Thinking Outside the Box to Attract Top Talent

Companies are coming up with innovative new recruiting practices to bring people in--even offering tuition assistance to attract Millennials

In the wine industry, there are certain positions that require previous winery experience—the most obvious being winemaker, lab technician and vineyard manager. Others, however, can apply across industries or regions. An accountant is an accountant, whether they’ve worked at a winery, a tech company or an insurance company. The same holds true for office managers, sales representatives, IT professionals, marketers and others.

Those already in the wine industry tend to have connections with other wine-related companies, and word of mouth is a very prominent, popular way of learning about new positions. There is also winejobs.com, which is home to a large number of winery positions. [Editor’s note: Wine Business Monthly created and manages winejobs.com.] But what about those who have never worked at a winery, those who might be better qualified for the position? How do you attract them to a life in wine country when they could just as easily work anywhere the pay is better?

A session at the winejobs.com SUMMIT, held last September at the Westin Verasa in Napa, took a look at this issue, and focused on low-cost alternative recruiting methods. Moderated by Marcel Rodrigue, director of talent acquisition at Delicato Family Vineyards, and featuring Melanie Nera, Yelp’s recruiting marketing specialist, and Heather Johnson, senior regional manager for Robert Half International, the panel discussed cost-effective, easy ways to attract new talent.

How to Recruit Outside the Industry

For many positions on a winery team, talent can be found anywhere. Before making a move outside the wine industry, Rodrigue and Johnson both agreed that there are some steps any HR or hiring team needs to take.

Johnson works with clients to find the right employee, regardless of the industry the candidate is currently working in. “It’s all about selling the story and the opportunity to the candidates. There are a lot of candidates who are interested in moving out of different industries and going into something different. There are a lot of candidates that don’t want to be at large, Silicon Valley companies where they’re employee No. 4,502. They’re looking for an opportunity to make a difference and be at a company where they’re impactful,” she said.

Impactful, in this case, does not necessarily mean working for a nonprofit or a company that “makes a difference” as it can often be described. Here, it means that the employee feels that his/her work is valued and making a positive difference to the employer and the company. If this is the case, and the candidate feels like they would fit in well with the other employees, Johnson said that compensation often doesn’t matter as much. In a few surveys that Robert Half conducted, respondents often said that compensation rated as the fifth most important considerations when choosing a job offer.

“We’re looking for candidates who are looking to make that change, the pattern of where they’ve been before. We focus on being the storyteller for your organization because we’ve got to sell them on ‘Why the wine industry?’ What’s the opportunity there? What’s the story? What’s the brand? Because that’s what candidates are really interested in right now—not compensation,” she said.

To sell the wine industry lifestyle, Johnson and Rodrigue said that there are some easy (and relatively inexpensive) ways to guide efforts.

Think Hard About Your Job Description

Think back to the last job description that you wrote. It more than likely had something about experience required, daily tasks and benefits. It might have also included a paragraph about the company—when it was founded, the type of wine you produce, etc. But do you think it said anything about what it’s really like to work at the company?

“It first starts with the posting,” said Johnson. “What are you telling the world of people you’re looking for? Right now, if you were to go to Monster, CareerBuilder or Indeed and you put in the role that you’re looking for, you’re probably going to have 30 to 40 companies looking for that same person, so you have to be competitive. How attractive is your actual posting? Is it dry? Is it fun? Is it exciting? Because that’s the first touch.”

Similar to selling a bottle of wine, selling employment at your winery starts with the first touch point. It needs to be engaging and, most importantly, true to your brand.

Use Your Website to Sell Your Job

Once the candidate sees the opportunity/posting, the first thing he/she will do is head to your website. The second touch point in the recruiting process, the website needs to be professional, sell the brand story and communicate what it’s like to work there—a lofty feat.

“They’re going to look at your website and what it tells them. Has your website not been updated in the last 10, 15 years? That could be a problem,” said Johnson.

Does the site tell the philosophy of the winery, not just that it’s been in business for 30 or 40 years? Is there a prominent place for employee bios or an “Our Team” section? And why does this matter?

“When we’re talking to candidates, they say, ‘Heather, tell me a little bit about this company. Tell me a little bit about the manager that I’d be reporting to. Why are they there? Why did they choose this company?’ Candidates want to know about the opportunity and the story and people behind it,” she said.

Descriptions and photos of the managers, if not all employees, can go a long way with a potential hire to help them understand who they would be working with. This can be an easy and essential add-on for a number of wineries, especially those small to mid-sized producers with a relatively small staff.

Ensure Your Point-of-contact is a Brand Ambassador

“I’m usually the first point of contact with any candidate,” said Rodrigue. “I’m the forward-facing representative of the company and, guess what, so is your website, so is your job description.”

Johnson added that it’s important a hiring manager realizes that finding someone from another industry could add serious value. “There are great things from having candidates come from outside industries in what they bring into different organizations. It’s just really about educating your hiring managers to that,” she said.

