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Just one look at Progessive Insurance’s career site and there’s the immediate impression that this recruiting team gets it. The site offers glimpses into specific careers via short videos, a talent network powered by Jobster, and a selection of career paths so new grads can explore their potential. Their entire application process, from hello to handshake, is published front and center so that applicants remain educated on the evolution of their application.

I spoke with Progessive’s Brand Director of Employment and Marketing and their Manager of Executive Recruiting to talk about their recent push for brand consistency, their internal Facebook recruiting team, and the Progressive career site’s overhaul.

Please give me some background on yourself and your position.

Mari Pumarejo, Brand Director, Employment Marketing.
Gretchen Snediker, Manager, Executive and MBA Recruiting

Tell me about your recruiting team - what positions do you source for, how many people are on your team, and are sourcing and recruiting separate functions?

The National Employment Team is comprised of approximately 100 people working in coordinating, sourcing, recruiting, and management roles across the country. We recruit in four major areas: corporate/professional positions, with a heavy focus on analysts, IT, Claims, and Customer Experience (sales and service contact centers).

The recruiters own the entire recruiting process, but they are assisted by other areas. For example, the brand group works on national media buys, online media, emerging media opportunities, creative development, community/organization sponsorships, and passive candidate management. Additionally, most teams are supported by one or more candidate developers or sourcers.

What program are you most proud of that (or that has seen the most success) that your team has developed?

Last year we made some strategic moves to ensure we are seen as an employer of choice. Our first move was to hire an employment brand agency and EB Director (Mari) to gain a better understand of our current position in the market, help us establish a strategy around the target candidates we want to hire, and execute that strategy using new and emerging media options and a structured marketing department approach.

As a result we launched a new marketing campaign and ensured its message permeated consistently across all candidate touchpoints, from our web site, jobs.progressive.com, and ATS, to collateral materials, recruiters scripting, presentations, display booths, emails, even giveaways. This consistency in our communication continues to make our message stronger.

This year Progressive hired our first CMO, Larry Bloomenkranz, and so we’re especially excited to work with Larry and his team in leveraging the strength of the Progressive brand.

Are you using any Web 2.0 technologies to recruit?

Yes. Last year Progressive became the first auto insurer to upgrade their site to Web 2.0, and this included our recruitment site. In January we hired Christy Palfy as our Manager of Online Social Network and Emerging Media. Christy’s role is to test the most successful technologies and implement them nationwide. We have already seen some early positive results.

Specific to Facebook, this summer we hired an intern who had “the coolest internship of the summer.” Her job was to get the entire recruiting organization to learn Facebook and create profiles. We developed an internal Facebook recruiting group that’s currently used by our recruiters to become more familiar with the application, and soon we will be officially opening this space to our candidates. We have partnered with Jobster to supplement our ATS by handling our passive candidate flow, management and communication. As you can probably tell, we are all looking forward to this.

How are you recruiting Gen Y?

Hiring Christy to manage online social networks was intended as a way to reach this target in the places they visit. Last year we upgraded our web site to include Gen Y-friendly tools, altered the tone of the site to be more conversational and to the point, and added information more relevant to this target, such as information on our culture, our art collection, and diversity initiatives.

We have continue to learn new initiatives that are important to the Gen Y generation and promote what we do about them, such as environmental causes. Progressive is the official sponsor of X Prize- community involvement, and our rotational programs.

Do you utilize job boards? Do you think they are still important in the recruiting space, or are they dying out? What are some of your favorite sourcing tools?

We still do utilize some job boards, however research is telling us that less than a quarter of hires come from them, and our results confirm this. So we have been and continue to shift our media spend to sources that yield better results for our specific targets, such as niche sites, social networking, and local activation opportunities.

Any new programs/initiatives your team is developing?

Candidate experience is a really important focus to us. Recruiting is an extension of the Progressive brand. Every candidate is a customer or a potential customer. So we work very hard to manage each candidate touchpoint with their experience in mind.

Progressive uses an NPS to measure customer experience. We’ve applied the same methodology to the candidate experience. We survey every candidate who’s been turned down for a position to gauge their experience. The driving questions is, “would you refer a friend to work at Progressive?”

It provides some very powerful data which has enabled us to improve the candidate experience and, hopefully, reinforce the Progressive brand.