Homegrown Employer Branding for AEO & GEO

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Speaker B: Homegrown employer branding for AEO and Geo Next on the Rectech podcast,

Speaker C: welcome to REC Tech. The podcast for recruiting and technology intersect. Each month you'll hear from vendors shaping the recruiting world along with recruiters who will tell you how they use technology to hire talent. Now here's your host, the mad scientist of online recruiting, Chris Rock Russell.

Speaker B: Welcome to the only podcast helps employers and recruiters connect with more candidates through technology inspired conversations. Mastering recruitment technology is the key to hiring great talent. That's why the show exists. This episode is sponsored by Dalia. Is your career site living the conversions you need? Well, Dalia's plug and play tech turns any employer career site into a high performance candidate conversion engine. Cce. No replatform required. It's live in days. I want you to visit Dalia Co and learn more. So AI answer engines are changing how candidates discover and learn about employers. Mikayla Fitzwilliam from Dalia talks with Danny Rojas, a forward thinking TE leader who's worked at nationwide brands like JCPenney and the Container Store to learn how to build an employer brand that gets serviced and cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot. Enjoy the audio.

Speaker D: Okay. Hello. Hello everybody. Um, so excited uh, to be on here today with uh, Danny. We are going to spend some time talking about employer brand in the age of AI search. I know I've had a lot of conversations with TA teams and leaders recently about AI and AI search and how it's changing how their employer brand and the stories they want to tell are showing up in the candidates journey. And so um, I'm really excited to kind of dive into this deeper with Danny. I'll pass it over to you to do a quick intro. Um, so yeah, well thank you so

Speaker E: much Mikayla and Dalia for hosting and for inviting me uh, on the show and the webinar. And uh, I have a very interesting background. What originally started as an army recruiter, uh, that really just loved problem solving and fixing processes and digging into what was working and what we could do better that led to a career in retail. So ex JCPenney, ex Container Store. Very much a practitioner and a thought leader in everything that is talent acquisition and in what's happening, what's new. And I couldn't think of a better topic than what's happening in the age of AI search, aeo, geo and what employers and candidates are doing about it.

Speaker D: Great, great. Yeah, yeah. If anyone who's on here doesn't follow Danny, go follow him. He has very fun thought, interesting posts from lawn cutting to thoughts about AI. Um, so a great, great person to follow on LinkedIn. Um, so yeah, to kind of set the stage a little bit. Uh, Dalia, we work with job seekers and we speak with job seekers every single day. And so we're really close to how they beh when they're looking for and applying to jobs. And we've seen, you know, and we've seen this very uh, big shift in candidate behavior and also in general like human behavior. Right, where people maybe used to go to Google, um, and type something in. Their first thing is now going to ChatGPT or Claude or if they're going to Google. Gemini is showing up first, um, before any sort of ah, links. And so uh, what we've seen and this also, this data comes um, from a partner of ours but 70% of candidates are using AI in their job search. Um, and what this really means and why this is important is because candidates are deciding, um, and interacting, hearing about your brand before they ever land on your site. And these first impressions are happening with AI Answers and not necessarily with your owned written employer brand content. And so that's really what we want to talk about today, why this shift is really important for employer branding teams, um, for talent attraction. Um, so yeah, this is, the shift has already happened. And so not to say that if you're not doing this already you're behind but it's important to be aware of this change so you can kind of roll with the punches on this. Um, and then also to kind of set the stage and the landscape. Um, the difference between SEO, GEO and aeo, obviously new marketing terms. If you do work in recruitment marketing or employer brand, you probably are already aware of this. But if someone's joining and hasn't really heard any about any of this at all, I just wanted to kind of talk about the difference. So there are three layers of visibility when you're talking about AI answers. So SEO is the classic rank search on Google or any other um, search engine. We are using keywords where backlinks are important and you have built a certain authority over time, um, with your web pages and things like that to rank first, second, third, be on the first page of Google, GEO and AEO are really more aligned and tied directly to those AI search engines. So Geo is important into how AI systems actually find your content and interpret it. So that's really how you're structuring the content that you're putting out there. So an AI bot, uh, cloud bot, Gemini bot can go and um, find your content and then AEO is how you're answering the content, uh, how you're answering questions, um, in your content. So then AI actually uses that content in their answer when candidates are asking ChatGPT or Gemini, um, questions about maybe your company. Um, Danny, I didn't know if you wanted to add anything.

