Full Transcript:

Jonathan Duarte:  Hey everyone.

Welcome. We’ve got a special guest today, Kerry Corcoran, and Kerry is a leader in HR tech and Candidate Employer Branding. I want to introduce you to Kerry. And, Kerry, why don’t you give us a quick bio about yourself? 

Carrie Corcoran: Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate you having me on your podcast this morning.

Carrie Corcoran: It’s I know it’s early there in California and not so much here in Tulsa. So appreciate you getting up early. Yes, I am a senior employer brand leader. I have over 10 years of experience doing employer brand recruitment marketing. Talent attraction for companies of all sizes, anything from a small startup to an enterprise-level size company.

Carrie Corocran: I love providing value and helping companies tap into their employees and to showcase their stories and talk about what it’s like for some for candidates to potentially work there and why they should join them super passionate about the candidate experience and treating everybody with respect in that process and providing value and the value that employer brand and recruitment marketing can bring to a company.

Carrie Corocran: So that’s what I specialize in and that’s what I’m super passionate about. 

Jonathan Duarte: Okay, so when we were in the little green room, you told me about how one of your job before employee experience, tell me about your history. How’d you get into what you’re doing now? 

Carrie Corocran: Yeah. That’s a great question.

Carrie Corocran: What a lot of people don’t know about me because it’s not showcased on my LinkedIn anymore is that I have over 20 years of trade show and event management experience behind me. And I’ve always been a marketer at heart. I enjoy putting pieces together and connecting dots. And so much of events is putting those different pieces together and connecting the dots and then bringing those experiences or those stories for the event to life.

Carrie Corocran: And So that transitioned very well over into employer brand, recruitment, marketing, and talent attraction. And the way that I made that transition was back in 2013, I worked for a company called Working Solutions. They’re a contact center solutions company. I was hired for a dual role there where my focus was on business-to-business marketing.

Carrie Corocran: So the traditional business marketing. their services and also the other half of my job was recruitment marketing I had to figure out creative ways to attract independent contact center agents to work for their clients and their customers in a virtual environment. So I found that I loved the HR side of it more, and I was more drawn to the people side of it versus the business side of it.

Jonathan Duarte: And we talked about this too, that what I love about event planning people is Events have a start and an end and they don’t change. We, I go to HR Tech all the time, just ’cause you didn’t get something done doesn’t mean they’re moving the date. It, you have to be someone who gets some stuff done and you have to thrive.

Jonathan Duarte: If you’ve been doing it for 20 years you have to thrive in that type of environment. So I think that’s critical. It’s certainly for me as a founder and a visionary to be around people like yourself who have that skill that, just tell me what we need to do and I’ll get it, I’ll get it done.

Jonathan Duarte: And on time, on budget, like that’s such a critical skill. And you’re right, like you don’t see that on people’s LinkedIn profile and you don’t see most people don’t interview for that. They may ask questions. So I think it’s really good to know. So in that transition with the contact center folks, how did you, after the, after that project, how’d you keep going into employer branding?

Jonathan Duarte: What happened 

Carrie Corocran: next? Yeah, that’s a great question. After working on solutions, I discovered a role at Hilton and it was for, oh my gosh, it was the strangest title and I’m not, probably not even going to remember it. It was something like Social Strategy and Implementation for Digital HR. And I was like, okay, what’s that?

Carrie Corocran: The thing with employer brand roles or even recruitment marketing, there are 50 titles out there and you never know what’s what and so it was up to investigate that And essentially it was showcasing the digital, it was digital storytelling on the employee side.

Carrie Corocran: And I owned the Global Glassdoor program. And while I was there, I was able to Get Hilton on the best places to work list, which was a first for them and also their highest-rated CEO. And so it was through a very concentrated effort and strategy built for Glassdoor for increasing reviews and ratings, to get them to come out on top that way.

Carrie Corocran: And, 

Jonathan Duarte: That, and that, I gotta say. Sorry for jumping in. That’s something most people don’t know about you. I’m pretty darn sure. And do you again, it’s probably a while ago, but this is the kind of stuff that I’m glad we’re talking about because you don’t see this stuff on people’s resumes.

Jonathan Duarte: Oh, 

Carrie Corocran: it’s on my resume. It’s also on LinkedIn. 

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. Good good. Yeah, because that’s like a critical thing. If someone’s trying to hire someone for employer branding, it’s based on two things. One, they either got a problem that they know they have a problem and they need someone to solve it.

