Kerry Noone, Director of Employer Branding at CVS Health

Sponsored by Workhere.com and Emissary.ai Hi, this is Kerry Noone, director of Employer Branding for CVS Health, and I'm next on the Rec Tech Podcast. Announcer: Welcome to Rec Tech, the Podcast where recruiting and technology intersect. Each month you'll hear from vendors shaping the recruiting world, along with recruiters who'll tell you how they use technology to hire talent. Now here's your host, the mad scientist of online recruiting, Chris Russell. Chris Russell: Yes, indeed. You're listening to the only Podcast that helps recruiters and employers connect with more [inaudible 00:00:32] technology, inspire conversations. We're all about the new tools and tactics to landmark talent. Today's show is a practitioner edition. The Rec Tech Podcast is sponsored in part by our friends at Emissary.ai the Text Recruiting Platform, your next superstars in demand and on the move, and so the easiest way to connect with them faster and more effectively wherever they are. Use their tool such as a one-to-one text campaigns, group campaigns, share by text, apply reminders, all of which allow you to capture more applicants at that point to apply, and get them into your system, go to Emissary.ai, self schedule a demo, and let them know you heard it on the Rec Tech Podcast. Chris Russell: All right. Kerry Noone is a recruiting marketing and employer branding professional with more than 25 years of experience in developing and delivering knowledge based solutions through digital marketing. Kerry has been instrumental in launching successful media... social media programs that empower employees to share their personal and professional stories as corporate brand ambassadors. She currently manages the CVS health recruit marketing and advertising, and is transforming the CVS Health Candidate experience, though the robust content strategy, recruitment marketing guidelines, mobile apply in a fun, emotional and a purpose-driven recruitment value proposition campaign. I've known Kerry for a number of years going back to her days at Amtrak, and I'm finally glad she's on the show. So Kerry, welcome to Rec Tech. Kerry Noone: Thank you. I'm excited to be here as well. Chris Russell: Definitely. I was looking forward to the conversation, and I'm glad they reached out and pitched me you, to talk to you, because you're definitely someone I want to... I've admired over the years going back to your time at Antrak there. And you've always been a really good recruiting marketing person overall. And so I think you have a wealth of knowledge, and looking forward to hearing what you have to say today. So I guess let's set the scene first. If you could just start out by telling us a little bit about CVS Health's hiring goals for next year, and what you guys are up to lately. Kerry Noone: Sure. So we... about a year ago we integrated with Aetna to become one company. So our goal for 2020... it has been for 2019 and continues to be for 2020, is to integrate the two brands. So not only go down to one system, we'll have one career site as opposed to the two career sites that we currently have. Chris Russell: Oh yeah. Kerry Noone: But then also from a brand perspective, it's making sure that our candidates understand that we're one company, and that we're working towards common goals. So I think that that's probably an opportunity and a challenge for us for 2020. Chris Russell: And tell me about your team there at CVS Health, as far as your employer branding goes, how big is it? And maybe kind of define the roles if you could. Kerry Noone: Sure. So I've actually... I'm very fortunate. I think one of the things that I'm most proud about is the team that we have. When I first started in 2016 we... I was a team of two, it was me and one other person. And over the past three-and-a-half years or so we've continued to take on more work at the organization within talent acquisition as well as outside of talent acquisition. And along with that... those new responsibilities came a larger team. Kerry Noone: So currently I am at a team... or a total team of six, and we are all very hands on, we've created a process. So we have a lot of requests that come in every single day, and we created a process to help streamline that and monitor the workload. Selfishly, I enjoy having work life balance. So of course I want to make sure that my team is equally as balanced as I am. Kerry Noone: So those... we have a primary secondary contact for everything that we do. The team is made up of, as I said, six people. So we have two people who focused on... one person who focuses on high volume hiring campaigns. The other person focuses on more longterm campaigns, and when I say focuses on campaigns, they manage the budgets end, and applicant flow and conversions, monitoring and reporting back to the teams that are providing the budget for those campaigns. Kerry Noone: I also have someone who focuses on just the Aetna side of the business, as well as one person who combined part of her... and when I say Aetna side of the business, I mean the campaigns that come in from the Aetna side of the business. And then I have one person who focuses