As director of talent acquisition, Rodrigue knows that all potential hires know what it’s like to work for Delicato. He’s not “going to sell a bag of ice” as he put it, but he will be honest about why he enjoys working there, what the hours are like, why people stay. That story is essential to hiring.

“I think people really want to hear your personal story,” said Johnson. “It’s the personal story first. That’s what’s going to resonate with them. It needs to be authentic and I don’t think it needs to be oversold because people can smell that out really quickly.”

Rodrigue also knows that it’s up to him to stay in contact and keep the hiring process moving. “You’ve got to take look with your team and figure out the internal hiring process. Who’s our best storyteller to be the initial contact? Then make sure that the hiring process never goes beyond what we call a second weekend. That kills all hiring,” he said.

This is something Johnson deals with all the time at Robert Half, and she has to educate her clients about hiring best practices. “Once you get that candidate, that the first person that they talk to at your organization is going to really set the stage for who you are as a company. I know a lot of times we hear from candidates, ‘I got a call back from HR or I got a call back from a recruiter, but the call was only five or 10 minutes,’” Johnson said. “Then they’re not as interested, so you really have to make sure that that first person, whoever that first touch point is, is someone who is a good storyteller about the opportunity.”

Show Them What Working at a Winery is Like

In addition to selling employment at your company, you might also need to sell living in the area. If there’s a chance you might need to ask someone to relocate to an area they may not know, it’s important to provide a picture of what that life can be like. Describing housing, local schools and things to do can be incredibly beneficial to selling the wine lifestyle. Rodrigue mentioned that providing a list of resources, including materials from a local chamber of commerce or other housing and city authorities, or even creating your own brochure, can be an inexpensive way to help guide potential hires.

Some wineries have even used emerging technology to showcase how special their company is.

“A couple of our winery clients have done some really interesting things with virtual reality; showing a day in the life of working at a winery. That’s really appealing for people who are not from this area or have never actually visited a winery before,” said Johnson. “We’re actually seeing more and more companies do more VR.”

Virtual reality may not be for all, and Johnson does work with quite a few tech companies more inclined toward this route. For the winery with a smaller budget, even putting together a nice YouTube video showcasing the day in a life of an employee can work wonders in selling an open position and, as shown above, telling this story is more important than ever.

“We did a survey of more than 10,000 employers and 76 percent of them said they lost really great candidates because they didn’t feel like they actually told the story of their company well enough through the first posting, through the website, through the interview process,” said Johnson.

More than LinkedIn: Using Social and Other Media to Recruit

LinkedIn, winejobs.com, Craigslist, Monster and Indeed are all very obvious places to start when recruiting. But sometimes, depending on the position needing to be filled, other media can be just as beneficial in enticing new candidates.

Yelp started its “career” social media channel five years ago and, at the time, they were one of the few companies attempting this method. With no “likes” and few followers, they started a program to promote working at Yelp from scratch. Melanie Nera was part of that team. At the time, she was working on the sales recruiting team, which was tasked with hiring a large number of entry level sales individuals who had just graduating from college.

“We knew that those candidates were Millennials and that they were Millennials who were on social media. There were a number of studies that said they spend a good amount of time on social media, so we knew that we needed to meet them where they were,” Nera said.

The program was not an immediate success she said. It took a while to find a system and content that worked for the company and type of candidate they were looking to hire. At first, she was posting work-related motivational quotes, but it wasn’t resonating with their target audience. Though it worked for personal accounts and other brands, it wasn’t the Yelp style or employee. Eventually she found that it wasn’t motivational quotes or job postings that found success—it was in telling the Yelp story.

“On thing that has worked well for us in the last four years has been doing Takeover Tuesdays (#takeovertuesdays). We give the handle to an employee of our choice and they show us and our audience what it means to live a day in the life at their position,” said Nera. It’s free, it’s authentic and it’s basically a job description.”

There are some parameters, of course. Yelp is a publicly traded company so there are a few limitations when it comes to what can be shared, but Nera said that’s usually not a problem. Employees don’t want to share reports or results, but rather the other aspects that take up a day. “Our mission is connecting people with great local business and so if they can feature their favorite local business that’s obviously great. That enables our mission, but for the most part they run with it,” she said.

She also created the hashtag #fivestarcareer, which helps her curate content for free, and for very little work. “It’s related to Yelp, and we put it everywhere. It’s on our email signatures, it’s on all our events. It’s on the whiteboards. It’s on the screens in the office. That allows individuals at the company to share their story. If there is a candidate that asks you, ‘What’s the culture like? What does it mean to work where you work?’ What we typically do is we send them to the hashtag. That’s authentic. That’s real. That’s employee-generated content that’s free.

Nera utilizes Instagram the most, citing its ability to visually tell a story, and said it’s more effective than Twitter or Facebook for her brand. LinkedIn has been the go-to for those already looking for a job, but Nera was also trying to appeal to those not actively seeking a new position. For others looking to do a social media hiring campaign, she recommended a lot of trial and error. First, it’s crucial to find out who your audience is—who are you looking to hire? Figure out the immediate target audience and where they spend their time and start there. Whether it’s Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, start experimenting. “You’re never going to know what works until you try,” she said.

