What is Symphony Talent Marketing Agency?
Symphony Talent is redefining how employers and talent connect. By applying data-driven consumer marketing best practices to Talent Acquisition, you provide personalized engagement between your employer brand and candidates through smart technology and creative solutions.
Symphony Talent Services
mashFlyX combines CRM, career site, and programmatic advertising for the most complete recruitment marketing and campaigning capabilities you’ll find in one platform.
Across verticals, roles, languages and skills, we’ve worked with thousands of businesses globally to implement assessment processes that positively affect organizational success.
Centralize every data point across paid, earned and owned media to know what’s working and constantly adapt to it.
Our platform automatically paces budget, prioritizes reqs and perfects channel mix based on real-time data. Plus, it’s integrated with our CRM and analytics.
Show your story to create demand for your roles with tailored experiences from search to apply.
Pipeline and campaign to internal and external talent, plus discover and match by engagement and quality.
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Symphony Talent Case Studies
We helped ForrestBrown define their emotive EVP and launched their new employer brand look and feel internally and externally, with seriously impactful results.ForrestBrown is a firm of chartered tax advisers specialising in research and development (R&D) tax credits. They’re young (founded in 2013), they’re independent and they’re proud to be based in buzzing Bristol, UK.
ForrestBrown is growing fast – doubling in size year on year. We needed to add people power to their team, but without diminishing their individual, start-up culture. That meant we needed to create an employer brand that could:
Raise awareness of ForrestBrown as an employer of choice in Bristol – and as a specialised tax consultancy and credible alternative to top 10 accounting firms
Reduce reliance on agency hires in order to decrease long-term costs.ForrestBrown had developed a surprisingly friendly corporate brand, but even that didn’t represent the employer personality that already existed. There was a lot to say, but wasn’t being communicated. To begin with, we developed and executed a robust research programme that included robust internal and external research. That research culminated in an EVP that was truly descriptive, emotive and ownable, and centred around four pillars:
The difference trust makes
Proud to be good
Solutions, not suits
Small but mighty
Then, the employer brand essence, or rallying cry, was agreed: Share purpose. Feel proud.
We created a look and feel that drew on the insights gathered, along with the EVP pillars and Rallying Cry, to position ForrestBrown in a fresh and exciting way. Distinctive, hand-drawn custom illustrations act as a visual representation of ForrestBrown and the creative, bespoke work we do for clients. Always used alongside birds-eye photography of real objects, that represent ForrestBrown’s various clients, it visually demonstrates how close employees are to the impact of their work. Illustrations are always positive and incorporate ‘real’ elements to form one bigger picture.
We also developed a tone of voice that accurately reflected ForrestBrown’s personality. Although they are professional, they aren’t corporate or boring. So, instead of hiding behind long sentences or meaningless jargon, we use a human tone: simple, clear and honest. Then we summed it all up with a comprehensive employer brand book.
The first stop on our activation journey was a brand-new careers website.
Next, we fully activated the employer brand across a series of marketing collateral, including exhibition stands, online banners, collateral for a ‘Gin Mixer’ event and HTML emails – plus a set of T-Shirts for a charity run.Since launching the new employer brand we’ve seen some amazing results both online and offline.
Careers site:
69% increase of unique visitors were brand new
9.08% bounce rate and 2.44 pages per session browsed
+ 3 mins and 10 secs dwell time
9.15% conversion on ‘visit to get in touch page’
377% increase in unique page views (average 1276 p/m in last four months compared to 268 p/m in four months prior)
425% increase in number of applicants coming to us via the website
We executed a sophisticated recruiting model that let Regis to hire quality candidates faster and at scale.As a service business, Regis Corporation’s success hinges on high-quality, high-volume hiring. While the demand for stylists is forecasted to grow, the number of new cosmetology graduates is declining. Couple the high competition for stylists with licensed professionals who are required to participate in a one- to-two-year program and as many as
2,000 continuing education hours, the challenge of hiring stylists for the industry’s largest employer is formidable. To address this, Regis needed a holistic talent strategy that prioritized the candidate experience and simplified the complex corporate and franchise hiring model across multiple brands.Kramer partnered with Symphony Talent, using its talent marketing platform as part of its new, sophisticated recruiting model. Kramer’s approach involved a recruiter-less, data-driven, solution. Targeting passive, licensed individuals at a high volume, it provides a single source of hiring for all of brands, while producing quality candidates at numbers not previously seen. Additionally, Symphony Talent designed and built the Regis Career Website to house all corporate and franchise jobs. It features built-in lead capture capabilities, along with a highly targeted media optimization strategy. The automation, smart spend, programmatic media and artificial intelligence-based solution completely automated the pipeline and recruiting process. This allowed hiring managers to do what they do best: close the deal and provide an over-the-top candidate experience.Regis now recruits licensed individuals at a high-volume in an extremely competitive space, without a single recruiter. Hiring managers are reaching out to pipelined candidates within 24-to-48 hours, which translates into a huge boost in recruiting results. Regis is also able to achieve its recruiting goals at scale. It also saw an 86 percent reduction in hiring time. By utilizing artificial intelligence, Regis’ employee referrals went from minimal participation to approximately 10 percent of all applications. Jacob Kramer, Regis Corporation’s Associate Vice President, Talent Acquisition, was recently named one of the “32 Under 32 ” thanks to his role in spearheading these unique initiatives. The “32 under 32” award recognizes individuals who push beyond what’s asked of them in order to disrupting the status quo. These are the early risers and late-nighters — after-work hustlers and the opportunity seekers.