on... part of her time is on a very specific campaign for our longterm care. Kerry Noone: And then the other part of her time is focused on technology. So making sure that our recruitment marketing tool is syncing with our ATS, making sure that the candidate experience is optimized, any kind of tech issues that come up, she is our go to person. And then very, very fortunate to have hired a creative person on the team about two years ago... a year-and-a-half ago or so. She focuses on all of the creative requests that anything from social media content, to a flyer, to a print ad, to radio slots, to targeted ads on job boards. She manages all of the creative that's needed to support our hiring campaigns. Chris Russell: Very cool. Do you guys have a lot of autonomy as far as the creative marketing and messaging that goes out? I mean, how often do you have to interface with your general marketing team overall? Kerry Noone: We're constantly reviewing and working closely with the enterprise brand and communications team, just to make sure that we are... we're compliant. So the person on the team, Amy went through all of the training that's required, and then she works closely if anything needs to be reviewed. We also have an opportunity because we've built that strong relationship with the enterprise brand and marketing and communications team. Kerry Noone: We also have lots of opportunities to participate in wider [inaudible 00:06:47] wider programs within the organization. For example, we just last week, I wasn't able to attend because it was snowy, but we had an employee photo shoot. That's about the third one that we have done since I joined in 2016, and then we also have a brand story. So not only do we try to tell the stories on our career site, we also work very closely with internal communications to tell that those stories, so when they have a day in the life, for example, that they highlight on our internal communication tools, we work closely with them to make sure that it is compliant and able to share externally as well. Chris Russell: Yeah. How... storytelling, you mentioned that phrase, I think more companies need to do that, but what... give me your take on why that's so important for an employer to tell those stories internally? Kerry Noone: So I think that the job descriptions... we try our best to make the job descriptions the marketing tool that it's intended to be. But I also think that it's very hard to communicate exactly what it's going to be like working on that team. When you can say in a job description you're going to report to the Chief Human Resource Officer, and you're going to have a team of six. But really seeing what that team looks like, helps to get over a barrier of if someone is choosing to work for the organization, or as we hear often, if they're choosing not to work. So opting out, choosing to opt out. We use the storytelling tools, we have a automated process when someone joins the organization, or when we are working on a campaign. We have a... an intake form to try and understand how the team works together and the team dynamics. Kerry Noone: And so we collect those, that information via form, so it's an online form that they complete, and we develop personas based on the information that comes in from either the leaders on the team, or the team itself. We also use a tool called AlTru to have those written stories communicated into short snippets of videos. And if we create a landing page, for example, those videos will sit, or those Q & A's will sit on those landing pages so that people can see who they're going to be working with. Kerry Noone: The frequently asked questions are not just a written answer. They are... sometimes they are communicated via the video tool. We're also able to put those video tools like maybe a message from the hiring leader, or a message from your teammates on the job description. And we're hoping that those... that this is something new that we in the last six months have implemented. So we're hoping that we'll see a better conversion rate of people who are clicking on the application and reading the job description to converting to a hire... or an applicant, and then a hirer, and then a successful candidate, or a successful employee. Chris Russell: Yep. Yeah. I'm on your listings now, and I see it looks like pretty much all of them have a video on there. Is that correct? Kerry Noone: They all have a video. Not all of them have the specific video that we do from the team. Chris Russell: Right. Kerry Noone: So our Health Hub Hiring is our first... well actually we did this for our interns, to welcome our interns, to get to know our interns. And then those interns will then help welcome the new interns from next year. So people who've converted from an intern to an actual hire at the organization. Chris Russell: Yeah. Kerry, I don't know if you know these numbers, but how many hires do you make in a year, and how many applications do you get in a year? Kerry Noone: We get about 2 million applications [crosstalk 00:10:31] per year, and we hire anywhere between 130 with the current CVS Health Organization. And then that will go up to maybe 150, so it's... it