🧪 Employer Brand Headlines #147: The "Shout to the Top" Edition
What are the four legs every employer brand stands on?
Mission: Create a million employer brand thinkers
Written by James Ellis. »» Say hello! ««
In this issue…
The four legs of the employer brand stool
The long and short of it
The courage to be different
The big idea
It’s a holiday here in the US, so this week’s edition will be a bit shorter than usual.
Every strong employer brand rests on the answers to four questions":
What is the employee experience at work?
Chaotic because there’s so much to do? Rigid because everyone knows their lane? Political? Communal? Individualistic? A safe haven? A place someone can grow, or a place someone should expect to fight? What should the day-to-day experience an employee should expect and does it match how that person likes to work?What is the vision of the company?
Where is the company going? Is everyone working towards that hockey stick moment, or is that in the rear view mirror? Who will the competitors be next? Will they be the challenger or the leader? The person you want to hire might want one but not the other.What are the job/company options someone has?
Biochemists can work at research hospitals, universities, big pharma or biotech startups. SaaS sales leaders can work for established SaaS companies or SaaS startups. Developers can work at tech unicorns, large banks, F500 manufacturing, or code startups. Lawyers, recruiters and accountants can work almost anywhere. Your brand exists as a function of one’s options.What does your target audience desire in their next employer?
Do they want freedom and opportunity or stability and collaboration (not that those things are mutually exclusive)? Do they want a small company or a global monster? Do they want their employer to care about DEI and social good or not? Do they need remote/hybrid/flexible work or do they need to collaborate face-to-face? These are demands/desires independent their current situation, but if you want to be on their target list, they need to know you offer these things.
Don’t skip to the end. I know having a cool tagline and a design system feels like the goal, but they are meaningless unless you’ve nailed down the answers here.
Season 2 of The Talent Cast continues!
The revised and annotated audio version of Talent Chooses You (all singing, all dancing!) continues with episode 19 where we talk about how to distill and communicate your employer brand.
Headlines!
Top 5 Most Critical CMO Priorities For B2C Brands
Spoiler: Employer brand is #1 [Forbes]
Can you achieve long and short at the same time? Usually, no
Can you build a brand (long term thinking) while activating direct sales (short-term needs) at the same time? It’s worth considering while you build an employer brand while trying to hit hiring targets. [MarketingWeek]
10 Red Flags That May Indicate Your New Hire Is a Bad Fit
Hmmm… I wonder if there’s a way to test for some of these things during the candidate journey [Small Business Trends]
Brand Leadership Has A Courage Requirement
You can lead by doing what others do. You can’t play “follow the leader” to the front. You need to be willing to have the courage to do something different? More to the point, can you convince others to be different with you? See also NOBL’s post on Being Different. [Branding Strategy Insider]
How to Respond When an Employee Quits
Where does your employer brand come from? Very often, it comes from the mouths of those who are leaving. [HBR]
Key Stats That Prove the Importance of Employer Branding
Don’t bother 🙄. This is just a rehash of exactly the same stats we’ve been sharing with each other for the last eight years. What does it say that we’re sharing stuff dated 2011? I mean, 2011 is the year Siri and iCloud were released. Snapchat hadn’t been invented yet. Almost no one had heard of Instagram. [Recruiter.com]
Inside the fortune cookie
“We don’t know who discovered water, but we’re certain it wasn’t a fish.” - John Culkin
Thanks, everyone!
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Keep sharing issues!Search the 1,400 links in the newsletter archive.
Read Talent Chooses You for free from this open source Google Doc.
Here’s the 2022 version of The Employer Brand Manifesto.
If you have a question, reply to this email. It comes directly to me.
Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn)
Where the subject line came from:
Style Council - Shout To The Top
The early 80’s had this weird 60’s revival. From Steve Winwood, Aretha Franklin and even the Grateful Dead having late-career hits, to the whole “London remembers it invented teenagers” thing (see: the film Absolute Beginners), the Style Council really embraced it. Born from the ashes of Paul Weller’s previous band The Jam, who themselves felt like a throwback, there’s great horns, a killer beat and a hearty injection of soul to make this a great track.
If you are enjoying the music, congratulations, you’re old! Just for you, I made a Spotify playlist of all the subject line 80’s songs I’ve referenced over the last year and a half. You don’t even need hairspray to enjoy it:
