MUSINGS
’Green’ recruiting campaigns on the rise
The profile of a fresh graduate ready to enter the job market- young, enthusiastic, eager to grab opportunities, confident, friendly, and a high sense of awareness of the most serious and current issues, political, social and environmental. The most pressing and common issue is of course environmental. The youth of today are especially aware of this issue.
Not to be left behind companies have started declaring their environment friendly credentials and give publicity to their ‘go green’ campaigns and pro-environment practices especially during their hiring process.
This is being done especially to woo the best talent. A case in point is GE, which initiated a contest among college goers in the U.S in 2006. It posed a challenge, asking them to develop an environmental project on a budget of $25,000, which they could implement on their own campus.
The contest called the Ecoimagination Challenge had students come up with brilliant ideas.
The final winners were students of Massachusetts Institute of Technology for their design of a solar powered processor and some of the winning team even got into GE.
An Internet site reported the progress of the contest and the website even had a link at the bottom saying ‘Jobs at GE’.
The concept was simple; GE was declaring its campaign to save the environment through the contest and at the same time inviting job applications. This was a nice piggyback campaign to woo the best talent from colleges.
Steve Canale, manager of recruiting and staffing services at GE says that the contest was primarily aimed at improving the profile of the company among college students. He adds, “ But as a byproduct, we were helping to attract and recruit students." "It definitely helped with the overall image on campus of GE as an employer."
Other companies are taking the cue and devising novel recruiting ideas to woo the most innovative and talented first time job seekers to their fold. Recruitment experts vouch for the fact that an ‘environment friendly’ tag can improve the recruiting leverage of a company.
According to a survey conducted in the U.S in 2006, 78 percent of more than 150 MNCs described corporate citizenship, including good environmental practices, as extremely significant in their recruiting and retention campaigns.
And employees too responded in tandem. In response to another survey more than a quarter said that they would prefer to work for an environmentally friendly company.
This so-called ‘green recruiting’ has emerged only in recent years, highlighting how pressing and significant environmental issues have become in the recent past. The high sense of awareness both among employees and employers has triggered this trend.
Job applicants are the most influential in encouraging this trend according to Nicholas Eisenberger, a consultant at Green Order, a New York-based firm, that provides consulting services to companies on environmental strategy. He adds applicants do not hesitate to ask companies about their contribution to the environment during interviews.
This concern is not restricted to freshers, even those in mid career are very aware of these issues. They may be seeking a job with a higher purpose and checking the environmental credentials of a company may be one way of assessing if the organisation thinks beyond the profit line and how it treats its employees.
The message is clear; companies will have to flaunt their environment friendly credentials to woo the best. Besides publicising green initiatives on the company’s website, recruitment experts have other suggestions. Chief among them are:
• Get your company mentioned in articles about environmental issues
• Ask your employees to spread the word about your campaigns
• Bring up environmental issues during the interview process
• Make efforts to win environmental awards
Going green goes beyond using environmental friendly products or using recycling methods in your operations. If your business is environmental savvy, be sure to tell applicants.
As John Sullivan, a human resources consultant and professor of management at San Francisco State University’s College of Business suggests you will have to incorporate these environmental initiatives wherever possible, in job ads, interviews and get quoted in the press besides having publicity campaigns.
And as Sullivan states the company website must go beyond mentioning its recycled products and mention how these measures impact the environment.
In order to measure how effective this ‘green recruiting’ has actually urged applicants to accept the job offer companies must do a post –selection survey. Companies can garner how environmentally conscious the workforce is.
Though it is difficult to actually measure how much of an impact such campaigns have, it does raise awareness levels of a most pressing issue and could inspire better initiatives to save the environment.
Such recruiting initiatives also depict the company as something beyond a profit making entity and this could be the key to attract the best. So going by this fact the mission statement of a recruiting campaign must read “Go green!”