Jonathan Duarte: And someone who’s already gotten a major, Fortune 1000 brand, their CEO ranked, and the best place to work. That’s pretty critical. component, I would gather, of employer branding. 

Carrie Corocran: It is, and there’s a strategy behind it, and anybody who says that you can do it without a strategy is fooling themselves.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. Awesome. Alright, what turns you on about employer branding and like the videos? Because I think the video, we talked again a little bit in the green room about this, but in videos, what I’ve seen before is we, and it entirely depends, but it’s the adoption in the company.

Jonathan Duarte: about the videos and the culture of using it. So speak to me, tell us a little bit more about that, what’s worked for you in the past and maybe even a couple wins in that process. 

Carrie Corocran: Yeah, that’s a great question. I’m super passionate about using video for employer branding and recruitment marketing, and not only for that but for retention too.

Carrie Corocran: And that’s what companies are so focused on right now. And to be able to showcase their employees and give them a voice and let them be authentic resonates so highly with me because I’ve worked for companies before where that part of me was tamped down. And if you are that type of person, like that will always come out, and then there’s going to be friction with the people you’re working for, because they’re either intimidated by it, scared by it or oh my gosh.

Carrie Corocran: Why is this person saying the things that they’re saying, if it doesn’t exactly align with what we’re saying we’re all about And so be, to be able to have the transparency and authenticity come through videos, that’s very important to me as a candidate. If I’m looking for a role, I wanna see the truth behind it, and I wanna know the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Carrie Corocran: And it’s a great way to showcase that. And I think a lot of companies are. Afraid to embrace the bad and the ugly. Yep. 

Jonathan Duarte: Yep. Yeah. Let me ask you about that too, because that’s a, that’s an interesting perspective because we hear all the time and we all know, of course, we are in a video marketing world now.

Jonathan Duarte: You just can’t deny that with TikTok everything else that’s going on. We’re not in a text. phase of read my pamphlet about my company and even your employer, I would challenge any recruitment advertising company about how great their website career site is that they’re building because nobody goes to it.

Jonathan Duarte: They’re on Instagram, they’re on TikTok. So what’s the mindset of the leadership that has to What does it have to look like, or the push and pull to get them to be open to this, the idea? Cause I think that’s the thing that’s stopping most of it. 

Carrie Corocran: I would agree. When I was with, so it was a really interesting experience when I was with BOK Financial, a regional bank here in, Tulsa, and I was introducing a video for recruitment marketing surprisingly, it was embraced.

Carrie Corocran: And it took a lot less time for it to be approved. At that time, it was three weeks. And then it was like, okay, you’ve got your approval now go. And the lesson that I learned there was to build the strategy along with when you’re asking for it to be approved if you truly think it’s going to be approved because then you have to execute right away.

Carrie Corocran: So that was a good lesson there. But it’s. Leadership has to embrace storytelling, number one. They have to not be afraid of putting their employees out there and having them talk about what’s good, and what’s bad. And That, I think, is very hard for leadership to embrace because they’re afraid of, oh my gosh, what if people see this about us and they’re not going to want to join us, and that’s not the case.

Carrie Corocran: That someone may be attracted to that where someone else might not, and so it goes back to attracting the right people and repelling the wrong ones. And video is a great way to do that. But leadership has to have that open mindset to do it. And it’s all about education. That’s what I’ve found with the companies that I’ve worked for.

Carrie Corocran: It’s educating everybody up, down, sideways, across. about the true value of using video for recruitment marketing and even for retention and getting them to buy into it. And so it’s, look for a pilot. How can you prove this concept and get some quick wins in? Showcase a pilot and then showcase the results from that pilot.

Carrie Corocran: And then that’s one way to open their eyes up to say, Oh, okay, maybe there is something. , and we need to take a deeper look into this and not be so afraid to embrace it. That’s one way that I would say, always back it up with the data and showcase what that story is and then present that to leadership and say, we need to do more of this.

Jonathan Duarte: All right. So that’s great. Could I have two follow-up questions first, I think you mentioned this, but I think that’s a critical point. The company already has to, or leadership already has to be open to storytelling, number one. I guess that’s not a question. Then, the second part is the question.

Jonathan Duarte: You mentioned retention, video retention. I’ve never heard that even talked about. But we know today in 2023 and 2024, it’s now going to be, we’ve had DE& I, unfortunately, it’s coming, it’s the wave is coming gone and unfortunately, but retention is never going away. It’s always been a problem.

