by John Sullivan and Laureen Edmiston

Several weeks ago ere.net published an article that asked the question “what are the dumbest things that recruiters do.” After surveying recruiters on ere.net, Twitter, and at the recent SMA symposium in Seattle, it is clear that most feel the dumbest thing recruiters do is…

Not managing the candidate experience — the candidate experience is the perception of the sum of interactions with an organization throughout the hiring process. It includes every communication, the design of the process, the fairness of process elements, the quality of information exchanged, and the honesty with which questions and concerns are addressed. Providing a poor candidate experience can have many negative consequences, including an increased candidate dropout rate, negative word-of-mouth, and decreased loyalty to the overall brand.

The rest of the “Top 10” are…

Expecting dull position descriptions to attract — potential applicants assume that the company puts its best foot forward when it describes a job. So when they compare your dull, legalistic description with your competitor’s more compelling description, they will simply apply elsewhere. The net result is that you lose candidates unnecessarily, harm your employer brand, and you will eventually frustrate your hiring managers.

Not taking advantage of employee referrals — the best-practice firms approach 50% referral hires (the percentage of all external hires who come from referrals). Failing to fully use referrals means that you will miss out on a large number of high-quality, prescreened, and presold candidates. Because employees are no longer doing some of the recruiting work, your recruiting workload will increase.

Not learning the business — obviously if you can’t speak “their language” and you don’t understand their problems, hiring managers will be less responsive to your requests. Your lack of knowledge will also make it more difficult to communicate with, to sell, and to build relationships with candidates.

Using the same recruiting process for different level jobs — higher-level jobs require a different level of service, knowledge, and relationship-building. So using the same process that you use for lower-level jobs on more sophisticated, technical, or management jobs will result in fewer returned calls, a higher candidate dropout rate, and lower-quality hires.

Making slow hiring decisions — the very best candidates are gone quickly, so a drawn-out process or slow decision-making will likely mean that candidates with multiple offers will be gone. Managers will also become frustrated if a slow recruiting process means losing the best.

Assuming interviews are accurate — interviews are traditionally weak predictors but poorly executed interviews dramatically increase the chances of making a major hiring error. Poorly designed interviews may also screen out innovators and turnoff top candidates, because they have not felt challenged.

Using active sourcing approaches for passive candidates — posting your jobs using active sourcing approaches like job boards, newspaper ads, and job fairs means that the 75% of the workforce that is not actively looking for a job will never see them.

Not prioritizing jobs — focusing on low-value jobs with little business or revenue impact will anger your managers and reduce their business results. It may eventually lead to lower recruiting budgets, after executives see that your hiring is not prioritized and in line with their business priorities.

Not identifying job acceptance criteria — if you don’t proactively ask for their job acceptance criteria, you can only guess about what it will take to get a top candidate to say “yes.” Although it is ranked as #10, not tailoring your recruiting marketing and candidate-selling approaches to the decision criteria of top candidates almost guarantees that you will lose these candidates. Because these individuals have choices, they will simply wait until an opportunity comes along that precisely fits their requirements and expectations.

Final Thoughts

Nearly 80% of CEOs select talent management as the business area that requires the most change. As a recruiter, if you are going to dramatically change, you have only two basic choices, 1) stop doing the dumb things that negatively impact your results or 2) start doing smarter and more effective things. The “stop doing dumb things” choice is probably the easier of the two because it doesn’t require you to learn anything new.

So if you are recruiter or recruiting manager with limited time and resources, we recommend that you use this “dumb things” list to begin the process of changing and improving your recruiting.

File this one under unfortunate cases of branding.

You probably know by now that Jerry Sandusky, the central figure in the Penn State child sex abuse scandal, founded a charity called The Second Mile.  It’s stated mission is “helping young people achieve their potential as individuals and as community members and providing education and support for their parents and youth service professionals.”  Worthy goals, no doubt, but that mission has now been tainted by the charges against Sandusky.  As a result, a lot of people don’t view The Second Mile in a very positive light.

In a recent article on The Huffington Post, we learn about the unfortunate effect the Penn State scandal has had on a Philadelphia-based organization called The Second Mile Center, a nonprofit thrift shop that helps ex-cons get back on their feet.  Although it shares a similar name to Sandusky’s organization, they are in no way connected.  But given the similarity in the two names, people have confused the store with the scandal plagued charity.  Since the charges against Sandusky became public, The Second Mile Center has experienced a 30 percent drop in sales. 

