Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Welcome, everyone, employer branding has emerged as a new business discipline and is here to stay. We’ve spoken before about employer branding even in the last episode, but the topic is much larger than a 30 minute conversation today. You’ll hear what successful employer branding looks like at a tech company and get actionable insights for upping your own employer running game. So let’s welcome Josh Cummings. us so Yeah, that was a total mess up here as he was getting to us.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): It’s not that up.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Alright, my gosh Rob I owe you a huge audience. I was literally just emailing. We know what I mean. But okay,…

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): really? Nice.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So here’s today, start over. Give a whole call. So that’s just okay and right here. We’re looking at the beginning. Okay, we’ll redo. I’m usually the one that messes up. So that’s what we did right at the beginning. I always go first if I just mess up and get it out. Okay here.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): No worries.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Employer branding has emerged as a new business discipline and is here to stay. We’ve spoken before about employer branding even a little bit in the last episode, but the topic is much larger than a 30 minute conversation today. You’ll hear what successful employer branding looks like at a tech company and get actionable insights for upping your own game. Let’s welcome. Rob Cummings (Guest). Thank you for being with us.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Everyone. I’m super ecstatic to be here today. I’m really excited about the conversation we have in front of us, and I can’t wait to kick it off.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, we’re excited to have you too and our typical next thing is to hear more about Rob Cummings (Guest) is the global employer brand specialist who wears many hats but no hats today. He collaborates with globally diverse teams to help reach business goals by attracting the best talent possible. Rob is also huge. I saw a hockey fanatic who enjoys College hockey more than the NHL. He was traveling and experiencing new foods and cultures and is an outdoor enthusiast who enjoys hiking, kayaking and more. Rob was also a CrossFit instructor for over five years and is healthy and very cool and can totally relate with loving the outdoors. And so tell us about what is your favorite place you’ve ever traveled to as someone who likes to travel

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, because my favorite country is by far Iceland. My wife and I have over the past four years been trying to hit every Scandinavian country and…

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Wow.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): just this past year. It kind of worked out really well where we were planning a trip to Denmark and then we actually got tickets to the Taylor Swift concert that was in Sweden. Which was just unbelievable that they all just kind of meshed up.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): But yeah, it’s so my first international trip was to Iceland and I joked to my wife all the time. I’m like, you ruined every other trip for me because Iceland is so incredible there’s so much beauty. There’s so much to do there.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Not that other countries don’t have those things. It’s like going to another world. So we love Iceland. It has a special place in both our hearts and we try to get there as often as we can.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): My parents have been there a couple times and obviously since they’ve been more than once it must be pretty amazing and I’ve seen their pictures. It does look like an incredible place. Did you go hike the volcano? It’s like a volcano there.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, there’s a couple we went to. It was an extinct volcano.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): So it’s basically just this enormous crater now. But it’s just endless walking up and…

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): you’re just at the Steep incline and you feel like you’re never going to get to the top. and when you finally do it’s breathtaking. It’s just this enormous.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): 

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): crater sort as far as you can see And then the landscape behind it. You’re so high up so you can see everything and it literally just takes your breath away. It’s such an incredible country in the terrain. It is so diverse from your lava fields to the incredible mountains that you have to Open Fields where you can see wild horses running or there’s tons of sheep farms. It’s just highly recommended.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So that’s amazing. So everyone who’s listening go click the affiliate link that gives us a commission to go travel to Iceland now until …

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yep.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): no, we don’t like that. That’s it right there. That’s the real deal, how awesome Iceland is, that’s pretty cool. Thanks for sharing that with us Rob.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Tell us a little bit more about the company that you’re working at.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, absolutely. So in kind of my own words, I would say it serves as your Tech friendly best friend for the cloud. We assist companies of all sizes in navigating the intricate world of cloud computing and sharing they fully utilize platforms like AWS and Google Cloud Microsoft Azure some other platforms. But our focus is not solely on just utilizing the cloud. It’s also doing so in a more intelligent manner. So we provide expert guidance, Innovative tools and assistance and optimize Cloud costs to ensure that you’re not simply pouring money into Tech but also investing in effective solutions for your business. So with email intelligent Tech unrivaled expertise?

