Founded in 1959, OppenheimerFunds, a leader in global asset management, is dedicated to providing solutions for its partners and end investors. The firm and its subsidiaries manage more than $219 billion in assets for over 13 million shareholder accounts, including sub-accounts, as of November 30, 2016.
The firm’s 15 investment management teams specialize in equity, fixed-income, alternative, multi-asset, and revenue-weighted-ETF strategies. OppenheimerFunds and its subsidiaries offer a broad array of products and services to clients ranging from endowments and sovereigns to financial advisors and individual investors. OppenheimerFunds and certain subsidiaries provide advisory services to the Oppenheimer family of funds, and OFI Global Asset Management offers solutions to institutions.
As OppenheimerFunds expands its business services into new areas in 2017, the firm expects its hiring volume to increase from ~200 annual hires in 2016 to 300+ in 2017. A large portion of these new hires will be in new departments and new geographies, stretching the talent acquisition team into uncharted territory.
The talent acquisition team itself, however, is remaining flat. With eight recruiters in total (between NYC and Denver), each team member juggles 13-15 open reqs at once while serving every line of business within the organization. The team also faces challenges in easily finding quality talent in environments like Denver & NYC where unemployment is low and competition is high.
While we look for many different skillsets based on each role, there are a few core competencies we look for in all our candidates: a focus on clients and results, a propensity to be forward-thinking, and the ability to collaborate.
Branding: OppenheimerFunds reaches hard-to-recruit technical candidates through LinkedIn’s employment branding and automated media solutions like Sponsored Updates, Recruitment Ads and Lead Capture solution.
These solutions also enable OppenheimerFunds to fuel a particularly creative recruitment strategy—quarterly partnership, advocacy, connection, and engagement (PACE) events. These events are hosted around the country to humanize the OppenheimerFunds employer brand with key talent, differentiate the firm from the competition, and keep talent warm outside of the interview process. LinkedIn is a fundamental channel in driving awareness and attendance; the team shares the events on LinkedIn, reaches out via InMail to advertise, and asks 1st degree connections to share with their networks. To date, LinkedIn has driven over 800 registrants to these events, resulting in two new hires in six months.
Quarterly PACE events, with attendance largely driven through LinkedIn, serve to keep talent warm and differentiate OppenheimerFunds from the competition.
The team has also collaborated with their social media team to build a comprehensive presence on their LinkedIn Careers Page. In addition, the firm’s Company Page has more than 45,000 followers as of November 2016 and its CIO and CEO are regular publishers.
As a result of this combination of efforts, 46 percent of recent hires were followers of OppenheimerFunds before joining the firm. The firm has also grown its LinkedIn Talent Brand Index (TBI) (a score measuring brand strength on LinkedIn) to the 25% quartile—with an even higher TBI of 32% for members in a finance function. The firm understands the importance of extending its employment brand to reach and engage candidates who may not have actively considered OppenheimerFunds as an employer.
Jobs:
100% of OppenheimerFunds jobs are posted on LinkedIn and 83% of the firm’s total hires from LinkedIn came through job applications. This is due to the dynamic and targeted nature of LinkedIn jobs: each post targets the right potential candidates through Jobs You May Be Interested In, ads on LinkedIn profiles, and other job recommendations. LinkedIn’s mobile-friendly job search and apply experience added value too—more than a third (39%) of all OppenheimerFunds job views were on mobile.
The firm also uses LinkedIn Lead Capture to drive job views and applications. To become an employer of choice to IT candidates in Denver, OppenheimerFunds launched a lead capture campaign with Sponsored Content and Ads. This approach has been particularly successful because the firm has all of the same (51) open jobs posted on LinkedIn.
OppenheimerFunds has seen strong results from the full suite of LinkedIn Talent Solutions products working together. By focusing on employer brand engagement and making all job openings discoverable on LinkedIn, the firm has driven an incredible 99 total hires from LinkedIn — 49% of all the firm’s hires — in the past 12 months.
Here’s a look at how the OppenheimerFunds talent acquisition team achieved their success:
54% of job viewers are passive talent (individuals who view OppenheimerFunds jobs through the LinkedIn homefeed rather than through searching)
OppenheimerFunds’ Career Page has almost 50,000 followers, many working in the financial services industry and interested in the firm as a place to work
- 26% of new hires in the last 12 months were following OppenheimerFunds on LinkedIn before being hired, suggesting engagement on LinkedIn as a factor in choosing the firm as an employer.
The OppenheimerFunds team has learned a lot from their recruitment initiatives this year and hopes to share their learnings with their peers facing similar challenges. Here are the team’s top 3 tips for success in recruitment with LinkedIn:
Take advantage of employer brand engagement on LinkedIn -- reach out and follow up with individuals who like, comment, or share your brand’s activities on LinkedIn to make new connections and keep current candidates warm.
Ask employees with prominent LinkedIn profiles to join relevant LinkedIn Groups and act as brand ambassadors.
- Educate your hiring managers of the benefits of having employees on LinkedIn. Mitigate fears of poaching by explaining that when employees are visible and prominent on social networks, they become brand beacons who can connect and engage with new talent.