Jonathan Duarte: But so how can companies use. Video for retention? 

Carrie Corocran: Yeah, that’s a great question. So using video for retention. So I would do this a couple of different ways. Use it for internal communications and showcasing your employees and their stories internally. Give them a voice to share their stories with other people across the company.

Carrie Corocran: And that creates more of a community environment. And encourage that across the entire organization. That builds more connections with more, more emotional connections with people across the company as well. So that’s one way that companies could embrace it. Thought of a great idea here off the top of my head with this question.

Carrie Corocran: When I think of employer brand, what that encompasses, it’s everything from attraction to exit in a company. So how great would it be? Unfortunately, layoffs happen. Sometimes people leave voluntarily. And companies hold that against them. They shouldn’t. They should be thrilled for them and they should cheer them on to say, Hey, great.

Carrie Corocran: Good luck with your next venture. And then sometimes people get fired and, those are sticky situations. But what about using video on the exit and showcasing, we appreciate the work you did here and, sending them off. I think this could work very well with a good taste in their mouth about the company and about leadership and, even, for someone who voluntarily separates or even a layoff, I think this could work well where you have either the CEO or maybe it’s, other senior leaders across the company talking about, we appreciate what you did while you were here, we wish you well in your career, here are some ways that you can continue to stay in touch with us and, you Hey if you enjoyed your experience here, feel free to refer other people.

Carrie Corocran: Just because your time here has ended doesn’t mean that our relationship has ended. 

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah, I think that’s critical. I think one, and where my mind went to is the current employees. Do you, have you seen companies do this where they’re Like, I don’t even know the technical process, but, if you’re on teams and things like that, too, and as I’ve worked with bigger companies, when I’ve consulted as well, we’re on teams, but do they have portals where, or Maybe, we would do like event, like a day, which would be like webinars or something like that.

Jonathan Duarte: Oh, we’re going to do like training or we’re going to do even like goal planning and stuff like that. But a lot of that stuff’s like training stuff, right? It’s not like exciting and fun. So have you seen companies this is just interesting to me, but I think it’d probably be to the audience too, is have companies created like little portals where.

Jonathan Duarte: People can just see or maybe it’s in Slack where they’re people just put a video about hey We’re doing this project and here’s what’s cool. And hey, I’m doing X Y Z. So how do they get those? Those videos or someone sitting behind a camera like this and say Hey, everyone, we’re going to do this cool thing at the office and share it.

Jonathan Duarte: I know some people have internal marketing teams or, part of that and they send an email to everyone or maybe on Slack or something, but do they retain that info? in those videos somewhere? So instead of it being a one-time shot, there’s almost like your Google photos for your family photos or something like that, that people can just see and educate and they get to see what other employees 

Carrie Corocran: are doing?

Carrie Corocran: Yeah, and that really ties into employee advocacy where I see it, and to do it well, if you’re a larger company, you have to have a platform, but I would even say that maybe like a mid-sized enterprise company or small enterprise company could do this very well with having a video platform and a community built around that, and there are several TA tech vendors that, that specialize in doing exactly that and those are challenging too.

Carrie Corocran: It’s challenging to get that buy-in from and likely that would be more from an internal comms or marketing perspective. It’s hard to get that buy-in to say, why should we care if our employees can talk to one another, showcase what they’re working on their wins, their failures, and how we can all learn and grow together?

Carrie Corocran: Yeah. Have I seen any companies do it well successfully? Not With any of them that I’ve worked for, but I do believe that it exists 

Jonathan Duarte: and it can be done. I think that’d be cool because when I was working at Kaiser Permanente, consulting with them, in, health care a lot of people were like, oh my gosh health care.

Jonathan Duarte: But Kaiser is such a great team. The people that work there are fantastic and we would use teams and we weren’t doing these kinds of video things like that, but I just think when someone’s coming into a company, if it’s, even if it’s a small, a 10 person company, even if you have them in a Slack channel, someone saying, Hey, this is what we do at marketing this is my role.

Jonathan Duarte: This is what I’m doing. So if you need this kind of stuff, let me know. Or I just think, wow, that what a great way to do it. Because as a business owner myself, I need to get everyone up to speed on stuff. And one way to do that is video. I Can keep typing and retyping and stuff like that, but it’s way faster for me to just ad-lib it and say, Hey, I’m going on video.