Ron Lucas, who sits on the board of the nonprofit, told Weeklyxpress.com that they have received countless angry phone calls from people, most of whom hang up before they can explain that they have no connection to The Second Mile.  They have even put up signs on its door, one of which reads:

“We are not in any way connected to the Second Mile of the Penn State scandal. We are the Second Mile Center.”

The Second Mile Center has been in existence for 30 years, while The Second Mile was formed in 1977.  It would be a shame if the negative attention towards that organization bought down this Philadelphia thrift shop.  In the mean time, Lucas and everyone else at The Second Mile Center can only hope people will start to learn the truth.

The Facebook changes announced last week at the developers conference, and those in the weeks before, have major implications for the way employers use the site to brand themselves and build relationships with potential candidates and future hires.

Recruiters who now use Facebook exclusively or mostly to push out jobs will become even more marginalized by the increasing emphasis the social site is placing on engagement. Those who actively invest in courting their Facebook “fans,” offering content of value, and real conversations, will reap even greater rewards than they do now, earning their brand a place on user’s forthcoming Timelines, and the ability to broaden and measure their reach as visitors “Share” content with their own FB friends.

One of the consequence of these and the other changes Facebook is rolling out, is that it will be harder than ever for employers to compete for attention. Even before last week’s f8 conference, when the company’s most profound changes in years were announced by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, routine updates such as a “like” or a me-too comment, and job postings, were being moved to a ticker-style activity window on the profile page. Even more is likely to appear there as Facebook’s standards of what’s worthy of being a top post, and thus rising to the top of a person’s wall, become more stringent. (A good summary of the announced changes is available here.)

In fact, the new Graph Rank will govern positioning of content in both the Timeline and ticker. Facebook didn’t share any details of the algorithms Graph Rank will use in deciding worthiness, but engagement will undoubtedly play a prominent role.

MediaPost, in an article today on the implications for marketers of the sweeping changes, says, “One initial takeaway is that while the new features could create more opportunity for users to interact with brands and products, an increased volume and velocity of updates on Facebook could also make it harder to break through the clutter to reach consumers.”

Until now, the most significant Facebook metric for employment marketers was the number of Fans. Soon, the number of times an item was “shared” and the number of times a connection was made to a Facebook timeline will be even more important measures.

That someone now “Likes” your post is another current measure of interest. With the changes though, you’ll be able to offer them a more active engagement, so they can tell their friends they are “reading” your post, or “applying” for a job. Employers can create their own action-oriented apps to supplement Facebook’s three default Lifestyle apps: “reading,” “watching,” and  “listening to.”

Analyzing the potential these changes will have for marketers, 3601, a top-ranked digital marketing agency, said:

The features that Facebook announced …  reinforce the notion that engagement matters more than ever. Brands must continue to create and share relevant content, experiences, and applications on a regular basis. A core objective for marketers remains becoming a part of consumers’ personal stories in a shareable way.

The meaning of these changes will take time to be fully sussed out. And user reaction to the changes already implemented — the news feed and ticker, most prominently — which have been mostly negative, may result in some adjustments.

The broad strokes, however, are clear. Facebook is saying that engagement is what counts. Those of you, therefore, who have a Facebook page that is rarely updated, or which consists of job listings and nothing else, you’re wasting your time. That’s not a social media program now, and once Timeline and the other changes are pushed out to all 800 million users, you may discover that not even those few people who are your “Fans” remain.

For everyone else, now is the time to take another look at the content you post and the breadth of your online conversations. While it looks like it’s going to be a matter of trial and error to learn how Facebook’s Graph Rank works, the opportunities to be a part of the activity stream and to consider what Lifestyle apps make sense need to become a part of your social media strategy.

It’s easy to say, of course, that the content you post needs to be useful, valuable, and interesting in order to engage your fans and others. What specifically that content should be, however, is another matter. As you think through the implications of the forthcoming Facebook changes, take a look at past content that promoted comments and reposting. Your visitors and friends and fans, by their Likes and discussion, have already pointed at what they find valuable.

The marketing agency, 360i, in its report, talked about the marketing challenges posed by the changes, which it said “should generate a tremendous amount of additional content on Facebook.” “Brands,” the agency said, “will have to be even more strategic, creative, and relevant to their fans to stand out.”

