28 Jun Authority Magazine: An Interview With EnsembleIQ Chief People Officer Ann Jadown About 5 Ways to Attract & Retain Top Talent

EnsembleIQ Chief People Officer Ann Jadown

Chief People Officer Ann Jadown leads all aspects of people strategy at EnsembleIQ, a North American business intelligence company delivering insightful information and actionable connections in retail, retail technology, consumer goods, healthcare, and hospitality. Her key areas of responsibility include talent acquisition, leadership development, performance management, employee engagement, benefits, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives — and company culture enhancements driving and supporting business growth. Taking the time to hire the best talent instead of rushing to fill a position is critical when putting together a high-performance team. As part of its human resources strategy series, Authority Magazine interviewed Ann about her strategies to attract and retain top talent — both to help to teach prospects what hiring managers are actually looking for, and to provide guidance to other business leaders in their hiring and retention strategies.

Highlights of the interview include these five techniques used by EnsembleIQ to identify top-tier talent:

Culture. The culture of EnsembleIQ is an essential component of the hiring process. We have a positive culture that encourages, supports, and celebrates the diversity of our employees, customers, and community. Embracing diversity enables us to strengthen the core of our organization, allowing for continued growth, innovation, and success. Prospective employees look for a culture that is supportive, flexible, and development-driven.

We utilized Comparably, a workplace culture evaluation firm, and launched a culture assessment survey to collect feedback from our employees. We were confident that our results would be strong. And our high marks have allowed us to attract new talent.

In today’s hiring environment, almost every prospective employee asks whether or not we have a DEI Program. We understand employees need to feel they are part of something important and the program, which includes 35 people and three employee-driven task forces focused on Community, Cultural Competence, and Cultural Belonging, allows employees to get involved, give back and make an impact both internally and externally.

Referral Bonus Program: EnsembleIQ is always looking to grow its team. Employees that refer an applicant who is hired are paid a $2,000 referral bonus. Our bonus program is our second-largest technique to hire great talent.

Research shows that employees who come from employee referrals tend to be high performers and stay with the company for longer periods of time. And in our experience, great talent refers great talent.

Diversity Recruiting Platforms: At EnsembleIQ we believe in a diverse workforce. A diverse workforce increases employee morale and also helps to better understand customer needs.

We utilize diversity recruiting software such as Seekout and WayUp to identify qualified applicants for job openings. We have successfully hired several candidates through use of this technology.

Social Media. Social media is very important to attracting new employees to the company. We post all of our open positions on social media, which allows our employees to spread the word through their networks to refer good people to the company.

Our social media accounts serve as EnsembleIQ’s employment marketing, showcasing the company, its culture, and our successes. Who doesn’t want to work for a great, unique company? By sharing who EnsembleIQ is through our social media accounts we organically attract candidates.

We feature everything about our company on social media. For instance, a candidate can truly get an understanding of who EnsembleIQ is from our LinkedIn page because we include everything about our company from our culture to our accolades on this page.

We feature our employees on social media. For example, each Tuesday one of our employees takes over our social accounts on #TakeoverTuesay. This is where we celebrate and acknowledge employees who have shown their proven track record of driving growth at EnsembleIQ.

Compelling Job Descriptions: Creating comprehensive and compelling job descriptions are vital in the recruiting process. From our best place to work award, to the description of the company and the culture to the benefits and the description of the job responsibilities, it is important to have good, consistent information to help attract the right employees and describe the exact role needed.

Due to the robust information we post, we have been able to hire very strong candidates to fill our hiring needs.

To learn more about how Ann leads EnsembleIQ in attracting and retaining top talent, read the full interview, here.