Jonathan Duarte: I’m just going to cut this video. And this is what we’re up to. And, I think that might be an interesting future we see because retention is so tough. But it all comes down to people want to be heard. They also want to have mentors. They want to be able to learn new things and If we can give them the tools, they already know how to use a camera.

Jonathan Duarte: Why is it, why do we make it so tough? Just give them a way to click share and upload that to some place into Slack or something for the team. 

Carrie Corocran: And providing the guidelines or the guardrails for them on what’s appropriate, what’s not appropriate. Shouldn’t have to train people on that, but unfortunately.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah if somebody, like if somebody is actually. One of the greatest startups I worked with, was a company called Inflection, and the team I worked on was GoHire, which is a small business background screening company. We just had phenomenal people. And so there would be people who would just, experiment with using different tools, and they would almost take on like the ownership role of that.

Jonathan Duarte: To see if the platform was working, and if something wasn’t working or somebody was using it a little bit off remember how Everyone used to cc everyone, like when you first learned how to use email so you just have to get those guidelines, but I’m a curious person, so I like to see people trying to figure things out if you’ve got 500 people in a logistics facility, They’re going to use their cell phone, they’re, they’re not sitting behind a computer, but if there was a way for them to say, Hey, or management does a little, video about, Hey, this is what’s going to happen in Q4 or Q1, here’s some stuff.

Jonathan Duarte: And maybe it’s the CEO, maybe it’s the marketing team, maybe it’s other individuals, but. They’re not, terrible videos. They’re about, this is what we’re up to. This is the kind of fun stuff, not just about the business goals. Cause if there’s no personal relationship to people on the team. That’s why people are leaving for 25 cents or a dollar more an hour, 

Carrie Corocran: right?

Carrie Corocran: Yeah, exactly. One of the one of the ways to Leverage video would be to have a specific line of business pilot it Give them the tools and the training and then let them run with it. Yep, and that has worked very well I have seen that work very well. We did a pilot when I was With the regional bank, I mentioned, and we did that pilot specifically for the PMO group.

Carrie Corocran: They had new leadership and they wanted to showcase leadership and their viewpoints and how it was different from the previous leadership and also showcase their employees within that line of business and everything that they cared about, whether it was, an intern or a contractor who went to a permanent role and joined the team, or people who’ve been there for 5 or 10 years, or someone who just joined 90 days ago, like giving everybody that opportunity.

Carrie Corocran: Did a pilot there with that group and it was overwhelmingly successful and did a survey with candidates afterwards to talk about, did you see any videos as you went through your candidate experience? And some of them did, some of them didn’t, and the consensus, though, was that they wanted more, not less.

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. Yep. Yep. And I also, just, I think one thing that’s important, too, for any, HR leader, recruiting team leader. Looking to use video. And you said this, but I don’t think enough people get it. So I want to repeat what you said and maybe have you talk a little bit more about this, but video can be used for two things.

Jonathan Duarte: I think everything about recruitment marketing is used for two reasons, but everyone focuses on one and that’s the attraction. The other part is the repelling of candidates that you don’t want. And I almost think that’s almost more important. Because anyone can attract. I’m not going to say they can do it well, but a good video will also get you the right people and also let people know that your company culture is not for them if they’re not that type of person.

Carrie Corocran: Oh, exactly. And I’ve seen that work well, too. If you work for a company where it’s very fast-paced, you have to figure it out on your own. There aren’t set standards, policies, or procedures in place, and you talk about that in the video, saying exactly, this is what you’re going to experience when you get there.

Carrie Corocran: If that is not How you work and how you function well, then that’s not a place for you to join. And you can immediately take yourself out of consideration for that reason. But if you thrive in a fast-paced and you want to see me, I want to be part of building the foundation. I want to be part of, coming up with innovative processes and procedures.

Carrie Corocran: Then that is a company that, that someone would be attracted to with those features. It’s critical and it goes to that transparency, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Yeah, 

Jonathan Duarte: I think that’s interesting too, because, being from Silicon Valley and being a startup founder three, three times over, like I’m all about breaking glass, like constantly.

Jonathan Duarte: And, but I need people around me who want to pave concrete. So I can say, Hey, things are going to move fast, but I need the, need the team to be a bunch of pavers, like people who are going to have the block and tackling. So there’s still, but there’s still, you’re going to be paving in a moving environment.