Speaker E: Yeah, uh, the one thing I'll say here is because SEO was obviously there's companies that are still doing SEO wrong today, I think, or not owning their brand in the SEO space. So seeing SEO, Geo and AEO all on the same screen may feel overwhelming. What I'll tell you is that GEO and AEO could very much be done together. Right. So some of the tools that we're going to give you today are very practical things that you can take away and be able to knock both of those out at the same time. And if you're doing both of those, you're still going to rank. Right. Google is going to be pulling information from these various sources that'll still get you ranked, essentially replacing some of those SEO effects. Should you still do it? Probably, if you're not today. But uh, GEO and AEO is where a lot of candidates are going to start finding information based on that work that you do there. So we'll talk a little bit more about some of that. But it is very important and unfortunately it's actually leading to more work for TA leaders because you do have to manage both now.

Speaker D: Totally. Yeah. I'm actually, right now I'm in something called Rank Week, uh, which is historically an SEO based kind of like weekly week training. Um, and yesterday was we were talking about keywords and things like that and trying to find the right keywords that you want people to be searching to find your content. And um, the host of it was like, it's still important. Keywords are important, but they're slowly and probably will more quickly be losing their importance over time.

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker D: Um, but that being said, if you already have a very strong SEO performance and presence, that will only help GEO and aeo. So. Okay, so obviously we're talking about this in the Context of talent acquisition. Um, and so you know Danny, you've been really close to, to how AI is changing the way candidates research employers. Like what should a TA team or recruitment marketing leader be paying attention to that they probably that might not be on their radar.

Speaker E: Yeah, yeah. I think one is the shift from candidates starting their search on either Indeed or Google or LinkedIn to starting their searches on ChatGPT perplexity or whatever AI version search bot of their choice that they choose to use for their job search. When they do that, they're going to go in and say, okay, find me this job in this market or what openings are available for me given my background in this market. Your company may or may not populate there, but all of what AI is doing is pulling answers from all open source Data, including someone LinkedIn, which we'll talk about in a little bit and giving them an answer. The question for TA leaders is do you want to be able in more control of that answer essentially right, or do you want the employees that left your organization, that left reviews on Glassdoor to own that messaging? Is your career site optimized for AEO and GEO to be able to provide those answers? Are your employees activated and are they going in and talking about what your company is doing from a cultural standpoint, from a benefit standpoint? We're going to talk about some of that as we get into the practical things, but it is something that we should be looking at. Um, Craig Fisher talked about this at ah, Talent Acquisition Week when he said basically that if your career site is not optimized, if your job postings are not AEO and GEO optimized, then you're going to pay more to populate in those searches. And that's absolutely true. Most of that money is going to, you know, job platforms like indeed and zip and LinkedIn and so on and so forth to populate. But if you can own the space, you might spend a little bit less. So that's why it's important those impressions are live. They're happening now. You mentioned the shift. The shift is already there. Your content has to be readable or it'll never get picked up and you're just going to pay more to actually be seen.

Speaker D: I, and I don't know if we're going to touch on this in a little bit, so pause me if, if we are, how can I like, how will I know if my content is AI readable? My career site is AI readable.

Speaker E: So when you look at like AEO and GEO and the way that they are looking at content. Right. So let's say it's your career site. A lot of it should be now long form, right? So long form explanation of your benefits, of your cultural programs of events and how you reward your employees, how you activate your employees, whatever that looks like, and how you treat your employees, um, all the way through. Like a career site blog, which is a really great idea. And blogs kind of died down on career sites for a while, but AEO and GEO are very much going to revive those. So I very much recommend organizations start looking at that again. Start publishing content there about what you're doing, um, about what matters as a part of your employer brand. Um, but we are going to talk about some very specific things on how you should be writing that material and specifically why it's important.

Speaker D: Okay. And actually, yeah, you brought up the blog. The blog piece that kind of popped into my head. The long form content. And again, pause me if I'm, if I'm getting ahead of myself. But, um, that. Should that be done on blogs or does Gemini Bot or claudebot prefer those to be on the, like the specific pages of the career site? Because right now career sites are. Don't typically have long form answers to how they treat their employees on their culture and benefits page.

Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, I think that there are definitely ways to position it not only on your career site, but also on Glassdoor. Right. Owning your space there, your responses there. Um, also owning your feeds on Glassdoor and indeed, which allow you to post about who you are and your culture and again, things that are happening, you roll out a new benefit or you're doing a benefit highlight. To give you an example, at the Container Store, we published a blog annually that started at the beginning of the new year. And essentially what we would do is give job seekers tips on what they can do as a part of their interview process at the Container Store. What mattered to us, what we were looking for in people that, that, you know, met the one equals three talent that we were trying to hire. And that blog we then took and pushed out to Glassdoor. We push it out to. Indeed, we had our recruiters create separate posts on LinkedIn about that blog. And it was in a Q and A format. So there was candidate asks question A and then we respond with answer, whatever. Right. So AI can read that a lot easier. And this was really before it was a thing. We were just trying to help out candidates as they went throughout their search. We knew there were questions about, you know, how do I, you know, best land at the Container Store. Uh, and that's what we did. It's a simple example of what employers and TA leaders can do, but of course on broader topics throughout the year. And we're going to talk about how to activate your employees to be able to do that for you year round, how to reward them, how to keep a program that's, um, that lives beyond three weeks, so on and so forth. But definitely, I think there's a real opportunity here. But if you don't get ahead of it now, you're going to be paying more to the people that do.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think something that I've been seeing and feeling a lot, it's just like you still, at the end of the day, whatever content you're creating still has to be helpful, right? Like, you have to understand what the candidates might be asking about your company and still developing useful content that people will actually, you know, want to read about and see. Um, and I think that that baseline still runs true. And then another thing before we, before we continue on is also our Reddit. I've been doing a lot of searches and I see Reddit, um, cited a lot by AI, but also I just see a lot of, a lot of forms. So that can be another location where maybe someone on your team should be auditing and looking at Reddit Reddit threads, um, to see how your people are talking about your brand there as well.

Speaker E: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. One of the things that, you know, we looked at was not only Glassdoor, but also what was happening on our indeed employer profile. And then in that search, a Reddit thread populated. And I was like, that's interesting. Right? So then we went back and started looking at it. But I think it goes back to this idea that we thought AI was actually going to reduce our workload and it is in some cases. Right? There's a lot of things that we're able to hand off, like scheduling. Right. Maybe even recruiter screens or initial screens, uh, candidate ranking, whatever you want to call it, if you're using AI in that way, you freed up some time. So the question then becomes, what are you doing with that time? And maybe it's paying a little bit more attention to what people are saying about you on Reddit, where 40% of, uh, you know, LLMs are actually citing material. Right? So is there, are there negative comments about how an employee was treated there? Maybe that's an HR response, right? Maybe it shows that something happened. But HR was, you know, present and active. Uh, maybe it's TA going and posting and responding about culture and Benefits and all the things that matter to candidates today. Pay, work, life, balance, all of the things that we're asking. Reddit is very much going to become a part of the conversation more so than not. Um, so we should be paying attention to it and you should have someone dedicated to doing that along with managing the program that we're going to talk about.

Speaker D: Cool, cool. Um, okay. I'm excited to dive in a little bit more. Um, I know the next slide was just about the cost of doing nothing. I feel like we, we covered, we just covered kind of a lot of that. Um, I don't know, Danny, if you wanted to touch on any, any of these other points that we didn't quite dive into.

Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, the only thing that I'll say is, you know, I think a lot of, um, companies talk about, you know, how important it is that they have this really built out, like, employer brand on their career side, right. And they have all these filler words that are just really exciting and fun and all of these things, right? It's going to get lost. It's going to lose nine times out of 10 to first person account. So what does that mean? It's what's actually being written by the people that have worked, worked there, or whatever AI can find and site it is going to win over these blatant fancy filler words that are on your career site that make people feel fun and fluffy and all these things. Right? It's great. It worked at one point. We're not there today anymore, so. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So LinkedIn pages, same thing. That's where we put a lot of that content. Right. We were sold on these, you know, sixty thousand, hundred thousand dollars LinkedIn branded pages. And that's great. But only 2% of your posts on LinkedIn are actually being seen by your followers, and that's down from 7%. So LinkedIn company pages are near zero organic reach if you're posting. But LinkedIn should not be where you expect all your candidates to come from because you're posting three times a week. And it's really great content and it's relevant and it's all the things. And you have great, you know, company, uh, pages that talk about the different areas of business that you want candidates to know. It's all that it really is at this point is it's a holding spot for your employees to go and take that and then engage more on LinkedIn outside, um, of LinkedIn. And we're going to talk about exactly how to do that.