ranges year-by-year. I was just looking at 2019 numbers last week for a report that I was doing. And [inaudible 00:10:52] sorry Chris. Chris Russell: That's okay. Kerry Noone: That's the challenge of working from home. Right? [crosstalk 00:10:57]. Chris Russell: What's the dog's name? Kerry Noone: The dog is Cocoa Bean. Chris Russell: Cocoa Bean. Kerry Noone: She is on Instagram if you would like to follow her on Instagram. Chris Russell: All right. Put that in the show minutes. Kerry Noone: Yeah. Chris Russell: Awesome. Kerry Noone: So yes, I was going to go back and just say, we were looking at 2019 numbers, and the numbers are slightly different from 2018 numbers, but on par with about 130 thousand. Chris Russell: So 2 million applications per year. Is that... that's a pretty daunting number I would imagine to look at. Kerry Noone: Yes. Chris Russell: Do you... there's nothing whole [inaudible 00:11:36] black hole out there. Is there a... any kind of a process in place where you make sure you'd see... at least touch all those applications in some form, so they get to the jobs... or get some kind of notification whether it's a rejection notice, or moving forward? Kerry Noone: We do. We have an automated process in place, so our application experience doesn't end... or the candidate experience doesn't end at the application, for some of our roles. Some of our roles, they are required to take a virtual job tryout assessment. So once they complete the application, they'll get an email that says, "Your application is completed, and an on file, next steps." Kerry Noone: Not all of our jobs require that virtual job assessment. So in those cases they will receive a confirmation that the email, or the application is completed and submitted successfully. And then there are steps in the process that they'll also either receive an automation or a direct contact from a recruiter. We also have a Dynamic FAQ page. So we have the FAQ, the frequently asked questions to try and... to help the candidate along in their process. But then we also have a form, so if they're not seeing what they're looking for, they can send us an email. And we get [inaudible 00:12:59] we get several emails per day, and we answer every single email, it's a combination of someone on my team, depending on whoever's monitoring the asked questions each day. And that's a question that we get often. What is the status of my application? I haven't... I received an email, but I haven't heard from anyone. Chris Russell: Right. Kerry Noone: And then we connect them with the candidate zone so they can log in to see where they are in the process, or we connect them with someone on the recruiting team who can actually reach out and connect with them. Chris Russell: Very cool. Kerry Noone: So that's part of that process [inaudible 00:13:37] To make sure that they... if they are curious that they can at least get the answer that they're looking for. We also, by the way, turns [inaudible 00:13:46] that candidate zone page, because it is the most second most frequented page on our career site. Chris Russell: Oh yeah. Kerry Noone: We turned that into a hot jobs directory zone. So if they get to that page and they find out that they're not selected, or they're still in the process, but they also see other hot jobs that we're hiring for, they're able to directly get to that information from that page. Chris Russell: Yeah. Kerry, you came to the roll in, I think you said 2016 correct? Kerry Noone: Correct. May of 2016. Chris Russell: Okay. What's a... what are one of the first challenges you kind of came across, and how did you kind of overcome that challenge in this... going to such a large organization like CVS Health? Kerry Noone: Yep. So, when I started I... we did not have any career specific social spaces. Every... all of the social content would have to go through our corporate communications spaces. So, that's one thing that we opened up. We created the career social spaces on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and then expanded the content strategy on LinkedIn. We also... based on some feedback that we had from candidate experience, the Candies awards, the survey from there. Kerry Noone: We realized that people were sort of ending up in a black hole, not necessarily the huge black hole, but still curious about their status, and opportunities and how to apply. So we put into place a... an infographic on how to apply just this level, set the expectations and then the FAQ page, the dynamic FAQ page that I mentioned, to give people another outlet to ask us questions and connect with people. Chris Russell: Yeah, I think helping to... helping your Cans, help them to understand the process they'll be going through is a great piece of content every company should put out there, I think. Right. I'm sure you agree. Kerry Noone: Yeah, absolutely. I think just level setting too. We do receive a large number of applicants each year. For most of them we do hire a considerable retail. So that's an ever changing challenge and opportunity for us. But we just want to at least help people along in the process as much as we possibly can. Chris Russell: I know you use... you