Carrie Corocran: So flying, what is, what’s the saying, building a plane while flying it? Yeah, 

Jonathan Duarte: what Reid Hoffman said when he was building LinkedIn Two great quotes I always like from Reid. One was you’ve got to be able to jump off a cliff and build the plane before you crash. And then, so maybe a variation of, a, another quote from somebody else.

Jonathan Duarte: There’s another one I love from Reid, which I also think is important in employer branding to some extent too is that when you’re building an MVP, I, this is just leadership principle. Which is when you’re building a minimal viable product, if you aren’t embarrassed that you’re charging somebody for it, you built too much.

Jonathan Duarte: And what that means is, people from a business side, they try to build everything at once and solve every need, but you need to solve one need and solve that one and then keep adding to 

Carrie Corocran: it. And intentional and focused. 

Jonathan Duarte: Yeah. Yeah, those are my little things. Before we wrap it up, too, what are some other things that you think people should know about you that are not on your LinkedIn profile or experiences you want to jump into and problems you love to solve?

Carrie Corocran: That’s a great question. So problems I love to solve. One of the things that when I was with BECU I was a contractor there for four short months and loved that team. Hi, BECU, if you’re listening, the talent engagement team and TA team is that their director of TA came in and really.

Carrie Corocran: transformed the way that TA was looked at because they had been looked at more of a butts-in-seat type of situation prior and now they’re looked at as a strategic partner. And so one of the things that I enjoyed there was the recruitment strategy consultation meetings, which some people may call intake.

Carrie Corocran: Sessions or intake meetings with hiring managers. And it was bringing all three parties to the table to meet with that hiring manager in that one session to strategize on what’s going to work best for attracting them. the person that they want to hire. So it was bringing sourcing in, it was bringing the recruiter who was working the role in, and it was also including recruitment marketing.

Carrie Corocran: And so to be able to have those three pieces tied together to say, we’re here to serve you, and you get one team with us, and this is how we’re going to be successful together. I enjoyed that piece of it being in on those strategic conversations and learning about, how did the hiring manager, and why did they join?

Carrie Corocran: Why did they stay? What are they looking for in this next hire? And what do the growth opportunities look like? And, everybody approaches it a little bit differently. differently with the mindset that they come into it. For my mindset, I’m always looking at what is the story that I can tell behind this how can we use those different stories, and how can recruiting and sourcing use those stories to attract the right talent and repel the wrong talent.

Carrie Corocran: And so I’m passionate about creating that cohesion and strategy together versus working in silos. 

Jonathan Duarte: And let me ask you about that. And so in that, I’m going to repeat them just so I get them again. So you have your recruitment marketing team, you’ve got the recruiter, and you’ve got the sourcer.

Jonathan Duarte: Those three people are going to meet with the hiring manager. And cause they’re all coming from different like you’re listening for the story. Like. How am I going to pitch this? What are they looking for? The sourcer is looking for the technical skills or the keywords or, then, the story.

Jonathan Duarte: And then the recruiter is looking for, okay, what’s their persona that’s going to fit what the hiring manager needs. So that’s critical because even if you’re a one-stop shop full lifecycle recruiter, you have to think about it from those three angles anyways. 

Carrie Corocran: And a lot of Recruiters don’t come at recruiting with a marketing mindset.

Jonathan Duarte: Very cool. All right. So I know we’ve gone a little bit longer. I figured we would, but this has been so awesome. And I learned a whole bunch. I hope everyone else learns a whole bunch too. Thank you so much, Carrie. How can people watching this Reach out to you. 

Carrie Corocran: Yeah. Connect with me on LinkedIn. 

Carrie Corocran: I’m always open to meeting and learning and growing my expertise from other connections out there. We all have much to give and much to share, and it’s a community. I enjoy building my community. So LinkedIn is the best way. I do have a Cary Cares Employer Brand on YouTube. So check out my YouTube channel where I show Tips and tricks on all the fun stuff that, that we talked about here.

Carrie Corocran: And I’m speaking at TA week. So if you happen to be going to TA week, catch my session the day before the conference, I’m up first at 9 AM. 

Jonathan Duarte: All right. All right. That’s a, that sounds awesome. I didn’t even know about your YouTube channel, so I’ll put that in the in transcript notes too. Thank you so much.

Carrie Corcoran’s Contact Info:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/employerbrandingleader/
Youtube:  Carrie Cares Employer Brand Consulting