Speaker D: Interesting. It's. I'm like, as you're talking about this, I'm seeing a parallel in my mind of like, you know, with Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they're, they're requiring and asking for more genuine type of content engagements. And even on like, you know, TikToks and shorts and reels, they want to see the, the dirty work. They don't want a beautifully produced, um, I don't know, real, uh, it seems like that's aligning with how, what AI is prioritizing as well. Right. They want to find which actually I appreciate the most, real first person accounts instead of what an employer is choosing to say about themselves. And not that it's not true, but it's just that it's a more first person account. Oh, interesting. Okay.

Speaker F: Right.

Speaker E: Yeah. I think the story is more around what AI actually cites. It has to be built around real questions. The generations that are entering the workforce and that are being more selective about where they work, they're controlling that a lot. It's a living program that is going to continue to evolve and change after you stand it up. Um, because you have to pay attention to what candidates are actually asking and what they're looking for.

Speaker D: So let's talk about the playbook, I think, because this type of thing can be really daunting, um, especially for teams that are already in over their heads, have a bunch of projects going on and may have a hard time engaging their employers or figuring out how to create these influencers in their company. So, um, let's talk about the overall kind of program. Then we can dive into each step. I'll pass it off to you to kind of explain it since you're the, you're the pro here. I'll just, I'll just ask questions.

Speaker E: I don't know about pro. I think I'm trying to figure it out like everybody else. Right. I think, you know, one of the things that led to this work was we started to see AI, you know, populating more things about our company and our positions, um, than probably what we wanted. Right. So we wanted to control the narrative. Now we were already ahead in a couple of different areas. Right. We're going to talk about some of these things. But for example, one of them was Glassdoor.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker E: It was activating, you know, our top performers. And we do, of course, um, talent assessments every year. Right. And we would, you know, run campaigns with our top performers and say, hey, would you be willing to go and leave us a review on Glassdoor and talk about all the Amazing things that are happening right now. It just happened to, you know, be after a 3% increase. So they're really, really happy and really willing to go do that for us. Yeah, but it starts by identifying, right. Your active voices. So the, the program that, you know, the, the playbook that we're going to talk about today, the framework, if you will, is going to be turning your employees voices right. Into content that AI actually cites and trusts. We already talked about kind of how we got here, why it's important. Uh, we talked about how AI is going to choose that content every time over, you know, the flop that we generally post on our career sites and so on and so forth, um, which should still be very much AEO and GEO optimized. That's another project in itself. But you're going to have to start by identifying, well, who are we actually going to target with this programming? Right. I think some of the things that have come across as ideas when we rolled this out at the Container Store, and even as the corporate communications team at JCPenney rolled out a similar program was, well, let's just push out an email and see who responds and who's interested. M. And I think that's great. Right. It's a great way to see where the interest lies. But I wanted to see who can we activate that's already doing some of that work today. So we partnered specifically with our LinkedIn rep. Right. And a lot of us are paying for LinkedIn enterprise accounts. You get access to your employees and their analytics. So ask your LinkedIn rep. Right. We probably don't ask them enough as it is. So some work to do. But with that, ask them to show you your workforce analytics and identify your active voices that already have engagement, that are already posting regularly, that are already involved and logged into the platform. Right. So look at the different people within your organization that you can target to kick off your programming. Right. From there, you get into actually inviting them into what it's ultimately a support program for the work they're already doing.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker E: So it's a lot easier to activate and support people that are already involved that already, you know, like, activated almost. Yeah, that's right. That's right. You know, they just believe in your brand. You know, they believe in, you know, keeping up with trends and things that are happening in the marketplace. And that stuff's not on Instagram. Right. So they're on LinkedIn. They're active there. How do you then help them, uh, find their voice and help, you know, really push everything that you're doing as an organization and what you're trying to accomplish with AEO ngo. And that's layer two. Right. So layer two is helping all of those people opt into what is the program and ultimately giving them the left and the right limits of what we're looking to build and then giving them the rest of the freedom to go and build it. Right. So that's posting regularly, that's digging into things that we're posting as a company and saying, is there a story behind that? I was at that event. Is there something I could share there personally? Right. So you're guiding them through this cohort and through this training of how they can get creative with it. And the same person that's monitoring the program, that's that stood up the program is monitoring content and saying, oh, that's a really great story from an employee that we didn't know about. Right. And I'll give you an example. Um, the Container Store had a lot of long tenured employees, many that had been there, you know, for many, many years. And, um, we were having a big celebration in, you know, our, our, uh, cafeteria or somebody that had been working at the company for four years. Well, that's a great story. And when I asked some questions, we weren't using it at all. Right. We weren't talking about it. It was an internal celebration. I think that's great. But who else wants to come and work here for 40 years?

