🧪 Employer Brand Headlines #150: The "My Brave Face" Edition
Candidates don’t pick the “best” offer, they pick the most certain offer.
Mission: Create a million employer brand thinkers (that means you!)
Written by James Ellis. »» Say hello! ««
In this issue…
Why don’t candidates take your amazing offer?
Belonging?
Update your EVP?
The three musketeers
The big idea
Let’s admit something: to the prospects and candidates you talk to don’t believe a word you say. They don’t believe a word of your job postings. They don’t believe a word of your career site. They don’t believe a word of your outreach messages.
It’s not you. You’re great. It’s the system.
Interviewing and hiring is a completely antagonistic system: Candidates don’t believe you (because you have an agenda) and hiring managers don’t believe the candidate (they know the candidate has an agenda).
So what do we do? This is a not an accusation, this is an admission of us all being human. What we do is we turn the volume up. Our benefits aren’t good, they are “world class.” Our tech isn’t top-notch, it is state-of-the-art bleeding edge. Our people aren’t just “competent and welcoming,” they are “a family.”
The more we feel like we aren’t heard in the maelstrom and chaos, we amp up our claims, and the more we do that, the more candidates pull away.
It’s a kind of self-sabotage.
Allow me to make a suggestion. Focus less on claiming “bigger” or “better” and spend all that time making what you claim more real, more concrete.
Candidates don’t pick the “best” offer, they pick the most certain offer.
So help them feel certain.
Season 2 of The Talent Cast continues!
The revised and annotated audio version of Talent Chooses You (all singing, all dancing!) continues with episode 22, where we make decisions about what content you need to build for any given audience.
Headlines!
Why Belonging Is Key to Building the New Workforce
Your candidates are wondering if and how they will belong, but your career site is glossy pics of models. See the issue? [MITSloan]
The Talent Gap: Why Companies Are Failing to Hire and Keep People and How to Fix It
Eva Baluchova sees the problem at a 30k-ft view and identifies the systemic issues. And then just to show off, she drops in some seriously good advice. [LinkedIn]
Data-driven arguments on why you should update your EVP
Barbara Zych uncovers some research on the power of an updated EVP. (BTW, I’m presenting a masterclass on competitive brand audits at her next EB Stars event.) [LinkedIn]
Why the return to the office isn’t working
Not to beat a dead horse, but asking staff to come back to work just because you prefer it isn’t going to fly. You need a SERIOUSLY good comms strategy, which means having a SERIOUSLY good reason to bring them back. [recode]
Is Your EVP as Good as the French Musketeers’?
Charlotte Marshall points out that ‘all for one and one for all’ makes for a pretty credible employer brand (points for pointing out that it is more than a tagline, but behaviors one can expect [LinkedIn]
Welcome to the Internet: Millennial & Gen Z Ennui
Fascinating investigation on the newest generation through the lens of comedian Bo Burnham. Totally worth reading. [Digital Native]
A play in two acts starring Elon Musk
SpaceX employees draft open letter to company executives denouncing Elon Musk’s behavior which leads to SpaceX fires employees who wrote open letter complaining about Elon Musk. It’s just a reminder that every part of the company impacts the employer brand. [The Verge]
Notepad’s Naeem Alvi-Assinder on brand strategy and inclusive agency culture
Always great to see leadership treating brand and DEI as part of the core business, not some add on. [econsultancy]
15 TikTok Content Ideas for Businesses
[HubSpot]
I’m doing my third AMA with RecruitmentMarketing.com this week. Come join in and ask me stuff.
Inside the fortune cookie
“If you want to take control of your priorities, use a calendar and not a to-do list.” -Shane Parrish
Thanks, everyone!
This newsletter now has more than 2,200 subscribers. Thank you!
Keep sharing issues!Search the 1,500 links referenced 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:
Paul McCartney - My Brave Face
From the biggest artist of the seventies last week to one of the biggest artist of the entire rock era. Oft-overshadowed by John, Paul has released so many amazing pop songs, it almost seems like cheating to list this. But this collaboration between him and Elvis Costello is easily my favorite solo-Paul songs.
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:
