joy Officer, teamed up with Sid Levy, VP of Talent Acquisition and Associate Engagement at Extended Stay America, for a candid conversation on leveraging recruitment marketing technology to hire at volume during today’s talent landscape.

Before the tech comes into play, organizations must build a strong foundation. Employer brands need to deliver an inspiring and believable message to the candidate. Organizations can then use recruitment marketing technology to efficiently allocate resources and prioritize media spending to have the greatest impact. Organizations should also adapt their messaging to reflect what is happening globally, reflecting on what they've learned, especially in the last 18 months.

For example, as the pandemic took hold across the country, Extended Stay kept employee safety top priority. They immediately introduced new safety protocols in all their hotels, as well as a new internal mantra, “Stay Strong.” Equally important was their push to help hiring managers understand that candidates without hospitality experience — but easily transferable skills — could be a rich source of fully engaged talent. Plus, if candidates understand that they can grow their careers in the hotel industry, their #journeyofyes is off to a fantastic start.

This special edition of The JOY Podcast series took a decidedly different turn: a mashup of some of the TA community’s most listened-to podcasters. Led by Debbie Tuel live from the Detroit JOY Roadshow stop, the group was made up of Joel Cheesman and Chad Sowash from Chad and Cheese, Tim Sackett of the HR Famous Podcast, along with Julie Sowash and Torin Ellis from Crazy and The King. 

As one would expect, the subjects they tackled were wide-ranging and touched upon the current recruiter shortage, diversity recruiting and even how where an organization is geographically located can impact the candidate journey and experience. 

In the latest JOY Podcast episode, Debbie Tuel, Chief Joy Officer at Symphony Talent invites Martin Burns, Editor-in-Chief for Recruiting News Network, for a back and forth around the current labor shortage and AI’s impact (good and bad) on diversity hiring initiatives.

The long period of isolation brought about by the pandemic has had a tremendous impact on how people set priorities in their lives and their willingness to get back on the job. The “wait-and-see” attitude about working has influenced employers’ processes for hiring.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is also top of mind for a lot of talent acquisition leaders, and they are making significant investments in technology to help recruiters do their jobs more quickly and efficiently. If used correctly and with ongoing oversight, AI-enabled software can significantly boost the effectiveness of diversity hiring efforts.

In this episode of The JOY Podcast series, Debbie Tuel, Chief Joy Officer at Symphony Talent, sat down with Kyle Lagunas to share a discussion all about the power of building strong relationships with vendors, employees and the rest of the team.

Kyle also discusses the importance of having a Talent Operations specialist on your team. When undertaking a major talent acquisition transformation initiative, it is important for stakeholders in the organization to understand exactly why it needs to be done. Is it driving a positive experience? Does it have the right KPIs in place? Will the initiative better engage with the people the organization wants to attract or retain? Larger companies are starting to embrace the notion of having talent ops to help answer these questions and implement.

Debbie Tuel, Chief Joy Officer, Symphony Talent, hosts Tracey Parsons, President at Parsons Strategic Consulting and founder of startup WORQDRIVE on this session of the JOY Podcast.  Each podcast episode, Debbie hosts various talent acquisition professionals to discover how we can best marry tech with joy to create a better recruiting experience for all.

In this conversation, Tracey shares her insight on how companies are tackling internal mobility and what we, as an industry, can do using data and analytics to improve retention. Add in the right tool recommendations from Debbie and hear how you can better predict what you, your candidates, and employees need for a better experience.

Episode Seven of the JOY Podcast series features an enlightening discussion between Debbie Tuel, Chief Joy Officer at Symphony Talent, and James Marable, Employer Brand Leader at Eli Lilly, about how strategies used to build brand awareness in a consumer audience can also be effective in recruitment marketing. It all comes down to timing, placement, a powerful story, and the right technology.

• Building brand awareness. Brand awareness is a critical factor in attracting best-fit talent (after all, they have to know an organization exists to apply for a job in the first place!).
• Harnessing the power of storytelling. Telling a company’s story through the experiences of its own employees is a great way to create buzz. Stories have a humanizing effect in bringing the work experience to life.
• Leveraging social media. TA leadership should be working closely with other corporate communications to establish guidelines – and guardrails - around what a social “looks” like when applied to recruiting. It can be as simple a list of the different things to think about when making a post.
• Consistency counts. Consistent messaging helps candidates get a sense of what an organization stands for. It piques their curiosity, makes them receptive to the brand message and, potentially leads them to apply. It’s a long-term strategy that can pay big dividends down the road.
• Making technology work for recruiters (and not the other way around). Recruiters excel at relationship building, but they also need tools and technologies to help them market their message across all channels effectively. It is important to have an honest dialogue between decision-makers, the TA team and vendors about a technology’s benefits as well as who can actually manage it.

In the end, brand building takes consistent effort and support, not only from the people spearheading it, but also from the technology used to implement it. The dividends far outweigh the efforts involved and the ROI will pay for itself in burnishing the power of the brand’s ability to engage the best people for an organization now and in the future.

Episode Six of Symphony Talent’s JOY Podcast series brought Debbie Tuel, Symphony Talent’s Chief Joy Officer, together with Heather Moffitt, the Global Talent Acquisition Technology Manager at General Electric.