To attract right-fit talent and meet high-volume hiring needs, DICK’s rethought — and articulated — its employer brand across all touchpoints.Like many retailers, DICK’S Sporting Goods has significantly grown its e-commerce business, making technology hires a priority. On the brick and mortar side, store associate hires are just as important – and the company seeks former athletes and
deeply knowledgeable sports enthusiasts and others who can give knowledgeable advice to customers. However, regardless of target audience, DICK’S career website content, job search function, and application process offered a less than stellar candidate experience.To attract right-fit talent, DICK’s had to rethink its Employer Brand, offering a candidate-centric experience across all touchpoints. Realizing in-person interaction was key to its specialized, high-volume hiring needs, DICK’S enlisted the help of its teammates, who created an in-store experience — National Signing Day — that brought its employer brand to life. Encouraging them on were pre-event internal communications, such as personalized recognition and thank you emails that highlighted individuals’ valued contributions. In order to bridge its online efforts with those in its physical stores, DICK’S turned to technology. It enlisted a programmatic push, complete with splash ads, career site pop-ups and National Signing Day-of videos shared across social channels in order to further bring the event to life and generate buzz.Taking a unique approach to talent marketing, DICK’S was able to leverage its “ownership” of the retail sports industry within its brick and mortar stores. Building an effective campaign around National Signing Day, it rallied the entire organization and fulfilled over 94 percent of its hiring goal for the season in one fell swoop. At the same time, the company significantly reduced its cost per applicant (CPA) and cost per hire (CPH) — 80 percent and 73 percent, respectively.
We streamlined and revamped talent acquisition efforts using trackable, optimized campaigns backed by real-time data.MedStar Washington Hospital Center, a not-for-profit, 912-bed academic medical center, and one of the busiest and largest hospital in Washington, D.C., is consistently recognized as one of the nation’s top hospitals, delivering quality clinical care to patients and the communities it serves. In order to ensure the highest level of care, MedStar Washington Hospital Center seeks the finest health care professionals and provides them with an environment focused on career growth and success.
Today’s changing trends in healthcare delivery require a better strategy for hiring the best specialized talent in fiercely competitive markets such as Washington, D.C. MedStar was having no problem getting responses to open positions.
However, in healthcare recruitment, quality matters much more than quantity. A majority of the applicants lacked the background and skills necessary to succeed. Additionally, the sheer volume of applicants made it difficult for their recruiters to quickly identify and onboard qualified talent. With resources strained and hiring timelines protracted, MedStar needed a solution capable of delivering top candidates quickly and more efficiently.By helping MedStar adjust the media choices to target only the best qualified candidates, Symphony Talent quickly turned the situation around. Symphony Talent helped streamline and revamp the entire talent acquisition process. The team began by analyzing MedStar’s current media plan and collaborating with their Media/Tracking Team to explore buys that would reach the most sought-after candidates. Through our programmatic advertising platform, MedStar was able to create campaigns using real-time data in order to inform ad buying decisions across multiple channels. Branded messaging was tagged, tracked, and continuously optimized to deliver more qualified candidates – faster and more cost effectively. Additionally, Symphony Talent streamlined MedStar’s media buying to focus on hard to-fill positions using programmatic media.The new approach improved efficiency nearly 200%, reducing MedStar’s application to hire ratio from 91:1 to 32:1
Symphony Talent helped MedStar reduce:
The number of applications by approximately 35%
Cost per media hire by over 50%
Overall media spend by 36%
We launched a campaign via YouTube vlogs to attract candy-loving candidates to Nestlé’s apprenticeships.Nestlé offer outstanding apprenticeship schemes in everything from engineering to finance. They wanted to reach and inspire potential candidates for the schemes using the digital channels those candidates were most likely to be on. One issue was that these schemes are not limited to a single
location but are delivered in various places all over the UK. Another was that Nestlé needed to increase diversity within their schemes, particularly in food manufacturing and factory-based roles where females are currently under-represented.Knowing our digitally savvy target audience as we do, we decided to promote our message using up-and-coming YouTube star @JanaVlogs. Jana is popular with people aged 16 to 19 (especially females) and is known for making fun ‘candy’-focused videos. In partnership with us, she created two Nestlé-themed vlogs, one involving her attempt to make the world’s biggest KitKat and the other her visit to Nestlé’s KitKat factory in York. Together, we pushed the videos out during National Apprentice Week through Nestlé Academy’s Facebook and Twitter and Jana’s own personal channels, including Instagram where she has an impressive 49,900 followers.The response has far exceeded our expectations. Comments on the videos – both on YouTube and across social – were extremely positive, with many individuals expressing their surprise at the opportunities available to them as an apprentice. And, unlike with traditional local advertising, we were able to clearly track reach and response. So far, both videos have received more than 70,000 views and there have been 1,000+ click-throughs to the Nestlé Academy site.