Want to impress your CEO? Few CEOs wouldn’t mind having the innovation track record of Apple, so there is probably no quicker way to become an “instant hero” then by learning how Apple’s talent management practices have contributed to its success and applying those practices relevant to your organization. In this installment of the case study, we’ll look at internal branding, employer branding, and recruiting.

Internal Brand Encourages Fighting the Status Quo

Steve Jobs and the management team at Apple have worked tirelessly to build a unique internal brand image at Apple that positions employees (at least mentally) as revolutionaries and rebels. Many years ago the organization influenced this internal brand by challenging employees to think how much more exciting it would be to be a pirate, rather than someone who followed the formal protocol of the regular Navy. It even flew a pirate flag over its corporate headquarters. The tradition of being revolutionaries is upheld even today with many supportive slogans including “Part career, part revolution.”

Apple is well known for using T-shirts, parties, and celebrations to build cohesion and to reinforce the internal brand as a ragtag group of revolutionaries. By getting employees to view their role as attacking the status quo, it helps to spur continuous and disruptive innovation. It has been successful in maintaining that internal brand image despite the fact that the top-down approach and intense secrecy run counter to its hatred of bureaucracy and all things “too corporate.” The external image further supports the internal brand.

You Can Have a Strong External Employer Brand Without an Employer Branding Program

Many among us dream of working at Apple, but unlike Google and Facebook, it’s pretty difficult to find out what it’s actually like to work there. A quick search on the Internet reveals that apart from a few alumni, most who have roamed the halls are pretty tight-lipped about their experience. While that silence is probably largely driven by Apple’s widespread use and vigilantly enforced non-disclosure agreements, even the corporation itself is relatively mum. You won’t find a great deal of employment advertising or find the Apple name on any one of a dozen or more best-company-to-work-for lists covering the technology sector, even though competitors like Google, Microsoft, and Intel are regularly listed.

Despite the silence, most would agree that Apple has a great “employer brand image”; Universum ranks Apple No. 10 among global engineering companies. The lesson to be learned is simple: use management practices that support your desired brand and elaborate brand management work will be unnecessary. Get your potential applicants to admire your firm for who and what the firm does by being the admirable firm.

Your Product Brand Should Serve Double-duty as Your Employer Brand

Instead of spending millions on building an employer brand, Apple lets its product brand do all the talking. Apple works hard on building and maintaining its product brand, which is ranked as the #1 global brand according to BrandZ ranking. Although product brand messages are intended primarily for customers, the messaging which emphasizes innovation and thinking differently also hasa major impact on potential applicants and employees. The logic is that if your organization lives up to its product promises, then it is natural to expect that the company’s jobs would also live up to the firm’s brand promise. In their minds, potential applicants make the connection between great products and a great place to work. In addition, because Apple’s products are talked about by everyone, there is a lot of brand association power lauded on those who work at Apple.

This public awareness and admiration can, coupled with a strong employee referral program, make generating a high volume of quality applicants easy. That same attention and curiosity will also enhance a firm’s retention rates because your employees will realize that the public sees them as collectively changing the world. Having employees believe that they are likely doing “the best work of their lives” is a powerful situation that most companies can’t easily mimic.

Being a Most-admired Firm May Be Enough

Apple does receive some notoriety in the press as the world’s “most admired firm.” In fact, Apple has been No. 1 for four years running on the list. That is an amazing feat. Apple dominates this list by being ranked first in eight out of the nine possible ranking factors. Those eight categories include factors that impress potential applicants, including people management, quality of management team, innovativeness, and social responsibility. The most admired list is based on the perceptions of business people and executives, something that Apple excels at managing. Having your firm admired garners enormous publicity in addition to increasing employee pride, engagement, and retention. The lesson to be learned by other firms is that if you don’t offer great benefits (which Apple doesn’t) you can get the same or even larger impact if you manage the perceptions of executives at other firms.

We want our people to be on the leading edge, so that everyone wants them… and then we must treat them right so they will stay, no matter what offers come along! –Apple Senior Manager

Aggressively Recruit the Best From Other Firms

The pirate-raiding mentality at Apple certainly carries over into recruiting. Apple has a long history of recruiting away top talent from other firms. In fact, the development of its iPod probably wouldn’t have occurred if it wasn’t for importing external talent from firms that didn’t appreciate the value of this new technology. Steve Jobs himself has been known to get directly involved in recruiting top talent. Apple has a top-grading type philosophy in that it targets top performers. Jay Elliot, its former VP of HR, cites one of Apple’s core principles as: ”Always… hire the best  ’A’ people. As soon as you hire a B, they start bringing in Bs and Cs.”

