DirectEmployers Association A non profit association of employers

Carrie Corbin
Associate Director of Talent Attraction, AT&T

She survived losing everything in the 1999 Oklahoma tornadoes, has been quoted in the New York Times, is an adjunct faculty member at University of Phoenix & Rose State College and manages the staffing strategy and employment brand for one of the world’s most recognized brands. Somehow she also finds time to squeeze in presenting at some of the industry’s most respected conferences. And this only scratches the surface of Carrie Corbin’s feats.

Amidst everything on her plate, last May she spearheaded the Oklahoma Donation Tweet-Up to help tornado victims, and was able to quickly mobilize volunteers and donations through social media. She wanted to give back in a big way to help those that were in a situation she faced over 10 years ago. The DirectEmployers Association is humbled to have the support of this incredible woman. We were able to catch up with Corbin recently to learn why she values AT&T’s membership with DirectEmployers, her perspective on .jobs and how she leverages our resources.

Carrie, can you tell us about yourself?
I’m Carrie Corbin. I’m the Associate Director of Talent Attraction at AT&T and have been there for about 4 years.

Tell me, what has your relationship with DirectEmployers been like and how does it impact you on a daily basis?
Over the last few years we [AT&T team] made a conscious decision to put a more concentrated effort on our relationship with DirectEmployers. The Association has been so progressive with some of the initiatives in place – specifically with the .jobs Universe. In examining the different ways we can be more effective and efficient as a talent attraction group – especially with the high volume of hiring that we do at AT&T – it completely made sense for us to take full advantage of the resources you offer; things like the ability to get involved, network with our peers and really be able to have a voice within the industry have been truly beneficial.

As a talent acquisition professional, what is your impression of .jobs?
As soon as I heard about the .jobs initiative, it was something I was all over from AT&T’s perspective as something we should take advantage of. We have incorporated search engine optimization in our approach to managing our online presence to help ensure job seekers find us directly, so this was just one more step in that direction. To give people the ability to simply type in retail jobs or Dallas jobs in a search engine and have our jobs show because they’re relevant to the search term, combined with the fact that the posting directly links to our site and it’s free since we’re a Member company…there’s just absolutely no reason why we wouldn’t take advantage of that.

There are some other things within the .jobs Universe like social integration to make it really easy for recruits to find you. What are some of those things that you’re excited about?

AT&T has really focused on having a suite of interactive technologies, different tools and resources to be able to reach candidates…and we understand that we need to go where the candidates are. With that said, we have gotten involved with using Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn as some different areas where we reach talent. With the .jobs Universe platform, it is set up to completely integrate with all of our social networking. All the places candidates can find us are centrally aggregated into one spot. The candidate can find us directly at our website or on any of the other sites we’re on.

For those people who have never heard of DirectEmployers, or just know a little bit about the Association, what might you say to them about considering a membership?
When you evaluate your return on investment and look at the value of the suite of services that DirectEmployers offers and the low price point, it absolutely makes sense for anybody that has a recruiting strategy at all, or even if they don’t, to be able to go out to DirectEmployers and take advantage of everything offered. When you look at the business model, all of the resources made available, and the ability to pull in the compliance element and job distribution to niche sites that get us connected with the vets and disability population, it makes it just a very easy, simple solution.

Why did you attend the Annual Conference?
My first year attending was 2010. It was something that we were pretty adamant about trying to attend because we had gotten so much more involved with DirectEmployers. When we looked at what was being offered with the quality and types of speakers, along with relevant and useful content, we knew it would be worth our time and wanted to take advantage of the event and the opportunity to meet and network with board members and member companies. It’s just a great opportunity to take advantage of.

Last question for you Carrie. Tell me about the military classification – how that’s worked into the .jobs Universe and what that means for AT&T.
When the .jobs Universe was brought to us, we were enamored with the possibilities of how many different ways we could use .jobs. We could do geographic, we could do industry, and so several of us [members] started asking, “Can we do military.jobs, disability.jobs, green.jobs?” Once we got over our excitement and actually started to pare that down and find ways to make practical applications, DirectEmployers did a lot of research to see how we could make this relevant. They came back to us with the Military Occupational Crosswalk – which is part of the coding for job classification in the military so it makes for an easy way to transition for someone who is coming out of the military. If they [members of the military] know, for example, that their job code is equal to a mechanical engineer, then they can type in their job code and it should pull up the relevant content for a civilian job. It also helps take the onus off the employer of knowing what all of those job codes are and how they translate.

Editor’s note: Don’t miss Carrie Corbin and DirectEmployers as we present together at this year’s NACE Conference.