How to start an employer branding project with Kumari Williams from HARMAN International

When you are done with part 1, make sure you check out part 2 here. Full Transcript Joe: What's up everybody I'm here with Kumari Williams who is the director of talent acquisition and employer branding atHarman International. Kumari thanks for joining me today. Kumari: Thank you for having me, Joe. I appreciate it Joe: Recently you've embarked on a journey right a project to resolve this employer branding problem to close that gap so I thought today could you first just kind of start off by talking to our audience you know what what that project has looked like so far. Kumari: Yeah, absolutely. And Joe you teed it up perfectly. One of the challenges that we face is that our our parent company or HARMAN International specifically is not necessarily what people know us for. They know us for our products and so we have different products lines that you know focus on different demographics. But within that we need to kind of get our message out more. So about HARMAN International who is the employer is right you can never go work for JBL you can't work for HARMAN Kardon, you can't work for Mark Levinson. But you can work for HARMAN International. And so I started with HARMAN back in 2017 and one of the big initiatives that I was kind of handed when I started was that we really need to further define who we are as an employer and then sell that in the market place. And then also share that with our internal employees. So the good thing is that there was a lot of research that was already done when I started. So some of you may or may not know, and Joe you do probably know this, but we are wholly owned by Samsung. And so as a result of we were purchased I believe maybe a year prior to me joining HARMAN and so there were a lot of my colleagues who had already worked on an employer branding project and that kind of came to a halt once we, you know, found out that we were being acquired by Samsung. And so when I started in 2017 it was the right time to kind of dust that off and start to look at those efforts again. So our starting point was really one that was kind of handed to me. A lot of the focus groups research, contact with the employees engaged with them to understand who they think HARMAN is. A lot of that was done for us already so that was, I had a really good starting point, and I say "I" but there's a team of us, a core team of five that have been working on this project for over a year now. Joe: So I'm interested in, you know, what were some of the findings from the research whether from the focus groups or conversations with them, with employees? What have been some of the insights? Kumari: Yeah, you know, and it's interesting because those insights are what we use to build our EVP, right? So it's the foundation of our our EVP is the data that came out of those. And one is that we're an extremely global organization and we're really global, right? We're not global just because we have an office here and there. There are a couple employees here that we truly have reached in over 30 countries and with that reach we have employees that are sitting, you know, in all of these countries. So not just products and services in these locations we actually have physical people and in brick and mortars and in a lot of these locations. And so what we found is one of the things that makes us unique is the fact that we're extremely global and that came through overwhelmingly. And the feedback that among other things but that was one thing with that global kind of presence comes a strong sense of diversity too. So having employees all throughout the world makes us one big as we refer to ourselves as one HARMAN makes us one big HARMAN family. So those two dimensions are kind of the foundation of our among other things but those are two of the areas that our foundations of our EVP is we're kind of building that out. Joe: Awesome, okay so you have this data, you have these insights, now what do you do with it? How does that materialize into the employer brand? What are some of the things you're doing to do that? Kumari: Yeah and so I should take a step back. We actually did enlist the help of an agency we're working with a partner called TMP. And they're helping us do both our EVP and our employer brand and also bringing our our new career site that we're working through. They'll help us to bring that to light. So we do have a partner who has helped us significantly with us again we had a lot of the research but we did leverage them to go back through and validate and they did some additional testing and focus groups. But through that exercise they helped us to refine our pillars right? So you've got the foundation of the EVP that they've helped us to create and now we're in the phase of actually starting to think through the activation of that. And so with that comes your career site and how you kind of go to market from an employer standpoint. What does the look and feel of your EVP turn into so that you have the EVP but then you have the employer brand which is just amplifying the EVP and the pillars that you've created already. Watch Part 2 here.

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