Speaker D: Right?

Speaker E: Right.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker E: Now maybe the answer is a little bit different now. Right. But still the concept, right. Is the same. It's how do we take this story about how awesome it is to work here that somebody would stay at the Same company for 40 years through various change, so on and so forth, and push that out to a much broader audience than just the people that are helping celebrate it. Right. So build a cohort, Give them the tools that they need to be successful. Right. Somebody on the TA team should be owning the initial post. They should be, um, you know, giving them content to think about and then monitoring the content that's published so that they can then go and take it and amplify it even further.

Speaker D: Okay.

Speaker E: Keep it alive, which is layer three, we'll get to in a second.

Speaker D: Sorry. Yeah. Ah, Um, I have a few questions about that. So I'm just sitting in, like, the practitioner seat who's, like, watching this and being like this sounds great, but how much time? Like, what's the time investment hours per week or percentage of my workload? Should I, could it, could I get this done in, um, Successfully, Yeah.

Speaker E: So I definitely think that it depends on, um, you know, kind of your, your team's workload already. Like what are they already doing? You know, how much time do they have to commit? I think for one, for starters, whoever you, you select to manage the program, they really have to be a champion of this. Right. So to give you an example, I knew that I wanted to stand up a broader social program at the Container Store. So I hired somebody that actually had a degree in social, that had some work in social and then just happened to turn into a recruiter and they actually had applied for a role on our social team and I would happen to be the recruiter and I said, hey, would you be interested in coming and doing some of this work for ta? And they said yes. And so we, you know, went through the whole interview process, so on and so forth, and they were selected. So I had already found my champion. Right. We got them trained and onboarded in the core of their job, which is recruiting. But then we started to roll out, you know, more and more social activations, including some of the work that we're talking about today. So it starts with the person that you selected run the program and then from there it goes into. We're not adding extra work. If you go to the, to, you know, the employee and say, hey, we would like to post about, would like you to post about the company that seems like work, right? It's framed as extra work.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Speaker E: We say, hey, we would love to amplify and support what you're already doing. The engagement and the traction that you already have on LinkedIn by giving you content that's going to be posted from, you know, the, the company site that we're going to email out to you when it's posted, that we're going to give you ideas to start running and it's only going to be one to two hours a month and you're going to be rewarded for it and you're going to help us attract more people like you. I think you'll be surprised at the results, you know, at the responses from those people. Uh, one thing that, you know, I think it's important to mention as well as you talk about the opt in stage is when you think about your cohort, you should ideally try to recruit one executive as well. You need a sponsor, somebody that's a part of the conversation that is in the room when you onboard, you know, for that first hour session and what should really only be an hour session total.

Speaker D: Mhm.

Speaker E: And they have to be in the meeting, they have to be a part of the conversation. And if their executive assistant goes and writes the rest of their post for them, that's fine. Right. But have them so that your employees see executives doing it. And when you have that involvement, just generally. Right. Not specific to this program, you're going to find that 50 more percent of your employees are going to be engaged and willing to participate.

Speaker D: Mhm. That makes sense.

Speaker E: So it starts with your champion goes to, you know, how you communicate the message and then having an executive sponsor

Speaker D: to help support and for like size of cohort to be successful.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: If I go in, my LinkedIn rep tells me, here are three people, right, that are, that are active and engaging on LinkedIn that you can, you can leverage.

Speaker E: Yeah.

Speaker D: If one, if only one person does it, is it worth it?

Speaker E: So the answer or the, you know, the question, um, that you're asking is really, um, is it better than nothing?