One of the key topics covered was organizational readiness for HR technology investments particularly – at large enterprise organizations – and the framework for the workflows that recruiters need to adopt. Although people come to recruiting with a variety of backgrounds, their goal is ultimately bringing great people on board. When, and how, technology is integrated into their toolkit can make a major impact on their success. This can be done by completing the proper due diligence, and going slow at first, in order to go fast with the correct tech.

Recruiters are handling more tasks – both routine and sophisticated – than ever before. At a certain point, it becomes critical to ask what they do day-to-day and how a particular set of technologies could make their roles easier.

The next challenge is technology adoption which also involves managing change, and particularly aversion to it. It is important to demonstrate the value of a tool to make a recruiter’s job better and how it can quickly connect them with the right talent. Heather notes that many organizations identify “super users” internally who become experts and champions of the technology, then take it to the teams and help them personalize it to the organization.

In the final analysis, successfully identifying, implementing and adopting the right recruitment marketing technologies is a win for everyone involved. And a powerful milestone on the Journey to Joy.

Debbie Tuel, the Chief Joy Officer at Symphony Talent, welcomed panelists Madeline Laurano, Founder of Aptitude Research; Kevin Grossman, President of Talent Board; and Gina Alioto, Symphony Talent’s VP of Brand & Experience. The topic: a brief overview of a research study recently completed by the three guest panelists that explores the challenges, the strategies and the technology enablers for creating and maintaining exceptional experiences in talent acquisition.

This is the first report of its kind that provides talent leaders and marketers, CHROs and even CEOs with foundational, rich data.  Here are a few highlights covered in both the podcast episode and in the research report:

• Customer vs. Candidate Experiences
• The Recruiter’s Dilemma
• Revisiting Candidate Expectations
• A Reality Check for TA Leadership

We invite you to listen to the full podcast for more revealing insights and observations – including how lessons learned during the pandemic have greatly upped technology’s role in the candidate experience.

The triad of belonging requires three things: ongoing interaction with others, a genuine interest in who they are, and caring about them as whole and unique individuals. Debbie Tuel, our Chief Joy Officer; Scott Corrigan, Talent Acquisition Leader; and Janet Rossbach, Belonging & Engagement Expert chat about the importance and value of belonging.

For candidates and current employees, affinity groups are a powerful drivers of inclusion, diversity and belonging. A bonus is that these same individuals often become cheerleaders for the organization. Affinity is not about separatism: it is about creating a sense of community within the broader organization.

Recruiters also crave a sense of belonging. If they feel strongly valued and connected, they will automatically represent the company as a place where candidates can bring their whole selves to work. Recruiters who are actively involved in employee resource groups have a better grasp of what the DEI strategy is for their organization - and should play an active role in crafting it.

Technology’s role in building an inclusive, “whole self” culture is becoming increasingly significant. In the final analysis, it fulfills a critical human need. It’s a powerful milestone on the pursuit of joy.

We took The JOY Podcast on the road at our JOY Roadshow in Dallas. We converted a truck into a mobile podcast studio - where Debbie Tuel drove to Nicky Gibson, Director, Talent Acquisition for JCPenney and Craig Fisher, Founder of TalentNet Media, to talk about how HR organizations can adopt, embrace and leverage new technologies in order to bring the joy back to recruiting - and create experiences that both they and the candidate need right now.

Many organizations just “check the boxes,” investing heavily in new HR technologies simply because their competitors have them. However, they often fail to use a vendor’s follow-up services to help implement and support the change. Recruiters have a bad experience, and their shiny new tools just sit there, unloved and underutilized.

Embracing these new HR technologies requires a mind shift away from “we’ve always done it this way” toward “this way is better.” Recruiters need to understand how a new technology makes their job easier, more efficient - and how it supports their goal of building relationships and a better candidate experience.

Need a pick-me-up WFH playlist? Everyone's favorite Transform DJ, DJ Vitale, has released his latest mix - and it's filled with handpicked songs that bring us joy.

How can we ensure every candidate in the pipeline has the dignified experience they deserve and get recruiters back to the part of their job that brings them joy? How about merging the tech that we use everyday--with emotion?

Symphony Talent's newly announced Chief Joy Officer and podcast host, Debbie Tuel, will debut the first episode of our JOY Podcast, discussing a pipeline built to pivot with Kerry Noone, Director of Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing for CVS Health.

Kerry will walk us through how their strong tech foundation allowed them to pivot to ever-changing market conditions and bring the joy back to recruiting.

There's not a lot of joy in recruiting today – with the gap between what you intend and what actually happens during the candidate journey wider than ever. Recruiters are overwhelmed. Candidates are demoralized. Their parallel journeys need an intervention to get them back on the right path. And technology is the antidote.

Why read a research report when you can watch it? In our second JOY Podcast episode: Recruiting Needs a Joy Intervention, we partner with actors to bring CandE’s Research Report to life in an experiential way. Debbie Tuel, our Chief Joy Officer, answers three calls: one from a recruiter, a candidate, and a talent leader. Each will give their recruiting experience confessions rooted in the data, and Debbie gives the antidote to each caller.