Employee Experience Stories Make It Easy for Marketing to Support Recruiting

I had been working with Courtney Casey at Accent Computer Solutions for about a year when we started publishing team member spotlights in 2019. It began with a question: What can marketing do to support the company's recruiting efforts?

My answer was to create content based on employee experience that would attract and engage job candidates. The stories revealed what it's like to work at the company, shifting recruiting from "We're hiring!" to messages that answered candidates' questions, built trust, and created a consistent employer brand. When Accent was acquired in 2022 by VC3, the approach transferred easily to the larger company, shifting their recruiting message in the same way.

Through interviewing employees—crafting the right questions, listening well, knowing when an idea needed to be explored—I created marketing assets that made it easy for Courtney and her team to support HR's recruiting goals without adding to their workload.

A Conversation with Courtney Casey, Director of Marketing Operations at VC3

How valuable has your employee experience story library been over time?

Having the bank of employee stories has been incredible. We've been able to reuse them to develop our employer brand—what are people saying about us, why do they like working here, what is our employer value proposition. We use the quotes on social media and in recruiting posts.

What problem does having employee experience stories solve for you as a marketing director?

HR and people operations teams aren't marketers. And for a marketing team, our main objective is not recruiting. So having a bank of ready-made assets we can use to help HR with their main goal takes it off our plate. We can use those assets easily and they work great.

What stood out to you about my process with employee interviews?

You were able to draw out things that people weren't expecting to share, didn't think people would care about, or had never talked about before. They didn't expect to tell their story, and I think it was super cool for them. They felt valued because somebody wanted to hear how they got from where they were to where they are now. It was neat to see that surface for people.

Were there any surprise benefits beyond the published employee stories?

I would often share the transcript or collection of quotes with leadership to say "these are the things that they said about us." That was morale building for leadership because, as you know, most of what leaders hear is negative. It doesn't matter where you work—that's just reality.

As a leader your job is to fix problems all the time, so a lot of what comes to your desk are issues. I would use those quotes to show "this is the thing that is good." There are lots of things to fix, but this is good.