Rodrigue has also started social media recruiting for Delicato. He’s part of a small HR team but has harnessed the power of the Delicato marketing department to assist in his endeavors, using some of the photos or press releases to show more of the company. This is can include, great 90+ point ratings, harvest pictures, photos of employees and more. “We’ve been playing with Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, and it’s been exciting to see the growth and the excitement from people,” he said.

Measuring the effectiveness can be a bit tricky. At the time, Rodrigue was looking to install a new Applicant Tracking System (ATS, see page 82) which would be able to tell where applicants are learning about positions.

“There’s ROI in terms of the amount of hires that you’re getting from your social posts, and then there’s also the unquantifiable ones that lead to referrals and brand storytelling, which tends to happen on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter versus LinkedIn,” said Nera.

Johnson said that LinkedIn’s social aspects are often forgotten when thinking about recruiting. She pointed out that the place candidates spend the most time in is the feed, not necessarily the job board. She posts photos of her and her team to show that, even though they are in the tech industry and it has a reputation for being “boring,” they are fun people. Even if they aren’t hiring at the moment, it sets the tone for the company culture. “It’s free and it’s widely looked at. I think a funny picture I posted about a dog in the office got over 14,000 hits in a week or two,” she said. The next post featured a listing for a new account manager.

Using Benefits to Attract Candidates

A 2015 Glassdoor survey reported that 60 percent of people regard benefits and perks as an essential component in any employment decision. Typically, a benefits package will refer to health care, dental and vision, as well as a 401K and sick/vacation time. Past Benefits Surveys (Conducted by Woodruff-Sawyer & Co., Inc.) have shown that the wine industry has remained competitive in this sector, oftentimes offering more generous benefits packages than other companies and industries in the Bay Area and the state of California.

Aside from health, dental and vision care, there are ways to think outside the box with benefits that can help attract new talent. That’s not to say that an employer should lessen healthcare benefits: a survey by Fractl showed that when choosing a new job, 88 percent of its 2,000 U.S. worker respondents would give better health, dental and vision insurance “some consideration” (34 percent) or “heavy consideration” (54 percent).

Healthcare is the most expensive benefit an employer can provide, but after that, the three most desirable benefits to workers are pretty low-cost to an employer of any size: more flexible hours, more vacation time and work-from-home opportunities. In a tasting room, or even harvest, these may not be an option. The tasting room is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day and the grapes are ready for harvest on their own time. But for those working on the finance, IT and marketing side, offering these types of perks can be an incredibly valuable recruiting tool.

“You can get flexible with what you’re going to offer as far as compensation,” said Johnson, prompting wineries to think about what works for their businesses.

Offering unlimited vacation time can even be profitable to a company. Fractl found that $224 billion dollars in unused vacation time is paid out every year. Switching to an unlimited time-off policy can save a company $1,898 per employee, according to Project: Time Off research. For those concerned that employees will abuse the policy: yes, that could happen, but a survey from The Creative Group discovered that just 9 percent of executives think productivity will decrease significantly with this type of policy. Fractl implemented an unrestrained vacation policy and found two things: there was not a “large spike” in out-of-office time and the quality of work improved.

Advancement and progression, though not covered in the Fractl survey, are other key attractions to candidates. “That doesn’t always mean the next role, because maybe there are not a lot of manager/director roles available; but what are the opportunities? Can they learn a new project? Learn a new technology? People are always, at all ages, interested in progression. Learning in something different,” she said.

Loan Assistance

Student debt has become a major consideration for many potential hires, as crippling loans have forced many to work multiple jobs or take less-desirable positions with higher pay to reduce debt. Employers looking to bring together an incentive package for entry and mid-level positions have taken to offering student loan assistance either in addition to, or in place of, 401K contributions.

A new startup called Goodly is looking to help employers offer candidates fresh out of university some student loan assistance. When a graduate is hired, he/she can connect a student loan to Goodly which, after verifying the loan, will integrate with payroll operations at the new company. Then the employer and the employee can set a contribution plan that is amenable to both parties. Currently, it offers an employer monthly contribution range of $25 to $200 per employee. Goodly also offers employers reports on the implementation to see if it’s working for the employees.

The Least Important Benefits

Google, Twitter and other large companies have seemingly made a competition of who can offer the most over-the-top perk, from lunches prepared by a professional chef, daily acupuncture sessions, free haircuts and more. But team bonding events, on-site gyms, free snacks and coffee, and company retreats, etc. don’t matter.

“Most people don’t care about that anymore,” said Johnson. “That was big thing four or five years ago, ping pong tables and free food. We never hear that anymore. I would say it’s your personal story that will resonate with them first and then the company story.”

Selling the Company

In the end, a lot of alternative recruiting comes down to branding. Take some cues from your marketing team—or maybe even ask them to help out in your endeavor by showing more employees, company gatherings, and more on the website or in social media. As many of the experts recommended, it’s about selling your place of employment. Your candidates are assessing you, too.

This article originally appeared in the October 2018 issue of Wine Business Monthly.