🧪 Employer Brand Headlines #148: The "What Do All The People Know?" Edition
Trying to be "the best" employer brand isn't the right goal.
Mission: Create a million employer brand thinkers
Written by James Ellis. »» Say hello! ««
In this issue…
Being the best?
Deep narratives
Beging relatable
Culture is behavior
The big idea
Every company who is building (or growing) their employer brand has one thing on their mind.
How do I compete against Facebook? Or Google? Or Tesla? Or Coinbase? (And yes, I know each and every one of these once best-in-class brands has suffered some serious credibility and branding issues in the last month or two. It’s almost like I picked them on purpose…)
It’s all the same question with different labels. Everyone wants to know how to be the best employer brand.
But that’s not possible.
There are a couple of technical reasons for this.
First, what one person likes another despises and vice versa. You can’t be something loved by everyone.
Second, what made you a great brand will not keep you the best brand. Contexts change. Industries change. Talent motivations change.
Third, it takes a LONG TIME to create a meaningful brand impression, but people only look for work in short windows.
Finally, unless you need to hire 3.2MM people this year, what exactly is the value of being “the best” brand?
Having a successful employer brand isn’t measured in “best place to work” awards or splashy press releases. It is measured in that moment when the candidate is presented with a job opening from your company. It is measured in whether they Google your jobs site directly when they are thinking about making a move. It is when someone looks at their available options and chooses you.
The “best brand” is gets that way by offering perks that people can talk about while a great employer brand knows that the people it wants to hire are motivated by having their work ship. A “best brand” buys lots of ads (and platforms) to make sure it is always in consideration for national awards while a great employer brand is comfortable being a well-kept-secret among the avionics engineers (or CRISPR scientists or ICU nurses or baristas). A “best brand” caters to what the most people like while a strong employer brand knows it only needs a hundred of the world’s best robotics engineers (or SaaS architects or CMOs or HRBPs) to see them as the perfect choice.
The goal isn’t to be “the best brand” because that’s not how people look for work. The goal is to be the best option.
Season 2 of The Talent Cast continues!
The revised and annotated audio version of Talent Chooses You (all singing, all dancing!) continues with episode 20, where we learn how to talk to interesting candidates (at parties).
Headlines!
Elon Musk’s return-to-office threat to Tesla staff sparks Twitter spat with Australian billionaire
Everything your company does impacts employer brand. More to the point, your competitors know that, too. (And there’s no possible way this is MuskRat’s way for getting people to leave so he can lower headcount without announcing layoffs. Nope, not at all…🙃)[Guardian]
New Deep Narratives
We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, so what happens when that story changes? Could understanding this allow you to help prospects and candidates tell a new story (with your company in it)? [CultureHack]
Goodbye Relevance, Hello Relatability
“The brands that are winning today have already discovered that ‘being relevant’ is a dying industry, and the only way to move forward is through relatability… Brands must now behave like mirrors of our psyches and attempt to forge relatable, intimate connections.” [Concept Bureau]
How to collaborate on content across business functions
Content creation can be a political minefield. So how do you tell stories across functions? [Ragan]
Three ways to prevent hybrid work from breaking your company culture
Culture comes from behaviors. [strategy+business]
3 Ways to use “Growth Mindset” Language in Job Ad
I point this out to show how small changes in language either set or destroy the frame and claims you’re trying to make. [OnGig]
10 Signs It’s Time to Pull the Plug on Your Marketing Campaign
Nothing lasts for ever. [HubSpot]
Inside the fortune cookie
“A clear and compelling brand story gives products context and narrative, which can help increase their desirability. When a brand sells products, it’s selling a story. When consumers buy products, they are buying into this story.” - Ana Andjelic
Thanks, everyone!
This newsletter now has more than 2,100 subscribers. Thank you!
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:
The Monroes - What Do All The People Know?
It feels like something straight off the Valley Girl soundtrack: Indie LA pop rock: a thin veneer of snark covering earnestness. This track is a real hidden gem: it was never really a hit, and the band never put out more than an EP, but it is such a great song. Give it a few minutes, and you’ll never get it out of your head.
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:
