This guest post presented on behalf of Heather Polivka.

As the Dir. of Employment Marketing at UnitedHealth Group, Heather led the development of the Employer Brand from methodology to creative execution and well beyond. After launching the company’s benchmark careers site, her passion for marketing and drive for innovation enabled her to apply consumer marketing techniques to the Talent Aquisition function at UnitedHealth Group. Today she oversees UnitedHealth Groups' full-scale social recruiting strategy. That strategy is coupled with behavioral management to ensure they're not only participating, they're leading by example.

Heather's attendance at a variety of social media conferences over the past year, hosted by multiple organizations, groups, and functional expertise caused her to stop and think about the ongoing disconnect between HR, Marketing, PR, Communications and Customer Service. Below are her thoughts and observations from these events along with some advice for the HR community.

 At a recent cross-functional social media event, one thing really stood out to me:

"I was the only social media person in attendance that sits within Human Resources."

Full disclosure, I'm a marketing person who now sits in Human Resources. And while PR, Marketing, Communications, and Customer Service were all represented and discussed in the larger context of social media….Human Resources was not.

Sure, most companies are discussing social media training and implementing social media policies. But what about the brand experience being communicated to potential employees? You know, the people who will ultimately deliver on the company’s consumer brand promise? 

What about the career websites? How about the countless recruiters using social media to attract and engage talent as front line brand ambassadors?  Have they been trained in the corporate and consumer brands, much less their linkage to the employer brand?  I suspect not.

Then I got to thinking about the Social Media conferences I have attended geared to Human Resources and couldn’t recall seeing PR, Marketing, Communications, or Customer Service represented at those conferences, much less discussed.

My concern? Is Human Resources even at the company’s social media table? Or is HR, if engaging in social media at all, still operating inside a silo? To learn what I could from my peers, I did a highly unscientific polling of my community over the past several few days and have found my observation to be true.

Ask yourself, is it true for your company?

Many marketing functions within an organization have no idea of the communication touch points that are leveraged by Human Resources and within recruiting specifically.  I know I didn’t.  Most would be surprised at the branding, marketing, and media spend. Although it is usually quite small compared to their budgets!

People are social media. That's why it's critical for HR, PR, Marketing and Communications to meet up. Provide full transparency to what you are doing, and why.  Align yourselves with them.  Become their partners.  Leverage their strategy and tactics for your purposes, as appropriate. Did I mention their budgets are bigger and resources more plentiful?

Claim your seat at the table.

How will you know you’ve done that? I'll see you at the next social media conference!

~ Heather

 Connect with Heather on Twitter and keep the conversation going.

 Heather also took her point-of-view on HR and Marketing collaboration to the Minnesota AMA Local Chapter blog. Be sure to check it out and add your 2 cents.

Meanwhile, I've dusted off a post from the Vocii archives: Introductions to HR, Marketing and the concept of Brand Convergence.