We executed a coordinated, global recruitment strategy, while activating — and memorably communicating — FCA’s employer brand.The merger of Fiat and Chrysler joined companies with over a century of heritage. To maximize the impact of its longstanding history, FCA had to instill employees’ emotional connection to the new organization, while maintaining the pride in the individual brands they work for and drive. Further, while FCA’s consumer brands are household names, other local brands — though well-known in a given market — lack recognition among the broader, global public. Given many
people throughout the world don’t recognize FCA name five years after the merger, it became apparent its employer value proposition required attention. That fact trickled down to its hiring efforts. FCA lacked a coordinated, global recruitment strategy. Each region — and sometimes individual brands — were communicating brand messages inconsistently. Additionally, nothing was in sync — they either lacked HR systems or were using different ones.As part of phase 1, extensive internal and external research was conducted to uncover FCA’s employer brand in North America, leading to employer brand pillars, a rallying cry and creative concepts. It then activated its employer brand through a new, global career website that personalizes the candidate experience based on location and click behavior. After a successful launch in North America, phase 2 kicked in. Global expansion was accelerated to flesh out its employer brand for an international audience. Global focus groups and interviews solidified its employer brand, while helping to pivot its tone and messaging based on local culture and industry. The global career site now provides job search results by acquiring job data from four different Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), while allowing locations that lack a system to manually create and feed jobs directly into the site. Then, jobs collected from various systems are combined into a single job data file. The site automatically personalizes the user experience in three key ways — by location, language preference and click activity. All told, FCA can now serve the appropriate creative, content, and jobs based on that location, conveying its employer brand and EVP in ways that resonate.FCA now has consistently — and compellingly — activated its global EVP. Personalization has led to a 24 percent increase in click-to-apply conversion on its career site. Meanwhile, activity from global regions — such as Brazil — has tripled, and activity in Italy has improved from 2 percent to 12 percent (phase 2 over phase 1). Additionally, FCA has experienced a 33 percent increase in global click-to-apply conversion rates. (phase 2 over phase 1). And 52 percent of users who created a profile are actively engaged in ongoing site visits, or by clicking on links in automated emails campaigns.
Hilton Grand Vacations combined AI, machine learning and automation with a solid employer brand to showcase its totally unique work culture.Formerly part of Hilton Worldwide, Hilton Grand Vacations (HGV) is now a separate legal entity. However, HGV lacks brand recognition. In fact, most people associated the HGV brand with resorts alone; in reality, it sells timeshares so there is a whole other level of sales and marketing at play. Adding to the complexity, HGV lacked a clearly defined employer brand and compelling story to showcase its work culture. Unfortunately, its career website was copy heavy, with multi-level talent pages that failed
to consider the user experience and didn’t adequately guide candidates down the funnel. Without full ownership over content on its career website, HGV didn’t have the ability to make changes in real time. Meanwhile, hiring itself posed challenges for recruiters. This was particularly true of its call center in Hawaii, which needed to attract bilingual real estate agents. Doing so required HGV draw from a very small, niche talent pool. Surprisingly, the tropical locale was also challenging to recruit to.Applying efforts in multiple languages, HGV employed AI, machine learning and automation, while solidifying its employer brand; finding ways to showcase its unique work culture; and clarifying exactly how HGV does — and doesn’t — relate to its former parent company. HGV overhauled its career website, gaining the ability to make changes in real time. Using a mobile- first, fully responsive approach, Google Cloud Talent Solution and machine learning-powered search capabilities are now at work on the career site, too, efficiently and accurately delivering enhanced job descriptions to right-fit candidates to increase engagement. Multiple levels of personalization were enlisted at the job description level, based on talent types. Lightweight and easy-to-navigate, a simple job search feature and double-sticky navigation are now employed at the job level as well.
Meanwhile, long job description lists were elminated in favor of digestible, accessible tabs. And content — expressing HGV’s employer brand with personalized videos or day-in-the-life video testimonials that correlate with job searches — is interactive and paired down or tucked into features and functions. Offering a single source of data, Symphony Talent’s talent marketing platform introduced next-level media buying decisions and integrated the candidate and recruiter experience using the same data.Thanks to ATS – CRM integration, HGV can now view application status and application information — such as which job a candidate applied for and what its status is. At the same time, it’s fed into, and reflected in, analytics from Taleo. Centralizing its efforts, all of HGV’s media spend is in one place — an approach that maximizes its ROI.
In the first seven weeks since going live with its Google Cloud Talent Solution-powered job search, HGV achieved a 21 percent reduction on job search bounce rates and 8 percent fewer multiple search results when it comes to page views. Additionally, the company has seen an 8 percent reduction in time spent on job searches and a 5 percent lift in conversion rates from job searches as compared to the prior six months.
Symphony Talent Mission
If you’re passionate, collaborative, and ambitious, then we’d love to hear from you. What’s it like to be a part of the Symphony Talent team? Watch it first hand from our very own employees – the heart of our business.