Apple’s recruiting approach is evolving because it has recently imported a team of recruiting leaders from Electronic Arts, but historically, despite the aggressive philosophy, its recruiting methods were pedestrian. It uses job boards and has an employee referral program that has paid up to $5,000, but its candidate experience is far from perfect. Glassdoor users rate Apple interviews 3.0/5.0 with regard to difficulty. Its college recruiting effort isn’t exceptional, with the exception of using recent college hires to help recruit the new crop. The key lesson for other firms to learn is that you can generate huge volumes of high-quality applicants if your firm is highly admired and if potential employees believe that they will be working on leading-edge products that everyone will be talking about.

In the retail group, there are two notable recruiting practices. The first has been the naming of the “Genius Bar,” where technical support is provided. Many applicants and employees in the retail area seem to be willing to put up with the relative drudgery of retail work simply for the opportunity to someday work their way up to becoming certified as a “genius.” The second is the use of employee referral cards that are well-designed and powerful. They reinforce the companywide focus that originated with Steve Jobs on recruiting the best from other firms. Recruiters and employees who witness great customer service at other retail and customer service outlets hand the card to those few individuals who provide impressive service. The front of the referral cards say “You’re amazing. We should talk.”

The back praises the individual and their work with a near perfect narrative … “Your customer service just now was exceptional. I work for the Apple store and you’re exactly the kind of person we’d like to talk to. If you’re happy where you are, I’d never ask you to leave. But if you’re thinking about a change, give me a call. This could be the start of something great.”

Next week, Part 4: Apple’s approach to training and development, management, leadership, and other difficult-to-categorize talent management lessons to learn from.

In honor of back to school time, let’s check out what’s new on campus. I’ve long-advised clients who desire to keep ahead of the technology curve to follow the trends in campus student enrollment. Now there’s another reason to head back to school.

If your responsible for your company’s campus recruiting efforts, Natasha Singer’s recent article for the New York Times is a must-read. The story highlights ways companies are using student Brand Ambassadors to promote products and services, and generate loyalty via social media, in-store events, and on-campus buzz.

Traditional marketing efforts like print advertising and TV spots are yielding fewer and fewer tangible results, but did you know that this fall, an estimated 10,000 American college students will be working on hundreds of campuses as Brand Ambassadors?

By illustration, Singer’s article cites efforts from three American Eagle student marketers who solicited 50 volunteers to take part in a move-in event at the University of North Carolina. Wearing A.E. Move-In Crew T-shirts, they helped with lifting boxes, handing out swag, and creating a welcoming branded experience for new arrivals, as just one of AE’s 50-campus events.

Target opened up its wallets for a freshman welcome dinner, and its doors for a private late-night shopping experience, complete with DJs and dancing through the aisles.

Mr. Youth, a youth marketing agency, published its list of brands who were best at communicating with freshmen. They included Nike (design your own shoes), Xbox (engage, connect and compete with your friends), and of course Apple (‘nuf said.)

So advice to the campus recruiting teams: Plan together and plan ahead.

1. Check in with your marketing department and find out if they are launching any guerilla marketing events on the college campuses. If yes, get in on it. If no, this is where you can shine. Help them plan something and then work together (isn’t that a great concept) to promote a seamless brand experience from consumer through employee. Give them the list of your target schools (you have that right?) and start there.
2. Work to infuse an employer value proposition that is aligned with the consumer value proposition into all your messages, and don’t sound like anyone else.
3. Make sure you’re careers site has been recently refreshed, is up-to-date and mobile friendly (QR tags are optional), and your social media sites are integrated with your career/jobs information.

Remember: the brands that swim together, win together.

Over the past few years there seems to be a change in the candidate experience, and it isn’t a positive one.

Let’s forget for a moment the hundreds of applicants who apply for a particular position, with a small percentage of them qualified. The candidate experience is not going to be positive for the unqualified applicants, and that’s okay. If they had taken seriously the minimum qualifications listed on the job posting, they would have realized they didn’t have a chance.

And let’s even forget those applicants who are qualified, but don’t have a strong enough background to be considered for an interview.

What we are talking about, however, is the candidate experience for those individuals who get invited to the company for an onsite interview. That’s where we have a problem. And it’s a big one.

