Rockstar Recruiter Series: Constant Contact

Since the economic recovery in 2009, the recruiting and staffing industry has been growing faster than the economy and other overall employment. The influx of new tools, technology, services, and content has helped catapult talent acquisition into a $400+ billion industry. This is the golden age of recruiting. And to me, there is no greater evidence of this than when I was recently at a local university and several students approached my team and me asking, “How do I get into the recruiting industry?” (I was a little surprised, and of course thought that I should tell them to pursue a different career path, but recent data and trends suggest otherwise). Times have changed. Employers, recruiters, and candidates alike need to adapt to keep up with this ever growing and evolving industry. So, what does it take to be successful? I’m impressed when a candidate: Engages us through one of our social media channels. For example, our employees use the hashtag #CTCTLife. By following this, a candidate shows genuine interest, and it’s a great place to find out what’s going on inside Constant Contact and learn all about us. We have a promise and commitment to help small businesses and non-profits succeed and the biggest investment we make in that promise is in our own talent and culture. It’s very impressive when candidates go beyond the numbers and research our company through alternative platforms such as social media and other content. I also personally love being challenged by candidates who ask tough, thoughtful questions. For example, last week a candidate asked me, “At Constant Contact, how will I learn?” Think about this question for a second. It hits on so many levels: intent; interest; career focus; motivation; sincerity; coachability; commitment (do I need to keep going? Ok, you get it!) To me, there is no greater sign of interest and intelligence than asking questions that show you are thinking about the role, the culture, or the business. Bravo. I’m impressed when a recruiter: Challenges the status quo. This is a leadership behavior and it requires real skills to do it effectively, such as vision, finesse, and collaboration. For instance, sourcing candidates is only one piece of the puzzle. Hiring is a team sport and it requires the hiring managers and recruiters to play ball. It takes the team to win. However, it pays to think bigger. To really be innovative, a recruiter needs to leverage and influence people even outside of our department. They should always be challenging the status quo and looking for a new and better way, and sometimes that means reaching beyond their direct peers and hiring managers to see a vision come to life. Bringing others along with them in the process is key to being successful. I love when members of our team pioneer new and creative ideas, and then share them back with the team and others. It makes everything and everyone around us better. An example of this is how we are using our own online marketing products in talent acquisition.  Not long ago, a recruiter on our team came up with the awesome idea to use our email marketing product to create a branded interview confirmation template to send our candidates. We also use our product to create email newsletters to build up our talent communities. Building relationships and partnering with our product, creative services, and content marketing teams were essential to getting this idea going. These are innovative and cost-effective ideas that have been very well received and make us better. After all, recruiting is marketing, so we better practice what we preach! I have been in the recruiting industry for: 15 delightful years. I started my career at ESPN, the worldwide leader in sports, in Bristol, Connecticut. I started out recruiting for ESPN’s flagship studio productions, such as “SportsCenter,” “NFL Countdown,” “Baseball Tonight,” and “College Gameday.”  I ended up managing a team at ESPN before eventually relocating back to Boston to lead Global Tech Recruiting at Akamai, one of the world’s leading cloud computing companies. I held multiple recruiting and human resources roles at Akamai during a significant period of growth before joining Constant Contact to lead Talent Acquisition 4+ years ago. It’s been a wild ride and I am sincerely blessed to have worked in three amazing growth companies. I’ve enjoyed the unique opportunity to learn from great leaders and I have met all kinds of cool people along the way. I know I’ve done a great job hiring when: The members of our team are successful. If the members of our team are successful then we’ve done a great job hiring and we are growing the business in the way that leads to success. This promotes confidence, growth, and opportunities for our team, our employees, and our business. That’s why I love what I do and why I feel I have the best job in the world. The biggest challenge recruiting candidates today is: Finding the right candidate for the job. We hire intelligent and motivated people who have the right domain expertise and fit our company core values. Yes, I know, we’re asking a lot. But the bar is high. Sometimes this means the right candidate for us is not the most obvious choice on paper. There are hundreds of really talented engineers, marketers, and customer operations people out there, but that doesn’t mean they can thrive inside our culture or support our mission to serve small business success. We live by our three core values every day. These values are:

• Customers First, Always
• Make It Happen
• Seriously Awesome People

The candidate who exemplifies these values along with the right domain expertise usually ends up being the right candidate for the job and our company. I stay cutting edge by: Committing to four best practices. These practices are things I work at and commit to almost every day to try and stay ahead of the curve. This includes:

• Read about new topics or trends daily (I love Fast Company and Wired. Also, the Gild Recruiting Blog is the best industry-specific reading source out there. Check it out!)
• Make a mental commitment and challenge myself to think differently
• Get outside my comfort zone (try it, it works!)
• Meet new people to solicit new opinions, get feedback, and discover new ideas

In 2015, I’ll invest more efforts in: Developing skill capabilities of our team members that are not traditionally tied to pure HR or recruiting. Skills such as marketing, social media marketing, program management, business intelligence, and analytics. Executives see employer branding and recruiting as: Absolutely essential. And I certainly wouldn’t want to work for an executive who thinks otherwise. This is an area where our CEO, Gail Goodman, CHRO, Bob Nicoson, and executive team are all aligned. There is no greater investment we make as an organization than in our own talent and employer branding is a core piece of talent attraction, engagement, and retention. I use Glassdoor because: It’s one of the fastest growing employment-related sites on the web and one of our strongest sources for inbound traffic. We believe in full transparency at Constant Contact and we’re proud of the culture and teams we have at the company. We love the platform that Glassdoor provides for employees and others to review and research our company. My success is most closely tied to: Creating a magnetic place to work, where talent lands in the right place at the right time to drive our business forward. Also, the continued and ongoing development of our amazing team and employees. It’s my responsibility to eliminate roadblocks and provide resources and support for the team to succeed. I could improve my reputation as a recruiter if I did this: I’m personally invested in improving feedback and communication with our candidates and applicants. For all of us who are obsessively focused on the candidate experience, both online and in-person, no candidate ever deserves to have a bad experience. We’ve invested a lot of time and energy to do this right, but it takes time. Technology is evolving. Teams and people evolve. It’s a challenge but it’s critical and we are laser-focused on it. Just like one of our small business customers, if a customer has a bad experience they might write a review about it on Yelp or OpenTable. The same goes for us recruiters when it comes to Glassdoor. We live in a transparent and hyper-connected world and we all need to continue to adapt and leverage every tool to communicate well. Candidates are our customers, and customer are first, always.