As you all know I am heading home soon to Melbourne, and have been searching feverishly for a job focusing on Social Media use in recruitment. Whilst these jobs are hard to come by anywhere, (and I am more focused now on going solo) something that utilises Social Media as a tool in any aspect is obviously of keen interest. My thinking has been that ad agencies would be the ideal setting and environment to move towards and many have agreed.

So when I recently found out that a particular employment ad agency (who shall remain nameless) was looking for a Account Director/Employer Branding I got excited. The focus is to be on social media as applied to employment market and best practice while focusing on the Employer Brand. You can imagine when I discovered this, that I thought I had found exactly (or close to) what I was looking for.

Now given this role is to advise pitch, propose and deliver solutions regarding Employer Branding, you would expect that this ad agency has their own systems in place to show candidates that they care about their own Employer Brand.

Well it seems that this isn’t the case. It was a over a week ago that I last heard from this ad agency, and the intention was to simply organise an initial phone call.

Now I normally wouldn’t do this, but if you are going to go to market to your clients the best methods or practices in a certain area, you need to be doing those same things yourself. Whether is be replying to candidates, returning phone calls, an open and honest interview process or ensuring that if you say their is a set of steak knives upon joining the company or 20% of your work time is free to work on what you want then there is, think Google. All of this can harm your Employer Brand is misrepresented or not followed through on.

How can I now consider this position when the company advertising, does not fulfill these areas themselves?
Can I honestly now consider this company and potential job opportunity in the same light? The job is to inform clients of best practice, and my own Employer would be at fault themselves.

We are all at fault at times, of being somewhat hypocritical in what we advise our clients to do, and then do not do these same things ourselves. Does this make it right, or our advice any less important? Certainly not. But for me this case is before I have even started working for a company, and the potential messages and solutions that I would be advising future clients on.

Perhaps I am being a little to pedantic, or they are just really busy. Which really is just a poor excuse. We can sometimes to be focused on winning new business or advising clients, that we forget about our own backyard. If you’re at fault, don’t stress, admit it, fix it and move on. Mistakes happen.

Now will this agency do the same? And no I’m not going to tell you who it is…………..