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): we help cloud-driven companies see strengthened and scale the cloud to drive their business growth.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That is impressive and definitely sophisticated Tech that you guys have over there and a lot of problem solving. I remember when we were speaking previously about this episode and you talked about solving problems that companies have a difficult time solving in house because you specialize in that area, which is really super cool. Yeah. …

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): yeah, it’s an …

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): go ahead.

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, it’s incredible. Innovative challenging exciting space to be in where we’re at the Forefront of a lot of new technology coming out and like you said the companies partners that we work with they have some of the best cloud engineers in the world and when they can’t figure something out they turn to us, which is a great feeling. s bling. It’s why we do the work that we do. We love it so much.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): the best yeah it’s really cool to be a part of a company like that and…

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): you’re in the employer branding space. tell us what successful and employer branding looks like

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, it’s a great question. It’s hard to answer truthfully because success can look like a lot of different things depending on what your strategy or your goals really are. but for me there’s a couple of highlights that I would point out where you want clear and authentic messaging. Do you want a strong online presence? So looking at your career page the different job boards that you have on your social media. You want strong employee advocacy which are testimonials from current and previous employees. You want testimonials from customers definitely from candidates who go through your interview process and

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): something that we have been really proud of is our strong referral program. We love it when that’s what we call our employees doers. We love it when they bring friends that they’ve worked with previously or people they met on LinkedIn at other social events. Their top quality hires are really good. source to bring into our company and I also say, positive candidate Journey you definitely want Awards and recognition.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): a strong data driven approach. So you want to make sure you’re collecting feedback regularly and continuously trying to improve your processes or your strategy and execution.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I like that definitely feedback is something we believe at Mobrium it helps you see the strategy that is going to be most effective because in this case your employees are the ones who are living that experience and they can help you see the top cons to change and to know what to protect in that experience. So, you’re specializing in employer branding. A lot of companies don’t have a role carved out exclusively or specifically for that. Who’s involved in employer branding? I’m sure that you’re collaborating with other team members as well.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, it’s an age-old question that I’ve heard time and time again, even though this is a relatively new space. Where does employer branding set? Does it matter where they sit and who’s responsible for it? It’s for my own personal experience. I don’t really think it matters where this team or individual or group sits. What matters is that they have a direct line of communication with the marketing department, Communications internally externally and definitely within more specifically Talent acquisition so that this function can fully understand what the businesses needs are to ensure your brain consistency and we’re going to talk a lot about consistency throughout our conversation today. but I think

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Going back into your earlier episodes with Matt Palmer, one thing that really resonated with me was he said the brand is the brand? So what we don’t want to do is start. Creating messaging or assets visuals, whatever it is. You’re creating and have that messaging be so far off from what marketing is already doing that you feel like a completely different company. Consistency is key within this space for so many things especially in what’s presented to your external audiences?

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): I know from myself. I like to deviate just a little bit and have some fun with our copy, responding to posts on LinkedIn or creating some fun things from our content that we wouldn’t put on LinkedIn, but we would put on Instagram. For example, we have international dog day coming up and I want to see all the dog photos that I can and I know there’s a bunch of people on Instagram that want to see that as well but might not want to see it on LinkedIn. So it’s just kind of figuring out where you can be a little bit more playful and engaging. Additionally , you definitely want to be dialed in. I sit under Talent Acquisition and I feel like that’s a great place for me. We want to make sure that we’re having those conversations about hiring needs.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): What’s coming down the pipeline I have access to monthly quarterly data about inbound applications candidates surveys onboarding surveys, all that really good stuff that you want to understand what your candidates are experiencing and it just helps give you a more well-rounded picture of how to strategize and execute.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So you quoted Matt Palmer as your brand. tell us about its brand and how you’ve entered and what you’ve done to improve that and advertise it and get the right candidates.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah. It took us kind of a little while to figure out what the EVP really was. We want to always come across as that. We are strategic and can take data driven approaches.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): we want to be readily available to our customers to our partners. and we want to consistently show up for them and remote work has had a really big impact on our ability to do that. And because we can cover so much more territory being a globally diverse remote company. I think it’s strengthened a lot of our Partnerships and relationships with candidates with customers and so forth. So we’ve definitely seen a little bit of an evolution but we’ve been incredibly consistent and I’m really proud to say that we have great candidate reviews. You can see that on our glass door account. You can see our cast scores on our website. You can go to doit.com for that nice little plug there so we’re really proud with the direction that we’ve been going in and are really excited for the future.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I do have a side note question here. You mentioned that it is a 100% remote company. How do you Hire and bring someone on managing expectations around being remote and making sure you get someone who truly. I actually want and can thrive in that environment. I’m just a little curious about that.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, that’s a great question. So. we’ve set up it support teams. We have hiring managers throughout the globe who have had, the proper training on how to have effective one of ones how to onboard your do is doers effectively how to ask the right questions how to interview with reduction in bias and proper interviewing techniques. So we’ve put a lot of work into building out processes and operations to fully ensure that remote workers have everything what they need to onboard.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): at a speed that’s comfortable for them. And it’s given them. Autonomy trust and a lot of other things to get fully integrated into it. So

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): I lost my train of thought.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): No, that’s totally good. more than So it was about remote work and…

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, what was the question again?

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): just managing expectations to make sure you’re hiring the right people.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Okay remote work.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): What If you hired someone who thinks they want remote work and then they realize they hate it.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Got you.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): So remote work is always at the forefront of its philosophy. We were remote even before the pandemic started which I think is really cool. You’ve seen companies kind of flip-flop between being remote to going hybrid to hey everyone needs to get back in the office for five days a week,…

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): but being remote, we have put that in our messaging. All over our career site. We have an entire landing page dedicated to remote work. Why it’s so important to us is part of our recipe for success.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): And for candidates coming to our page. They can fully understand what it means to be remote and do it. And then they can hear from our doer testimonials on our website to see if that is something that they can fully integrate with. And if not, it’s just an opportunity for them to learn and to move on to the next thing. They’re not wasting their time by applying and maybe figuring it out and we’re making sure that we are being as transparent as possible. And that’s something that we try to do across career page job boards Etc.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Managing those expectations really ensures that you get the right candidates coming to your door from the get-go.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, it’s very impactful to have the level of transparency that we do? I mentioned glass doors. We have tons of reviews on there. We have FAQs on our career page. We have these cool little videos on our career site. We have Cloud Engineers. We have marketing. We have people from all over the globe talking about their experiences and I think that’s really

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Compelling to hear from a candidate’s perspective because they get to learn and understand what the different experiences are of these people. They get to see certain things. It could be, Matt did this video? It’s on the career site. I get to see a little bit of myself and be like, there’s a genuine connection there. We both like CrossFit or whatever. It might be that you can see yourself slowly kind of integrating into that company and being a value add. Whereas a lot of times you’re just kind of looking at this point blank landing page and you’re like, This kind of sounds cool, but I don’t really know enough. I need more. so we try to give that without spoon feeding all of the information so that they kind of have to dig deeper and…

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): right

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): go into the landing pages or click here to find a little bit more information. So we want people who are curious and want to do the research.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Not just supplying the secondly see a listing or something. They got to get in a little bit further and know if it’s the right fit for them. I love that.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I love that strategy and you mentioned Glassdoor and when we talked previously that you said that was one of the first things you did when you got into this role was to start training get reviews and how getting that feedback and starting to build up that external facing platform was really useful in I don’t know educating what you’re gonna do next.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, there were so many things I wanted to do when starting and in this role I do it. And Glassdoor was such a good opportunity to kind of jump start a lot of that to just get the wheels in motion. So I think when I came on board, we had maybe 50 or so reviews on there. There was some content with pictures and some stuff about our benefits