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker E: And the answer is yes.

Speaker D: Okay.

Speaker E: Right. So yes, it's better than nothing because that's just a starting point. It's your foundation. Right. But once you start to like, see the results from it, one, they can go and tell all their friends. But two, I don't think you stop with just who's active today. Right. That's just the easiest way to stand the program up.

Speaker D: Right. Lowest hanging.

Speaker E: Right. Our end all, you know, kind of be all goal wasn't to stop there. It was to then develop the program to where we could teach somebody from scratch how to do this. M. Right. And do you start looking at like talent a little bit differently within the TA functions that drive some of this work? Like maybe the answer to that is yes. So maybe this is a, um, different TA leader type of opinion, transparently. But whenever I'm looking at somebody within Talent Acquisition to start on Talent Acquisition team, I'm looking at are they actually involved in the platforms that drive Talent Acquisition?

Speaker D: Smart.

Speaker E: Right? What's their engagement there? You know, kind of what are they doing? Um, are they involved or are they just, you know, reviewing resumes that come into the portal or the ATS or whatever? Are they just sourcing behind the scenes? Right. Um, so that's something that I've looked at as well.

Speaker D: Makes sense. And then my other question was I, um, have so many, but I'm just gonna, I'm gonna heed myself here, um, for the content they create. So you had mentioned the workflow is you would email them with content that, you know, the, the company is going to be, uh, posting about. Then are they to make their own post from inspired by that content or are they reposting your post and then sharing their thoughts with it on LinkedIn?

Speaker E: So, I mean, honestly, I don't know that there's a wrong answer here. I can tell you there's more, there's a, there's a more effective answer. Right. Again, um, anything is better than nothing. So if you have a group of your cohort, maybe it's two or three. Right. And if you can find like eight to 10 people that are willing to do this even in the smallest of companies. Right. I think that's a really big win first and foremost. Right. But if you have two or three of those that are only sharing, that's better than not sharing at all. Okay, Right. That's better than not getting the message out to a broader audience. I do find more value and I think AEO and GEO is directly tied to this and taking that content, writing their own first person accounts of it. Right. And their experience. Right. In a Q and A format that AI actually can understand, can actually read and cite. Um, and maybe turning it into long format. Right. Or you as the program manager, see their post and their experience and you say, hey, I would love to expand on this. Can we meet for 15 minutes to talk about it? Right. And now it's turning into, you know, an employee story that's being activated for the brand in long form format. Maybe that turns into an article which is much easier cited by, you know, um, what AI of your choice, whatever it is. Right. Perplexity, ChatGPT, whatever. That's much easier to be cited than a LinkedIn post. Think of LinkedIn post as the people activation. Right. And then you take that and you turn it into long form, whether it's on or it's in a different type of platform like Glassdoor.

Speaker B: Indeed.

Speaker E: Maybe it's medium, maybe you take some of that and you share it, you know, in a response on Reddit. Well, this is actually what we found, or this is what other employees are saying. All of that is much more citable. Right. Um, and that's ultimately what type of content you're trying to publish.

Speaker D: Very cool, Very cool. Okay, so I won't, I won't hold back any, hold this back any longer. Um, we talked a little bit about this, but yeah, we can talk into like step three. Right. How, how you're going to form this content. Uh, so AI is finding it and citing it.

Speaker E: Yeah. So the Q and A structure is probably the most powerful structure that you can write any one specific post if you look at some of the content that even I have posted. I'll pose like a problem. Like this was what the problem was, which is the question. Right. And this is what our experience was and what we did about it. It's a Q and A structure that is built for how AI retrieves information. It maps content to questions and answers. And I, uh, this kind of writing style starts with your cohort, right. When you build this, when you select the people that are going to be a part of the program and you coach and you train them, you're coaching them on how to frame their posts, their articles, anything around. You know, in my previous experiences I experienced X and whenever I joined I was questioning why. And this is my honest experience of what's happened so far. Right. Um, some of the things that I'm always looking for is a place with great culture. And this is what I have found here at this. Right. So there's different ways that you can frame it, but it's blank question, here's the answer. Right. Q and A format. And it's in their authentic voice. And if they ever need help, they have a lot of AI tools they probably go to, to help them. Right. Um, but I think that's the perfect way to engage your employees is by teaching them how to do this and then writing it in a way that it's easy for AI to actually cite it.

