🧪 Employer Brand Headlines #155: The "If I Had A Boat" Edition

What's better than a positive employer brand? A lot actually.

James Ellis

Jul 25, 2022

Written by James Ellis. »» Say hello! ««

In this issue…

The dark side of positivity
What do you know?
Employer brand impacts consumer brand (and marketing should care)

The big idea

I’d love it if everyone stopped talking about “good” employer brands and “bad” employer brands. Because there’s no such thing.

There are, however, strong brands and weak brands.

Why does this matter? Because too many employer branders (and employer brand-adjacent folks) are fixed on being “good,” which is often measured by a sheer tonnage of positive things said, by awards that are either paid for or just based on general positivity, by review site ratings, by now many applications are in the ATS.

Those. Things. Don’t. Matter. At least, they don’t matter nearly as much as people knowing what you’re all about, what to expect when they work there.

Focusing on positivity is a sucker’s bet. Why? Because jobs aren’t “fun.” They can be satisfying. They can pay well. They can fulfill. They can engage. And yes, there can be fun parts, but if jobs were fun, they wouldn’t have to pay you. The best “most fun” job still has paperwork and constraints that frustrate. They are filled with other people (and you should check out what Sartre says about other people) who have their own agendas and ways of doing things. They are impacted by executive decisions and macroeconomic shifts that we have no control over. Work is at least somewhat transactional, meaning employees and employers are there to maximize their value in their own side of the transaction. What about that feels inherently positive to you?

You know what I see when I see a 5 star rating on Glassdoor? That’s a cult.

A strong brand is clear. It is credible. Is it a promise you can believe in. It isn’t spin or hype, it is something someone can trust their career and livelihood upon.

Can it be positive, too? Sure. But listing only positive attributes makes you less believable. (Oh, it’s not me. There are plenty of studies on the subject.) Over-indexing on positivity almost for the sheer purpose of being positive scares people away. At least, it will scare the smart talent away.

A strong brand says, “this is what you’ll experience. Someone it you will love and some of it you really won’t. Are you willing to join us knowing all that?” It sets and meets expectations. Every once in a while it exceeds them, but most days, it meets them. Trying to exceed everyone’s expectations is like trying to subsist on cake. Fun for a few days, but deadly long term.

The recipe for a strong brand is simple.

Be specific. Not “we’re a great place to work,” but “we’re a great place to work if you want to be surrounded by smart people trying to cure diabetes.”

Be attractive. Not “we offer all our employees a great pension plan” when all your employees are Gen Z and won’t be staying for 25 years to capitalize on it, but something you offer that you know that your target audience wants.

Be different. Not “Work here because we innovate and save lives” as a pharma company, because that’s literally what they all say, but “work in a place that offers less red tape so that your work can make a difference.”

Be real. Not “everything is great!” but the whole truth of the work experience. The good and the bad. Even the ugly.

Create more employer brand thinkers by sharing this newsletter!

Season 2 of The Talent Cast continues!

The revised and annotated audio version of Talent Chooses You (now with more talking) continues with episode 27 where we learn how great employer branders see the world. The last episode of the series comes out week!!!

Headlines!

What do you know?

What candidates really want to know in 2022 [PathMotion]
What do you know about candidates? [Eva Baluchova]

Everything we do is predicated on how well we know candidates. We need to know what they want, what they are looking for, what they care about, what moves them to seek a new role, what gets their engine revving, what a satisfying day looks like, what culture works for them, what they want to be rewarded for, etc etc etc. Above are a a white paper and a posting that offer a lot more ways to understand your candidates (each from different points of view).

Employer Branding Is the New Marketing Imperative

The mad scientists at MIT Sloan (sarcasm!) have noted (finally) that a strong employer brand impacts the company’s consumer brand, and not just in indirect ways. To support employer branding, marketing needs to 1: Elevate itself beyond “traditional marketing, 2: See the value in the HR/marketing collaboration and 3: Amplify authenticity.

Quick Links

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“For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple and wrong.” - H.L. Mencken

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Need some ideas on how to activate your brand but have no budget? Here’s a free ebook that might be helpful…

Thanks, everyone!

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Here’s the 2022 version of The Employer Brand Manifesto.
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Cheers and thanks!

-James Ellis (LinkedIn)

Thanks for reading. I bet you know some people who would really value this kind of thing.

Where the subject line came from:

Lyle Lovett - If I Had a Boat

This song is a bit of an outlier for me, as I don’t care for country music. But Lyle never really fit into the country mainstream, and when he started getting more obvious about his folk, gospel and blues roots, it was hard to call him a country artist at all. Which is fine by me, because his late-80’s and early-90’s work is absolutely beautiful.

Fun fact: I went to high school about two miles from where Lyle grew up. His aunt has a bakery that my best friend’s family would frequent (Otherwise, there’s very little else to recommend the suburban sprawl of Klein, Texas).

This is one of those songs that half of you know and love and the other half have just never heard before. Take it as it is and I bet you’ll love it, too.

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: