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UPS, recent winner of the 2013 Workforce Optimas Gold Award for Recruiting, communicates with qualified candidates where the candidates are most comfortable—in mobile and social media. UPS was an early adopter, says Caldwell.
Caldwell, joined by Mike Vangel, VP digital talent acquisition architect of TMP Worldwide, offered her tips at the HR Technology Conference and Exhibition, held recently in Las Vegas.
Note: TMP Worldwide is a strategic partner to UPS providing software, advertising, and creativity to develop and deploy the UPS employer brand.
UPS provides candidates with an easy-to-use, integrated, and mobile-friendly platform to:
- Streamline gathering information about the UPS employment experience;
- Intuitively search for relevant jobs;
- Easily apply; and
- Quickly complete the application process.
Need help building a pool of candidates? Start on Thursday, December 17, 2015, with a new interactive webinar—Proactive Recruiting: How to Build and Grow Your Private Pool of Exceptional Candidates. Learn More
Recruiting in 28 Languages
UPS recruits in 78 countries and operates in 28 different languages, Caldwell notes. To deal with the complexities that entails:
- Visitors come to global portal of UPSjobs.com, and their country is automatically identified by their IP address.
- Based on visitor’s country of origin, the site defaults to the native language of his or her country and chooses that country for data entry.
- Visitor has the choice to select a different country or to view the country site in a different language.
- Each country has localized content and images.
How Candidates Come to Us
Here’s what we are seeing today as to how visitors come to our site, Caldwell says:
Improving Economy = Recruiting Challenge
It’s harder to recruit in an improving economy, Caldwell says. Questions to ask include:
- How do you develop/maintain a competitive advantage to hire the people needed?
- What new technologies would you leverage to help achieve your business goals?
- What strategies would you deploy?
- How would you measure success?
UPS needed to support its own plans for growth, while at the same time it needed to compete against other small-, medium-, and large-sized companies that were growing their organizations, too. (“You are our competitors,” she quipped.)
UPS turned to mobile and social media to drive the extra hires they needed.
The company’s recruiting strategy successfully met its “Just-in-Time” hiring needs for high-volume and hard-to-fill positions.
In 2013 and 2014, UPS drove more tracked hires from its mobile and social channels than any other recruiting source.
Here’s what UPS did to recruit effectively in a “perfect storm,” Caldwell says. It was able to:
- Leverage social and mobile recruiting strategies to offer a superior candidate experience.
- Integrate social media, mobile-friendly career websites, and applicant tracking systems—from initial attraction through to hire—to optimize the candidate experience.
- Provide candidates with an easy-to-use, integrated, and mobile-friendly platform to streamline gathering information about the organization’s employment experience, intuitively search for relevant jobs, easily apply, and quickly complete the application process.
- Track to the candidate’s greatest ability to determine what works, and what does not.
You Need to Put the Components Together
First, be sure to align your recruitment marketing strategy with your hiring needs, Caldwell says.
Create Greater Awareness
Next, develop greater awareness. For example, UPS is a strong, “promote from within” organization that encourages cross-functional rotations. An astounding 73% of people currently in management at UPS started off as a driver or part-time package handler. And, 8 of the top 11 officers started out there.
Also, UPS invested over $565 million in training for its employees last year. The UPS “Earn & Learn” Program provides $25,000 in education assistance for part-time package handlers.
Since the education assistance program began in 1999, we have invested over $200 million in tuition assistance for approximately 120,000 college students, Caldwell says.
Know you need to build a talent pool, but don’t know where to start? Join us Thursday, December 17, 2015, for a new interactive webinar, Proactive Recruiting: How to Build and Grow Your Private Pool of Exceptional Candidates. Earn 1 hour in HRCI Recertification Credit and 1 hour in SHRM Professional Development Credit. Register Now
Overcome Misperceptions
There are also misperceptions to overcome, Caldwell says. In UPS’s case, for example:
- UPS only hires package drivers. Not true, says Caldwell. UPS has, for example, 4,000 IT positions.
- UPS is not global. Not true, Caldwell says. UPS serves 220 countries and territories.
- You need a commercial driver’s license to drive the brown UPS van. Not true, says Caldwell. The UPS Business Development team is actively hiring entry and experienced sales professionals.
- UPS just delivers packages. Not true, Caldwell says, UPS provides businesses with a wide range of client solutions to be more productive and grow globally.
Make the whole process fun, engaging, and memorable and, finally, track, analyze, and continually optimize your program.
And remember, Caldwell says, constant innovation is the key to recruiting success in a competitive market.
In tomorrow’s Advisor, more on UPS’s massive recruiting strategy, plus an introduction to an interactive webinar, Proactive Recruiting: How to Build and Grow Your Private Pool of Exceptional Candidates.