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): And it was kind of just enough for the time being but then coming in there. There’s a lot of opportunity to really build that out and deliver an experience. And I think that’s what we’ve been able to do. We have over 260 reviews right now and our interview reviews are almost at 100 which I’m super proud of so it’s really great and…

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, that’s amazing progress.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): To see some of the feedback that’s on there positive neutral negative we want all of it because we want this to just be like I said a fully transparent place where people can learn about us. So, yeah, it’s been really impactful internally and externally.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): My theme that was so useful for you where you came from, you’re a new employee so you don’t already know exactly the negative reviews they are good because it helps you identify what your brand is not. Here definitely.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point. I think that’s something that a lot of companies exact senior leadership kind of struggle with. They all have this. picture or idea of what their company culture is or what their philosophy our mission is about and then as you kind of see these reviews come in that mind shift might start to change a little bit and you start to question those things which is good because you don’t want to be falsely advertising what you’re about and I think that that just kind of helps build that EVP a little bit more.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I agree with that and I think your commitment to asking everyone for feedback that you want is positive. You want the neutral, you want the negative. It actually can help you get more authentic and real feedback too because kind of that inauthentic quest for a better rating and trying to cherry pick. Who’s happy? Let’s just go ask them because we just need a better number, it works to a certain level but then it actually starts working against you and other people here see that that’s kind of what’s happening and we’ve seen that that can solicit what we call Revenge review where someone’s writing that all caps one star in spite of your approach because It feels just like you’re trying to put up this facade. And so when you have that real commitment that you actually want to hear what everyone has to say oftentimes we see that it buys a little bit of added trust a little bit of benefit of the doubt when something’s not perfect, but

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): the employee sees the Company’s trying that there’s a genuine effort being made and that you are listening and you’re using that feedback. They see change happening and it creates this virtuous cycle of positive momentum. So you talked about not trying to get the execs involved and helping them have a change in mindset. What do you tell them exactly when they push back and they say we don’t need employer branding like people apply for jobs. We don’t need to do this.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, I kind of giggled a little bit and then just realized this whole journey, it’s more. Coming into it with the growth mindset, Evie is Today, it’s not a nice to have function, it’s still a pretty new role. We’re seeing more and more companies and organizations come out with these kinds of roles whether it be Department base or individuals like me.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): But in today’s incredibly competitive job market, it is definitely a must have so I say that because there are a couple areas that I’d like to attract top talent. I believe we mentioned this earlier where candidates are coming to your career page. And they see a JD and they apply. it’d be this sounds cool. I might want to do this. Those days are gone, forget about those. They candidates like we said they want to know about your company. They want to know about your values. They want to see a clear path for growth and opportunity and they want to know that you have a good culture. It’s incredibly important for high performing EV strategies to not just retain your top performers. So when our doers feel proud to work for our company.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): With a strong culture reputation, we recognize and reward our team and they’re more likely to stay. We talk about cost efficiency investing in these strategies can actually save your company money. Strong EVS have been shown to lower higher costs because it attracts more qualified top talent reducing your time to hire and using other resources such as agencies or contractors to go out and do that sourcing for just a couple more your company reputation. We know that employer brand directly influences. your overall company reputation If you think about literally purchasing anything. Where’s the first place you go? After you see the price you go to the reviews just like Amazon or…

