Kim Nixon, Human Resources Manager at NetApp recently opened up on how NetApp have managed to become a star employer of choice in the IT industry. She discusses what key points they bear in mind when recruiting and retaining talent. She also discusses how their internal referral program has helped NetApp keep attrition low. Kim Nixon will be speaking at the Recruitment and Retention in the IT Sector Conference. For more information about the event, please visit www.recruitmentinIT.com.au or call +61 2 9229 1000 or email enquire@iqpc.com.au

1. Strong Internal Referral Program Keeps Attrition Low
Q&A with Kim Nixon, Human Resources Manager at NetApp
Recruitment & Retention in the IT Sector 2011
Human Resources IQ
In recent years we’ve seen IT recruitment being increasingly social media focus. IT
recruiters and HR professionals are using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, and
others, to find quality candidates. So what is your approach to social media
recruitment? What kind of role does it play in your strategies?
Kim Nixon
It’s definitely becoming a big focus I’d say particularly at a global level within our
company and within other countries. I think that probably they are focusing more
strongly in this area. In Australia, we’re doing this less because we do actually find
that we are able to find the correct people for our business. We have a lot of
avenues particularly through employee referral that we actually do find… we locate
the right people with the right skills. It’s important they’re a good cultural fit as well.
So it’s probably less important to us at the moment, but certainly really high on the
agenda. As for LinkedIn, it would probably be one the more popular modes that we
would use. We do have some partners that we worked with on our recruiting (mainly
all outsourced) so I know that they rely on LinkedIn very heavily to sort candidates
out.
Human Resources IQ
Now, how do you actually manage your company presence both online and offline to
make sure that you’re the employer of choice? How do you make people want to
work for you?
Kim Nixon
We have a dedicated marketing person, he is responsible for our product marketing
area and it’s his responsibility to own a lot of blogs, and social networking pages and
overall be a very proactive base. As far as targets go, it is to mainly communicate
with the technical community, within our client base, but at the same time, it goes
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2. without saying that we’re getting footprints and we’re getting our name out there. So,
this way, NetApp is high in the minds of people when they’re thinking about job
searching and when they’re looking for something else to move on to. So, as far as
recruitment and attracting people, probably I’m not involved direction-wise, but
certainly in terms of as a company, we’re able to get a lot of messaging out through
these sites.
Human Resources IQ
Where do you actually look for IT recruitment and retention strategies? Do you look
for externally? Do you look internally? Or do you look on the web?
Kim Nixon
So internally, around 30% of our job is to internally source our candidates. We are
very active in moving people into promotions and to different jobs as they come up,
so that we give those people internally at this preference for what comes up. Then, I
would say probably of the external people that we bring on board, round about
maybe 55% to 60% of those people come through internal referrals. We have a
really attractive benefits-reward program with our referrals. Any employee who does
successfully refer a person into the company will get US $2,500. We tend to get
really great candidates through this process. So, I’m a firm believer that likes do
attract and so I think if we got a pretty good employee in our group they are likely to
want to bring on really good people as well, and only want to bring on great people
that they’ve worked with in the past. So, if I was to look at our attrition, for example,
it’s around about 6%. And the attrition that the people that we do lose the majority of
those do not come from internal referrals. Very rarely would we ever lose a person
from an internal referral.
Human Resources IQ
It’s well known that IT professionals don’t really job seek, so what kind of innovative
strategies does NetApp have in place to overcome this?
Kim Nixon
I think I’ve already talked about the referral program. So I think, a lot of the issue
stems from the small industry that we’re in. We’re in the data storage area and it’s
very small. We’re very conscious about hiring very successful managers and I think
a lot of these managers are able to bring on people they’ve worked within the past. I
know in some companies you find the odd line manager who people just don’t want
to work for them. They don’t have a good reputation. But I think we have a very
good management team here and it attracts a lot of people who want to work for that
management… for that particular manager because of their experience in the past.
So, where do we look for people? It’s mainly through networking. We do use
recruitment companies to do some hiring, but we keep that list of supplies very small.
We like them to be aligned with our business, and that they think within our culture
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3. and our values because we don’t want to just find a person who can do the job and
fill a hole - it’s got to be someone who’s really going to fit in to our culture as well. So
I suppose it’s a very old-fashioned sort of way of finding people, but we do see that
working well for us, so we tend to fill our roles very quickly within two to three weeks.
Kim Nixon, Human Resources Manager at NetApp, will be speaking at the
Recruitment and Retention in IT Sector Conference. For more information
about the event, please visit www.recruitmentinit.com.au or call us on 02-9229-
1000. Alternatively, you can email us on enquire@iqpc.com.au.
Don't forget, you can also follow on Twitter @iqpc_australia.
Human Resources IQ
Can you please tell us a bit about your experience and your role at NetApp?
Kim Nixon
Sure, no problem. I have been with NetApp for around 4-1/2 years and I’m
the Human Resources Manager for Australia and New Zealand, and it’s been
a pretty exciting role for me, particularly given the great place to work abroad.
We’ve been able to secure a license in Australia so it’s a fantastic company to
work for and I have been in the IT industry all my career and I’d have to say
it’s probably the best IT company I’ve ever worked for.
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