Are you protecting your employee brand?

With the recent collapse of Blue Chip investments in New Zealand, the obvious biggest loser has been the investors.  However, there is often a forgotten party within that mix that get adversely affected when organisations fall over and that is the employees.

Working for an organisation that does not succeed can affect your ‘employee brand’ no matter what position you hold within that company.

The recruitment process from an employer point of view and the methodology behind finding candidates with good clean backgrounds is becoming tighter and tighter.  Good employers will reference check, credit check, run a criminal history and even use online searches to ensure that they are mitigating as much of the risk as possible when coming on board.

From an employee perspective I often come across situations where a prospective employee is more concerned in their basic needs in a role (i.e salary, location and job title) rather than finding out anything beyond that.

We spend more of our ‘waking week’ at work, however, when it comes to choosing a new workplace often not much is done to find out about the organisation that you are looking to work for.

However, when we buy a car or a house, often we will get a number of reports and summaries on the suitability of that purchase.  We will compare options, prices, performance, location, etc…

In the case of Blue Chip and the related organisations I am not sure whether there would have been alarm bells for potential employees when joining these organisations.

However, in terms of doing your due diligence there are a number of ways to research both the financial position, culture and management style of an organisation such as:

-    ask the prospective manager if you can reference check them
-    call people within the industry
-    seek out people that use their product or service and find out about that experience
-    discuss with your recruiter their experience with the organisation
-    ask for their financial statements
-    conduct an online search to see what blogs or other information exists about the organisation
-    if they are listed look at their recent share history
-    speak to current employees and find out their experience
-    use the final interview to interview them – what is their vision, values and goals?

No matter what your role within an organisation, if that company is involved in any dodgy activity and this is made public then this could affect your ability in gaining your next role.

It is important to know the good, the bad and the ugly when going into the organisation.  Often when applying for positions you hear the good, it is up to you to find out about the not so good and ensure that your expectations about that company are set from day one.  This way there will be as little surprises as possible and you will keep your career on track.

Green, green grass of home

When Kiwi’s abroad or those that have travel to here think of New Zealand they will invariably think of the ‘greenness’ of the country. We like to think of New Zealand as being an unspoilt landscape, beautiful beaches, glistening rivers, deep native bush, mountains and an ever changing environment from sea to snow.

This love of the environment is beginning to influence returning job seekers when they seek out prospective organisations. Having been overseas and witnessed the impact that large corporates can have on the environment, New Zealanders are becoming more concerned about an organisation and its corporate social responsibility policy.

In the current market conditions candidates have the ability to be choosy about their employer of choice.

We all know that having a strong employee value proposition is important, however, it is no longer enough to provide a good salary, nice work environment and a bowl of fruit a week. Having a commitment to the community you operate in is becoming a necessity for organisations to differentiate themselves from their competitors and attract the best talent.

There are a number of New Zealand organisations that are doing really well in this area, organisations that encourage the use of environmentally friendly bags, provide volunteering days for their staff and sponsor various charities.

More and more organisations are also asking to get the ‘buy-in’ of staff when choosing how give back to the community. Recently LINK Recruitment, surveyed their entire staff to see how they wanted LINK to support the community.

From a hiring manager point of view, this commitment to corporate social responsibility will also help you attract and retain Generation Y. Studies have shown that corporate social responsibility is high on Gen Y’s list when choosing prospective employers

To close, if you are a business leader in New Zealand, what are you doing to be socially responsible? Looking at your CSR strategy will not only lift your profile as an organisation but may be the difference between securing someone over another organisation.

If you are seeking a role and looking to align yourself to a culture similar to your own ideals, then are you asking the recruiter or the hiring manager what they are doing to give back to the community?

‘Take hold of the strands the link you to New Zealand’

Have you ever ‘googled’ yourself?  It can be a surprise just how much information there is about you on the Internet and it is not always information that you would like your current or prospective employer from seeing!

From paying for a car park via a mobile to becoming almost a cashless society, New Zealanders are famous for being early adopters of all sorts of technologies and using technology to their advantage.

Being a nation of travelers New Zealanders have  embraced social networking to keep in touch with friends, colleagues, past contacts and now increasingly to open up job opportunities.

Whilst online networking is useful for keeping in contact with friends, it can be a very successful means of assisting you in finding a new position.

Around 80% of roles are never advertised and key to tapping into this ‘hidden job market’ is to position yourself appropriately online and utilise professional networking websites in actively finding a new position.

As of January 2008 there were over 300,000 users of Facebook in New Zealand. Professional networking sites are also on the rise, with sites such as LINKEDin hosting over 8,500 New Zealanders, and growing.

New Zealand job hunters now need to ensure that their online presence will help boost not hinder their career.

Here are some ideas to get you started:
•    Google yourself and review what comes up from the eyes of a prospective employer.
•    Start a LINKed in profile, or update it to keep it current.
•    Do a search on your industry and find any relevant local blogs or social sites – participate by replying to posts or submitting your own comment.
•    Sign up to Kea – ‘New Zealand’s Global Talent Community’ – they connect with over 23,000 Kiwis in over 174 countries around the globe.

Whether you are thinking of returning to New Zealand in the short term or the long term when it comes to online networking the Kea website sums it up well:

“Kapohia nga Taura here ki Aotearoa – take hold of the strands that link you to New Zealand”.