How HP Uses Video for Employer Branding

Good old Hewlett-Packard got split into two separate units, one focusing on hardware and the other on services. Which one has fared best in terms of talent attraction?

Ovidiu Voina is the Global Employer Brand & Digital Media Lead at HP, in this episode he shares how the company approaches talent attraction, what the ‘HP Way’ is, and how they have harnessed video for employer branding campaigns.

Have a listen to the interview below, keep reading for a summary and be sure to subscribe to the Employer Branding Podcast.

Listen on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play or SoundCloud.

Can you describe the corporate culture at HP?

• If HP was a person, we would be described as a successful but humble person.
• The lack of cutthroat competition means we are encouraged to collaborate and succeed together, and there is a lot of trust in each employee.
• On a personal note, I really like the autonomy I have within my role, and what has convinced me to join.

What talent challenges are you faced with?

• In the long run, the biggest challenge is the shift towards a more flexible skillset across organizations. Plus we have a new 3D print technology that we are pioneering, so we need people to have skills that aren’t really out there because the technology is so new.
• In the short term, it’s all about engineering, from Barcelona to Singapore, and we are constantly in need of chemical engineers to researchers, there’s lots of competition.

How does your employer brand strategy help with this?

When I talk about our strategy, I like to bring our corporate brand into the discussion. In a lot of situations, the corporate brand is stronger than the employer brand within a candidates decision-making process. Especially when you’re hiring engineers who will actually create the products or salespeople who will actually sell the products, it can be a very powerful tool of attraction. I’ve seen much better engagement when we combine our employer brand and consumer brand within our communication and messaging.

When we activate this messaging, I start always with the client’s need. I always ask recruiters we work with who these people are, what do they like, and from that we create persons that help us guide our communication.

Tell us about the great employer branding videos you do!

We launched a career vlog, the first of it’s kind, with the goal of breaking down job roles in a recognisable format for gen z and millennials who are used to watching things in this format. It was pretty exciting, the first episode got more than 100,000 views on social media. What is different about this is that we had no agency involved, so it’s less PR-groomed and more human. The host is actually an employee, an engineer, and this is something we find unique. We featured people from all sorts levels of experience and all sorts of fields.

It was not our intention to recruit people from these videos, however, the engagement that I’ve seen is people asking questions about other job roles. But the good side is that they are evergreen content. So we leverage them on career websites, campus events and more!

What the toughest lessons you have learned along the way?

To choose the projects that I work on alone and those of which I involve a lot of people. It’s mainly related to our EVP work. It can be tempting to do things on your own because you can push projects out with more ease because you are more agile. When I started the EVP project I planned on doing it on my own, but as I worked on it I realised the impact it has on functions that are not only HR and recruitment related. So I started to involve and loop in everyone, and take in their input.

On the other side, such a the video campaign we spoke about, it was something I ran by myself with the help of just one person, our host, and we only looked to the marketing team to just check if it was in line with our brand, and because of this we are able to get the videos out quickly.

How do you measure the impact of your employer brand?

Thank god I’m a digital marketer!

• So I look at the number of applicants and the source of the applications.
• I also take into consideration the cost of application, as it tells a story about each channel.
• In terms of brand awareness, I look at social media metrics like followership and engagement.
• I use the Talent Brand Index on LinkedIn which is pretty insightful.

Connect with Ovidiu on LinkedIn.