As HR and recruiting professionals, we’re the face of the company for potential employees. We want to, and typically do, make a strong impression on leading job candidates. We politely and respectfully do screening interviews. We carefully match the hiring manager’s criteria with candidate skills. We provide recommendations on strongest applicants. We work closely with finalists to coordinate days and times for them to meet and interview everyone necessary within the company. We juggle internal calendars. We make follow-up calls. We prepare and distribute interview schedules. For some candidates we make travel arrangements and hotel accommodations. And we provide a welcoming smile and positive attitude when the candidate walks in the door.

And then we forget about them.

What? Forget about them? Well, not intentionally. But many times we do. And that leaves a much stronger and lasting negative impression on the candidate than all the other positive efforts we have made up until this point.

Think about your experience with job finalists who have been invited to onsite interviews. How many of them have you left hanging after the interview was over? How many have sent follow-up e-mails or letters thanking you for the opportunity to interview, and reiterating their qualifications? How many have called to follow up on the job status, never to hear another word from you.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many, many good recruiters, both internal and external. There are a few HR departments that put an emphasis on the candidate experience. Some do follow up with final candidates, even when the news is not positive. They share whatever information they can, from telling a candidate they were not selected for the position to telling candidates the position has been put on hold, or an internal candidate was selected. Sometimes they relay that the hiring manager has been delayed in making a final decision and that they simply wanted to keep the job finalists in the loop. That’s great communication.

But a great percentage of others leave the candidates in the dark. Never another word.

Is that fair to the candidate after all the effort he or she put into the interview process? Is that right to ignore a job finalist whom you have respectfully treated up to this point? Is this the way you want to treat someone who you feel may be a great future employee of your company, but perhaps just wasn’t the ideal fit for this position? If you were that candidate, wouldn’t you want to know at least a little bit of additional information? Particularly after the many hours you’ve invested in attaining that position?

Candidates understand that only one person can get the job. And they can readily accept when they are told that someone else was selected for the position. But not to say a word? That’s just not right. It takes a small amount of time on your behalf to do that final communication, but it can leave a lasting impact on the candidate. And a critical final impression of you personally, as well as the company brand.

Why wouldn’t you do that final communication?

Over the course of this webinar, Michael Long, Head of Culture Branding at Rackspace Hosting, will explain the theory, practice and results that have been achieved since the launch of rackertalent.com in March of 2010. Through the deployment of employee blogs, a flexible platform and modern web technologies, the Rackspace career site has increased visitors by over 430% in just one year.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Matt Epstein really wants a job at Google. Really.

He wants to work for the company so much he’s launched a silly, almost ridiculous “Hire M.E.” campaign in which a phony mustache plays a supporting role.

A self-described product marketer and digital strategist, Epstein’s got a video, a website with the pleading address GooglePleaseHire.me, a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube, and all sorts of publicity.

And now he has at least a foot in the door with Google recruiting. He tweeted to his 2,177 followers this morning that he had a first conversation with a Google recruiter: “Call w Google went smashingly! Contacting me back EOD. The irony? Microsoft unexpectedly called me 5 min before that call.”

It’s all pretty impressive for a guy whose “About me” page opens with a huge picture of him in boxers, seated in flowery wingback chair with the headline:

Armed only with a mustache and online marketing savvy, one man has set forth on an epic quest to land a job at Google. Follow me and join my journey.

Follow him on Twitter or on his blog and see what happens.

Would you hire Matt Epstein?Incidentally, Epstein does have marketing creds. And silly as it may be, the campaign is working. So would you give him a shot at a job? Vote in our poll. It’s just for fun, but you can see what you and your colleagues would do.

Re-Branding is done for a variety of different reasons.  Sometimes an organization wants to move away from some controversial events that had soiled their previous brand.  Other times, its just the result of an evolution in the organization’s thinking.  In the case of Good360 and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), it was clearly an effort to “refresh” their brand.  In the newest issue of The NonProfit Times, the story behind the re-branding of these two nonprofits is discussed:

When Gifts In Kind International (GIKI) changed its name earlier this year, it wasn’t just some tweaks at the edges or a few nips and tucks to its logo. The Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit unveiled its new name, Good360, this past spring, in the midst of revamping its business model in a sort of mashup of Kiva, eBay and DonorsChoose.org.


And, it’s not done yet: Phase II will launch by the end of the summer, integrating its two websites and rolling out an online catalog where individuals can become “microphilanthropists” by underwriting the shipping and handling costs of product donations. Charities often must consider when to transition image and brand, which might have grown from a small, fledgling effort into a nationally recognized organization. It’s not uncommon for nonprofit managers to think about whether the brand needs to be revamped with age or whether to retain the equity in a name it’s had for so long.


For Good360, it turned out to be a new name, web portal and business model, leaving behind a name, and more, that it had for almost 30 years. Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), also some 30 years old, didn’t want to lose its established name and brand, so a new logo was characterized as a “refresh” of the brand.

(read the full article here)

The article goes on to paint a fascinating story of the process behind the rebranding of these two organizations.  There comes a time in the life of any nonprofit where major changes have to be made in order to ensure continuing success.  Change can be difficult but, as you can see with Good360 and MADD, they can ultimately be for the better.  Has your organization ever had to undergo changes like these?  Please feel free to share your stories with us in the comment section.

Have you seen these people? The ones in the picture to the right? If you have, immediately call the marketing police and report their location. They are on the “Most Overused Stock Image Photo” list at MarketingProfs.com.

I’ve personally tracked the photo to eight HR-related sites where it shows up illustrating employee engagement, consulting services, headhunting, and a company’s commitment to diversity recruiting. I know there are more. Google has 19 pages of results.

Is your company among them?

A moment’s digression: Google has a new, handy image search that lets you drag an image into the search box to find where else it appears. You can also upload a picture, search by URL or, with the right extension, right click an image. Google explains it all here.

MarketingProfs.com has a dozen pictures on its list, which it put together as much in fun as to make the point that imagery is not immune to cliche. The images are all stock photos, available at little or no cost, which is one reason they’ve become so ubiquitous.  They are a cheap way to spice up a site.

The downside for recruitment marketers is that like elevator music, no one pays much attention. And when they do, instead of thinking “diversity” (in the case of our suspect picture), they think, “Now where did I see that photo before?”

I found it on the internship page of a company that boasts of being the “best of the best.” It may be, but consider the message communicated by the picture  (and, oh dear, the site has several more offenders). The message it sends is more along the lines of, “We’re just like everyone else.”

Is that what you want candidates to remember? Think of another cliche, the one about a picture being worth 1,000 words. Behind that trite expression is an enormous amount of research that all says the same thing: Images evoke a more powerful response, and are more easily recalled than words.

You can probably guess why. We see the image first, then zero in on parts, just the opposite of how we read. In a journal article a few years ago noted market researcher Dr. Alan Braithwaite, managing director of Ignition Marketing Research, explained it more scientifically:

Images have an immediate impact, as they are perceived holistically rather than in the linear-sequential fashion of verbal accounts. Whereas verbal messages are processed rationally and consciously, visual imagery is perceived and partially processed preconsciously.

You don’t have to be a market researcher, however, to appreciate the value of choosing images wisely. The web has plenty of sites with tips on how to select images. Here’s a simple starter from Brand Innovation Group.

Note the first point BIG makes: Fit images to the concept you are looking to communicate. I’ve sat in on enough meetings to know just how tempting it is to edit an idea, a concept, or a message to fit the image. This is especially true with logos, and thematic color choices.

I very clearly remember one heated creative discussion about choosing the “look and feel” for a website. The design team pitched hard one particularly attractive look. It was slick, modern, almost avant garde, with colors that popped. It was also totally inconsistent with the message we wanted to convey.

So here, in addition to the tips and advice from BIG and others you’ll find online, are mine:

1. DO NOT choose images until you have written out the message and impression you want to convey. Writing it out will (literally) ensure everyone is on the same page. And it will keep you from backing down when the design team comes up with the wrong image.
2. Avoid using images that have become Internet cliches. Search Google to see where else that cool, stock image appears. If it shows up more than just a few times, or if it shows up on other recruitment sites, don’t use it.
3. Before going live, invite in employees not involved in the image selection. Instead of asking them what they think of the picture, show it to them in context, and ask about the impression the entire project conveys.
4. Whenever you can, use real people. Have a photo day and engage your employees in shooting photos for the web site. Give them a photo credit online. Mount the best submissions and hang them where everyone can see.
5. Be ruthless in your selection and your photo editing. It may be a great picture, but if it isn’t consistent with your message, it doesn’t get used.
6. Change the imagery periodically. This is especially important to make sure the workers on your site are still your workers and haven’t moved on.
7. Candids are better than posed.