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): anything else. So candidates. They do the same thing. They want to know what it’s like working there and having a strong EB.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): If it’s good it makes you more attractive to candidates and many customers want to know who they could be working with before signing that contract. I know we have a lot of that. We have great customer testimonials that we advertise on LinkedIn and our career site, so that’s a really important employee. Advocacy is huge. when employees become your best advocates. So many great things happen. There’s so much organic promotion. That is so powerful and it can help build your brand in ways that traditional marketing camp. And then the last point to wrap all this up is basically just future-proof the jog Market evolves at a rapid Pace. Now we’ve seen that post pandemic.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): more and more people are entering the workforce younger Generations that are a little bit more challenging to keep their eye attention or just keep their interest. So having a strong EB. It awaits us to keep adapting to newer work models that appeal to those future generations and just remain competitive within our spaces.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Now we’ve seen that in our research as well that and I feel like this word fits this perfectly but it insulates you when you have a strong employer brand it insulates you from anything that can happen in the future even layoffs. it can really help the repercussions that can happen from that, and it is a part of business that happens sometimes and so when you have a strong employer brand and you invest in that insulates

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, yeah, that’s a great point. I really like that word. I think I’m gonna steal that for my next piece of content

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): we’re still informing you all of your points were spot on and anybody that’s out there and whether you’re marketing manager, or maybe you are specifically in the employer branding space. This is going to be a great episode for you to watch and really get a feel of where to start, where to go next and what view you need to have as you’re diving into space definitely and as we’re kind of winding down closer to the anterior. We got two more questions we’ll squeeze in so let’s say you’re talking to an HR Manager who has very limited resources. They are aspiring to do employer branding but there hasn’t been a lot of that at their company. Where do they start? What do you tell that HR Manager?

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, for So. I guess the first thing that I would really say is don’t take on too much, it’s easy to get bogged Into everything that you can and want to do. But it’s really just kind of understanding where the more significant impacts can be made. you can go on LinkedIn and join there’s a bunch of different employer branding groups and recruitment marketing groups on their that you can join. and learn ask questions and there’s a whole host of free tools out there available. That you can use Canada. I love canvas. I use it every day. There’s also other tools for project management or for Content calendars things like that. So

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): I would say get involved in those groups and ask as many questions as you can listen to other podcasts that are out there. And just try to make your life easier by learning from other people’s mistakes so that you don’t make the same ones and keep hitting the same roadblocks over and over again.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Love it. Those are some really good tips. I especially do not take on too much and anyone improvement that you make in any one area, whether it’s enhancing the career page or how you lay out job postings or leaning in more to the glass door and managing your employer reputation more. All those pieces are going to create a lift. So let’s talk about the other side for our last question here. What would you say to the marketing manager who wants to be more included with employer branding efforts?

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, I mean. I would honestly just kind of say the same thing but with a couple more caveats to it. So being in marketing going back to the beginning of the episode, you want to make sure that you have a direct line of communication with your hrvp’s Etc. So that you understand what the business needs are, your background and your marketing mindset will be incredibly helpful to you because a lot of the tactics that we use in employer brand or the exact same and marketing. It’s just putting out content for a different audience. So you want to try to understand? Who your target audience is and then deliver content that they want to see and make sure that it’s consistent with your brand. and with whatever you want to put out there, so it’s

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): There’s so much collaboration and communication that goes into it. So just make sure that you set up those relationships and you develop trust so that there’s no speed bumps in the future.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I love what our episodes end with the Symmetry where we have a concept at the beginning and then at the end we touch on it again collaborating. It doesn’t have to just be owned by one Department. every piece can help strengthen that the marketing and having an actual person for employer branding and I just thank you so much for all of your comments and insights Rob. It’s been so great having around on our episode today and we will include resources even just a link to canva and the other resources that you mentioned as well as do it and your LinkedIn profile at the bottom of our pilot highlight article and thank you so much for being on our podcast today. Thanks to our listeners and hope you can subscribe and see our future episodes. Yeah. Thank you, Rob.

 

Rob Cummings (Guest): Yeah, thank you so much. It was a genuine pleasure to be here today. Anyone wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, please. Feel free to do so, always happy to have a chat. And yeah, thank you so much. This was a great experience.

 

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Thank Appreciate it. Thanks guys.