A great interview by RecruitingFly (animalized).
Sully: If you're targeting the average person, the average stories excite them but innovators or top performers already have a job and are being treated very well so it takes something startling to excite them.
Holding a contest or putting a billboard on the side of the road or using video games is powerful virally. Word spreads through the blogs that something is happening at that company and that gives you the opportunity to sell your jobs.
Google is the poster child of innovative recruiting. They are amazing. No one has every been like them. In their SEC filing to the government it says that the primary thing that will keep them growing is the recruiting and development and retention of their employees. They have said, in a legal document, we know what makes us good.
And they're right down the road from Yahoo which is a wonderful company but one is kicking butt and one is struggling because of their approach to recruiting.
Their training isn't very good and their development programs are miniscule. They hire people who think outside the box who are totally excited and then they say "Let's not screw it up."
There is no place that gives you so much creative freedom and resources. Every other place tells you what to do every minute of every hour. Every other place takes months to make decisions. At Google it's "I have an idea, let's go with it. Let's not have 42 committees. Let's make a decision in five days. "
Chris: Do other companies say "Yeah but we don't have Google money to do that."
Sully: Google started with $500 dollars. It's a dull product, an online Yellow Pages. But they have excited people. And they have turned it into a recruiting machine.
I would urge people to copy them and they don't keep what they do a secret. You can find it online.
Chris: I've always felt that recruiting is all about marketing and that HR should hire more marketing people than recruiting people.
Sully: I'm not going to hire anybody with an HR background. Sales is what this is all about. You are telling people to change their lives. To leave a perfectly good company and go to another one. And branding is critical. Google has a number one product band and I would argue the number one employment brand, as well. I don't know where they get their recruiters but they understand the talent pipeline and sales and marketing and brandiing.