Tuesday June 15th, 2010
Just how bad is your recruitment brand? Ask IT contractors.

Contract IT professionals are mobile, connected, and cynical - and they don't mince words.  Asking them about how your recruitment brand is perceived could be the first step towards attracting better candidates across the organization.

(I don't think I get this, either.  But I'm pretty sure there's an A-list programmer out there who thinks this is hilarious.)

Today I was talking to a senior Java/PHP developer who's in town for the weekend but who lives and works in St Louis, Missouri. 

'Missouri' isn't the first place that comes to mind when I think of 'great career opportunities', so we got to talking about the major employers in the area, career paths, etc.

Turns out that St Louis has more businesses than you might think, and is home to some great brand names, including Anheuser-Busch (now owned by InBev, the same group that owns Labatt).  Quite a few companies - like Wells Fargo, AT&T, DaimlerChrysler, Monsanto - have midwestern or divisional headquarters in the area, and it's the world headquarters of the Energizer battery brand.

"Wow," I said to the IT contractor.  "So you have lots of options if you want a new job, then."

"Well....," he responded,  "I don't think I'd work for [insert name of one of the companies above] or [ditto], and apparently [ditto] is a terrible place to work, especially for IT."

"Oh, I didn't know you'd worked at all those places," I said.

"I haven't.  Actually, I haven't even interviewed at any of them.  I've just heard they're terrible."

"In what ways?"

[ruefully]  "You know, now that you ask me, I don't really know.  I've heard that a couple of them pay pretty badly, but the truth is that I've never really investigated it.  It's just sort of the word on the street."

How many passive candidates are you losing - 
without even knowing it? 

Now, my IT contractor friend isn't actively looking for a new job.  But contractors - especially IT contractors, who often work on projects which have a specific beginning and end - in general tend to be more or less permanently in the job market. 

In other words, they're the 'passive candidates' that recruiters like best:  The ones who are hard-working, always employed, and willing to consider a new opportunity if the right one comes along.

However, like most A-list IT contractors, my friend gets called by recruiters all the time - scarcely a week goes by in which he doesn't get a voicemail or email from a recruiter, telling him about 'a fabulous opportunity at [some place or other]'.

The problem?  As soon as he hears (or even just assumes, given the 'teaser info' in the recruiter's message) that the opportunity is in one of the organizations about which he's heard negative things, he doesn't even bother responding to the message, let alone get to the interview stage.

IT contractors talk to other IT contractors - a LOT

In many organizations, the computer geniuses - the guys actually building the back-end technologies that let the rest of us get on with our jobs - tend to be departments of one or two, or sort of separate from the rest of the organization.  

Like scientists, they tend to share information with other people doing similar work in other organizations, because their loyalty is often to the work itself (i.e. solving a difficult problem) rather than to the organization they're doing it for.  

So IT contractors - especially the good ones - tend to be involved in online communities and forums where they can interact with other people who actually know the difference between ASP and PHP.

It's in the process of these interactions that they end up sharing a lot of info - sometimes unwittingly - about the organizations they're working for.  

All it takes is one guy in one forum ranting for one month about how he's going insane because the project manager at his company doesn't know the difference between a socket and a plug-in, or about the jerky recruiter who lied about the pay rate - and suddenly the 'word on the street' is that Acme Inc. is a terrible place to work.  

These contractors have more power than you think

You may be tempted to think that it doesn't really matter what IT contractors think about your recruiting brand - heck, those guys only hang out with each other anyway, right?

But...these guys are also all over the internet and social media - it's what they do for a living.  So it's entirely possible that candidates for other roles who are Googling your company prior to applying or accepting an interview, will come across these forum posts (and blogs, and statuses, and websites).

Conversely, IT guys who like where they work and are passionate about it are more likely to talk about that online, too.

A better recruiting brand may start with a conversation with your IT contractors

If your organization has a well-known, relatively strong consumer brand, but you're having trouble attracting great people, it's probably time to talk to the IT department, particularly your IT contractors.  They may just have a better, objective grasp on how you're perceived in the marketplace than you think - and they probably won't mince words when they tell you about it.

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About the Authors

Paul Dodd
Co-founder and President
Head2Head Canada

Paul has one simple goal: To help companies hire great people - and get the most out of every recruiting dollar they spend. That's why he's recognized as one of the best recruitment-industry thinkers in Canada.

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