Speaker D: When you were saying, giving the template there, I was brought back to third grade writing class where you learn the five paragraph essay, tell them what you're going to say, say it and then tell them what you just said. And basically it's, it's like that kind of same framework of like this is what I'm looking for, this is what I found. And then you know, a conclusion or a takeaway or something like that.

Speaker E: Absolutely, yeah. And even if you can have a few people do this, you're already doing more than a lot of other people are. Right? Um, yes. There's more work that TA team should own your career site. Right. Making sure that's optimized. A blog, if you don't have one, activate that. Uh, again, we talked about the glassdoor indie stuff, but this is the core of the program. It's letting your employees activate their experiences and their own voice and just giving them a few left and right limits. Right.

Speaker D: And it sounds like, you know, they're very supported and this kind of goes into the next stage of like, you know, how do we, how do you make this not just like a one hit wonder slash one month Wonder type of program. But it sounds like there are. The structure is built to support them over time and to get this, this consistency.

Speaker E: Absolutely. So I'll say, like the reward program, you know, initially, uh, comes off as like, I'm probably going to have to go and get a budget for this. Because everything that we've talked about so far is just time. Right? It's time, Will. And maybe the willingness to kind of learn the skill if you don't have it today. Right. But this is where budget lines may come in and say, okay, well, how can I actually afford to do this? But the reality is that I've been in organizations where you don't have, um, to get a budget line for this. Right. To recognize your employees that are doing really great things, that are consistent, that are posting, that are driving engagement. Um, so to give you an example of that, you know, when I was at JCPenney in this program or a similar program rolled out with, uh, our corporate communications team, it was a little bit more consumer focused. Right. But we leaned in on the TA function, say, hey, can we actually get, you know, some TA content pushed out with this as well? And we built out, you know, different types of posts and graphics that they could use and choose to roll out with certain what we called hot jobs. Right. And, um, highlighting employees and so on and so forth. But there was always a story behind it. We got really surprising results because people just wanted to be a part of that journey. So we didn't actually have to build a recognition program for them. They just did it on their own. And they're still doing it today. Right. I still follow a lot of them. The program is still alive. And that was three and a half years ago. Right now the TA portion may have dropped off. You need a Danny to get that done. Right. But the rest of it is still very much alive. Right. So at the Container Store, I wanted to take a different approach though. Right. Because we're asking you to do something outside of your day to day. Pressure's high. Everyone's being, you know, told we have to do more with less. So we started off with stuff that we already had. Right. So we already had access to company swag. So let's talk about, like giving them a welcome kit with a few swag items that we've already paid for. Right. And you know, whenever they do their first post, we give them a welcome kit. You know, maybe it's a pen and a hat or whatever.

Speaker D: Right, right.

Speaker E: Whatever you have at your disposal. Um, and then as you get further along in your reward, you know, kind of, or your program, whatever that looks like. Start looking at things like, you know, ten post streak, Right. Engagement thresholds. Right. And start rewarding them with smaller things, you know, like gift cards. Right. Maybe it's an internal executive spotlight. Maybe it's lunch with an executive. Right. These are all things that you can do for a very low cost. And if you want to go a little bit above and beyond, then maybe you go and ask for an actual budget line. Right. The key is that you're rewarding behavior that was already happening if you're engaging people that were already active on the platform. Right. And if not, you're just rewarding a behavior and a skill that you taught them. Right. So that's the, that's the purpose behind, you know, recognizing consistency in the program is you're not manufacturing enthusiasm like we found at JCPenney. You're just resourcing what's already there.

Speaker D: Very smart. Very, very smart. And I know the container store and JCPenney both, they hire a lot of people that work in, you know, stores and frontline workers who typically aren't spending their time on LinkedIn. Um, correct me if I'm wrong on that. Um, but how important is it for a company like that, that maybe has a majority of their hires not posting on LinkedIn to find people that might be being advocates in another way?

Speaker E: Yeah, I mean, so first of all, I don't think that, you know, frontline hiring is, or, you know, um, candidates are not on LinkedIn. We actually found at the Container Store, the quality that we were looking for was on LinkedIn.

Speaker D: Okay.

Speaker E: So we actually had to pivot a little bit and split, you know, kind of where we invested our time between Indeed and LinkedIn, because we found great talent there.