guys use the CareerArc platform there at CVS Health. Tell me what you use them for, and what kind of results you've seen from that particular platform? Kerry Noone: Yes, I love CareerArc, it's probably my favorite tool. We use CareerArc for a number of... in a number of ways. So not only to promote jobs on our social spaces, so Twitter being a big area of opportunity, but then also on LinkedIn and Facebook. But then we also... and by the way, it is our number one source for social, so applicants coming in from CareerArc. It's also our lowest cost per application, and lowest cost per hire, which for me, I'm always looking for ways to either make the process easier, or [inaudible 00:17:02] not only on my team, but also for candidates. So for me, I like to call it one of our easy buttons. It's just something that's a no brainer for us. It just helps us to extend the reach. Kerry Noone: But we also have started to use CareerArc to extend the brand, so not just about jobs, and we're hiring for XYZ job in Annapolis, Maryland or wherever it might be. We're also using it to extend our brand, the brands and messages that we have. So on LinkedIn for example, we do less jobs, we do a hot job per day, and we're actually scaling that back to three to four times a week, and using the CareerArc tool to promote the brand, as opposed to just jobs. Because we have our jobs fed to LinkedIn anyway. Chris Russell: Right. So just go... just to go back for a second, you said... I think you said that social media is your biggest source of hire. Is that correct? Kerry Noone: No. CareerArc is our... in the social world, CareerArc is our number one source. So we do organic, and we do paid sponsor on LinkedIn and Instagram. A little bit on Twitter and a little bit on LinkedIn, but CareerArc, because the volume and the ability to extend the reach so broadly, is our number one source for bringing people in through social spaces. Chris Russell: Got you. You mentioned paid there too. What's... what do you think is, from a retail standpoint, retail hiring standpoint. What channel works the best do you think? Kerry Noone: We see a lot of engagement on Facebook, so we've started to use the Facebook jobs. We see a lot of interaction there and... but one of the things that we also notice that unlike LinkedIn where people do keep their resume and their information up to date, I just don't think that people on Facebook are thinking of it as a job tool. So their information where they've worked and the experience that they've had at each of these different organizations, is not necessarily up to date. Kerry Noone: So we're using the platform itself to guide people through that process. So what... we'll make an observation and say, "Oh, did you know that you can search for a job on here on Facebook in our job section, or by searching. And oh by the way to help get noticed, make sure that your information, your background, and your experience is up to date in your profile on Facebook." Chris Russell: I have one more question about social media. What's one post that you guys have put out there, could be a picture or video, anything that really... that became your best sort of engaging post out there, does one come to mind? And could you describe that post? Kerry Noone: I can. I can. We have quite a few that are out there that I could probably review, but one that comes to mind that's most recent. October was individuals with disabilities awareness month. And so we interviewed someone who had, not a visible disability, but an experience that created a disability for herself that she... we had a Q & A, and we... she talked through her experience, that [inaudible 00:20:12] or that post in itself, received quite a bit of feedback from people who were reading it, not just on Facebook, but also on Twitter and on LinkedIn. It was a nice awareness that we as a company are... we make an effort to hire people with individuals first of all, but that a disability doesn't necessarily have to be one that's a visible, you don't have to be in a wheelchair to have a disability. And that awareness in general I think is important to communicate. Chris Russell: Yeah, okay. You mentioned AlTru career work of course, while other tools are part of your HR tech stack today? Kerry Noone: Yeah, we use a couple of different tools. We use Surveil to constantly monitor how we're doing and what the candidates are thinking of their experience with us, so that's always on. We also use Brazen Technology for virtual hiring events. We use HireVue for interviews that we are... video interviews. Chris Russell: Okay. Kerry Noone: And then our AI chatbot is Paradox. Chris Russell: Okay. Kerry Noone: So we use Paradox on the rep level, and on our landing page. And we're getting ready to launch a job search, an AI job search tool. Chris Russell: Okay. And what's your ATS there? Kerry Noone: We have Brazen, I'm sorry. Not Brazen. We have connect the Brassring. Chris Russell: Connects. Okay. The Brassring. Very good. Okay. The... I did see on your [inaudible 00:21:48] I got a pop up asking my feedback on the Can experience. So you said Surveil runs that. Well what do you learn through those surveys, that