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 ofte