Speaker D: Okay.

Speaker E: That was out in the field. That was Frontline. Um, but you're absolutely right. I think that they're. It's not always the case. Right. So I think in that, you know, situation, you have to find people, you have to find leaders that are passionate about the same work. Right. Again, we had general managers that were leading, you know, enterprise wide, uh, what we called ergs. Right. And that's a lot of time outside of being on the floor and selling to customers. So what does that look like? How do you take that same, uh, you know, energy, that same, you know, kind of love for the brand and just pay. Pivot it towards maybe recording or getting some Q and A from people that have worked in their store for a long time or questioning the newest employee that's having a really great time. That thought it was a complete turnaround from their last retail job at X company. How do you turn that into a story? It all starts, uh, at identifying those people that are already active, already love the brands, and then going into that cohort, doing the training, so on and so forth. Again, this doesn't have to be like a huge rolled out program. Your training should maybe be an hour. Right. And if they need more time, give them more time. Individual, one on one, whatever that looks like gets crappy. Right? Like it's better than doing nothing.

Speaker D: I had one more question that has escaped my brain. Um, I know we're, we're kind of coming up, I don't, we're coming up on time here, but um, yeah, is there anything else? Like if people have questions, feel free to also comment them. I'll see comments on, on here and we can, we can answer them if anyone has questions. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm forgetting that question I just had in my head for you.

Speaker E: Well, that's okay. We'll give it to the last, the last layer, which is where AI crawls. We've talked about it a little bit already which is, you know, walking through all of your different channels that you have available outside of LinkedIn. Right. Again, that's where the work starts, but I definitely don't think that's where it stops. Right. So looking at things like a career site blog, again, which is going to give the highest trust signal, right? You already own the real estate in the domain and AI is going to prioritize anything that you already own. Looking at Glassdoor, right. This is like a heavily cited source for AI. Uh, whenever candidates go in and ask questions, make sure that you're optimizing your Q and A sections, that you are going in there and responding to different reviews that come over from whether it be an interview review or it's an actual employee review, make sure that you're responding and then look at um, sources outside of Glassdoor. And indeed if you see a story that one of your employee post and Maybe it's a 500 character post, but there's a lot of meat in there that you could probably get out of that story, out of that conversation. Ask them if they're open to a little bit of an interview around it or a deeper conversation. Turn that into a long form story that you post in an article or a newsletter or on your blog or on Medium or substack or use it as a testimonial to respond to Reddit Right. A Reddit thread. Um, I think there's a lot that you can do, but doing nothing in today's environment is going to end up costing you more money in the long run.

Speaker D: So big, big takeaway is just do something. Just do something.

Speaker E: Something. Start here, use LinkedIn and mirror it off to feed the AI layer.

Speaker D: That makes sense. That makes sense. Um, I just wanted to remove the screen share for a second and just thank you for all of your insights. I think we're just kind of at the tip of the iceberg or in the top of the cookie jar in terms of this topic. Um, so if anyone also has any questions or wants more advice, feel free to reach out to me. Danny, if I'm, um. You're always so helpful. Um, and so also give Danny a follow. He also gives tips and tricks for free, uh, on LinkedIn as well.

Speaker E: 3.99. That's right.

Speaker D: But, yeah, we're all just trying to, we're all just trying to help each other and figure out the best way through all of these changes. And, um, yeah, there's going to be more about this topic coming up in the next couple of weeks, um, from, from my LinkedIn lives. And maybe we'll have Danny back in the next couple of months to, to see where he is then. But, um, yeah, I want to thank you so much for your time.

Speaker E: Of course. Appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Speaker D: Thank you. Bye.

Speaker C: Another episode of Rec Tech is in the books. Um, be sure to rate a review on itunes or Spotify, connect with Chris on LinkedIn or visit rectechmedia.com where you can find the audio and links for this show on our blog. Rectech Media's mission is to inform the modern recruiter, so be sure to check out our other sites. Recruitingheadlines.com HR newsfeed.com and HRtechfeed.com to stay on top of the recruiting world. Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon on the next episode of Rec Tech, the recruiting technology podcast.

Speaker D: Google pressures remote workers to return to office or risk termination.

Speaker E: AT&T mandates full time office return but lacks desk space.

Speaker D: Amazon tells staff to return to office five days a week.

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