feedback you're getting from these candidates about your connect experience? Kerry Noone: So we [inaudible 00:22:01] we have two different surveys. We have one in the job seeker experience, are they finding what they're looking for? Do they have recommendations? Are they willing to be followed up and do a follow up survey? And then we have a survey that is on the thank you page. So once someone completes the application, what did they find? Did they find that it was a good experience for them? Did they find that it was a challenging experience? And we always ask for recommendations. And then we take those, we monitor it regularly, we report on it regularly. So we report on the NPS score of the candidate experience satisfaction. Right. And we also take a look at the information that we're gathering. Kerry Noone: We... another tool that I forgot to mention is Your Next Step, which is also part of CareerArc. And that is a link that we have on our dispositions, people who aren't selected for a position. There's a link that says we care about basically the messages. We care about your job seeking experience. Here's a link, and it takes the candidate over to Your Next Step with CareerArc, which offers job search tools, resume tools, interviewing experience, other jobs, similar jobs. We just want to make sure that we're providing as much care for our candidates as we possibly can. Chris Russell: No, that's very cool. I think you just care about all the candidates who apply to your company, not just the ones you hire. Right? Kerry Noone: Absolutely. Yep. Chris Russell: Awesome. Kerry Noone: And we know that we can't accommodate when we get that many applicants per year. We know that there will be people that just aren't going to be selected, and we don't want to just say "Thanks, but no thanks." We want to make sure that they have some tools to help them find a position, whether it's at CVS Health, or at some other organization. Chris Russell: Yeah. I want to ask you about Google for jobs. Are you getting... how's your traffic coming in from that particular source? Kerry Noone: Yes, that's something that we launched within the last six months. Another tech tool that I completely forgot to mention is SmashFly. That's our recruitment marketing tool. Chris Russell: Oh, okay. Kerry Noone: And yes. And so we've been able... and our CRM, so we've been able to partner with SmashFly to put the Google for jobs out there, the search functionality. It's... I think that it's intuitive, it's more... it functions more like a Google search, which we know that most of our traffic from a Google search engine comes from Google, and [crosstalk 00:24:37]. Chris Russell: Have you seen any increase in traffic from it? I did a story a few weeks ago about the traffic from [inaudible 00:24:45] seems to have flattened for many with job boards and employers out there. I'm just curious if you've seen any kind of a trend there? Kerry Noone: Yeah, we are actually in the process of doing an analysis to take a look at previous... the previous search function compared to the Google search functionality, but I don't have those results just yet. We... actually I might even have those tomorrow if we want to follow back up. Chris Russell: Oh cool. Yeah, we certainly [inaudible 00:25:08] put that in the show notes, maybe. I want to ask you about your Talent Community. What do those candidates get when they join that? Kerry Noone: We... that's also something new for 2019, so we... I have some stats, we actually sent five all database CRM emails, and we reached just over 12 million people, so obviously not unique visits, obviously people who have been part of our database. And from those emails we have about 4,800 applications, and now that's obviously what's in it for us. What's in it for them from a Talent Community, we have a CRM responsibility model set up, so each of the different groups are... they'll be sending quarterly newsletters. Kerry Noone: Some of the groups have already... like our Health Hub Hiring, our Minute Clinic Hiring. They're already sending emails. Our pharmacist team, they are already sending those emails. So they're getting unique content that is customized and tailored to what they're interested in. So it's not just... we do the all database emails, and part of that all database emails to make sure that your profile's up to date, so that we can send them the information that they're looking for, and it's very targeted to them. Chris Russell: Nice. Let's take a quick break listeners. [inaudible 00:26:31] talking with Kerry Noone from CVS Health. I want to mention my other sponsor today, which of course is WorkHere, the hyper-local candidate delivery tool through their geo-fencing app platform. They help employers reach more people through their ads with pinpoint precision, where they live, work and shop. WorkHere will advertise your jobs on this [inaudible 00:26:49] use the most, their mobile phone. And that messaging is then delivered into these social mobile apps that they use most often. From their [inaudible 00:26:56] chat team will qualify and engage those folks. Send them back to your ATS via SMS, email or redirect. So head over to WorkHere.com, and be sure to tell them you heard it on our Rec Tech Podcast. Chris Russell: All right, Kerry, I want to ask you about your apply process. I did go on my phone and kind of check it out. I'm a big believer in a... a big critic of many employers, because they have a poor mobile apply process. You don't seem to have that, it seems to be pretty good. When you start the application process with a simple form, it looks like by capturing their name, email and phone number, which is also an option for redirecting to your ATS. So how has that been helpful in converting more applicants to your system overall do you think? Kerry Noone: And that's been great for us. So we... what we do is we start the application experience with, as you said, name and email, and we added phone number so we can communicate via text with them. If they don't complete the application, they receive at 72 hours, they receive a... an email to remind them with a link to take them directly back to the application to complete it. They're also added into an opportunity to keep their information updated, as I mentioned in that all database email. So that in itself we see regular people coming in, as we're monitoring the Health of a Wreck, we see people coming in through that tool. Kerry Noone: We... I would say our mobile experience, application experience is enabled, but there's always ways to improve it, so that's one thing that for 2020 is going to be a huge opportunity for us. We're looking at an overlay with SmashFly to make that [inaudible 00:28:39] more user friendly, mobile user friendly. We're also working with Paradox to create a text opportunity for them, so they can complete their application, ideally this is our goal for 2020. They can complete their application via text messaging, and then Paradox will complete the application in our ATS. That's how we complete it. Kerry Noone: So that's on the horizon. The things that we are able to do right now is to eliminate some of the redundant questions, and then also make some of the questions optional that have traditionally been required in the past. I don't think that we need to know the address of your college campus. So those are the things that we take a look at, and we're always... those surveys that we do, and the Candy experience surveys that we participate in. Those are some insights that we're able to gather from that. Chris Russell: Well you seem to have a lot of moving parts and technologies there, Kerry. [inaudible 00:29:41] as my last question is, just talk about how you manage all of that, and maybe give the listeners some tips out there for how to keep all these new platforms sync together and working properly. Kerry Noone: Well that's always a challenge of course. We want to make sure that we're not just using a technology and it's sitting in its own little silos. So always looking for ways to integrate is top of priority for us. We also have started to look at the communication process, and this came from a conference that we attended, and I can't remember now, I think it was March. But looking at it, less of a funnel, so less of that top of the funnel down to a higher, but more of an infinity loop. And that I'm proudly borrowing from Intel's... no... yeah, Intel's infinity loop. Kerry Noone: I don't know if you've seen that or not, but it's a constant opportunity to continue to communicate with, not just job seekers, but also candidates. And then once they become candidates, how do we tie it all together? How do we tie the continued information that we can provide to them, so that they can not only look at a career, their current career with CVS, but then what's in their future, and how do they grow with the organization? So that's something that we use, that model often is the infinity loop, and how each of them tie together. And where they... where each of our texts fits in this process. Chris Russell: Well, Kerry, I appreciate the info today. I learned a lot, and I'm sure the audience did as well. Is... I guess it's jobs.cvshealth.com, is that the main URL for yours? Kerry Noone: That's correct, yes. Chris Russell: Awesome. Again, I appreciate your time again Kerry, and have a great holiday. Kerry Noone: Great. Thank you Chris. I appreciate the time. Chris Russell: Awesome. That will do for this edition of the Rec Tech Podcast. Thanks again to our sponsors, work here in Emissary. Subscribe to the show, or if you get your Podcast, if [inaudible 00:31:36] subscriber, leave a review, and I'll be sure to thank you on air. Thanks for listening everyone, and remember, always be recruiting. Announcer: Another episode of Rec Tech is in the books. Follow Chris on twitter@chrisrussell or visit rectechmedia.com where you can find the audio and links for this show on our blog. Rec Tech media helps keep employers and recruiters up to date through our podcasts, webinars, and articles. So be sure to check out our other sites, recruiting headlines, and HR Podcasters to stay on top of recruiting industry trends. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you soon on the next episode of Rec Tech, the Recruiting Technology Podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices