🧪 Employer Brand Headlines #157: The "Since You're Gone" Edition
Do you know what's missing in your talent pipeline strategy?
Written by James Ellis. »» Yes, you should say hello! ««
Over the last five years, one thing I’ve learned is that while your employer brand is for everyone, getting recruiters on board and properly using the employer brand at every stage of the funnel and for every interaction is crucial to your success. More than that, getting recruiters trained on how to use the brand will lower their time to fill, build stronger pipelines and increase their offer acceptance rates.
To do that, we need to close the recruiter/brander gap.
That’s why I launched my first video-on-demand course to teach recruiters how to use and get the most out of their company’s employer brand. It helps them succeed, and it helps you establish the value of the brand.
This might be the easiest way to transform your company’s thinking about EB.
»»Take a look.««
Want to make any TA leader’s heart beat a little faster? Talk about pipelines.
You know, pipelines. That list of people who are really interested in your jobs, even though you don’t have one for them at the moment.
Perhaps you call them “talent communities?” Please don’t. Communities are groups of people who interact with one another, not just the list of names who get a quarterly newsletters.
For a hot minute we called it “relationship-driven-recruiting” (as opposed to the purely transactional process most companies favor).
Or maybe you’re old school and you call them “previous applicants kept ‘on file.’”
Call it what you want. We’re in the new golden age of technology that allows us to collect information about strangers, segment them so that we know whether they would be more interested in jobs in Philly or Fresno (or sales jobs versus development jobs), and then feed them content that might influence their perception about our company to the point where they are more inclined to apply for a job (or answer a recruiter’s outreach).
We can use email, chatbots, texts, whatsapp messages, web visits, and almost any number of channels to capture a stranger’s info, dump it directly into the ATS/CRM so we can start feeding them appropriate targeted content.
But there’s a big problem. Very often when we buy these cool, often comprehensive and complex toolsets, we’re excited by all the candidates we’re going to be able to reach. Hopefully, we’re willing to invest in the work it will take to build content that will keep those leads warm. But there’s still something missing.
We see articles like this that cite that 3 out of 4 job seekers want to give you their information even when there’s no job available, but note that this is only current job seekers. Did you build a pipeline toolset to talk to people who were already going to apply to your jobs?
Of course not. You built it to engage people who aren’t looking for jobs. That’s where the best talent often is, and it’s the audience least served by… well, everything you do.
Your video about what it’s like to work there or your compellingly-written job posting is about as useful to them as a combination shampoo conditioner is to me. What’s missing from your pipeline strategy is the reason someone would want to step into your pipeline.
The power of your employer brand is that you can point it to candidates AND people who aren’t looking for a job. You can take what you know to be true and attractive about your brand and localize it to this brand new audience of non-prospects to give them a reason to engage.
Employer brand can provide the right bait to make the rest of your pipeline strategy work.
One of my favorite quotes is from George Bernard Shaw who said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” We assume having said something, it has been told to the right person, at the right time, and is accepted in the recipient’s mind. But that’s almost never true. That EVP/brand promise that you think isn’t useful anymore? Before you think about refreshing it, maybe you need to look to see if it’s actually been properly communicated. [Employer Brand Is Critical Right Now. But Don’t Refresh It as Much as Proclaim It]
Oh look! Another article that assumes that what makes the author happy at work is what makes you happy at work! A list of quick fixes that, like eating a candy bar to get some energy, can quickly sour into entitlement and disappointment (salary increases and extra benefits are great, but what happens when we begin to expect them). I know your feed is filled with stuff like this. Don’t fall for it. If you want your employees to be happy (and that’s not a universal desire, folks), do the hard work and look at your own situation and people rather than using greeting card platitudes like these. [8 Ways to Foster Employee Happiness]
And one more must read: Too often the day-to-day of employer brand feels like, “Gah! Run around and just make things better somehow.” This is a pretty stellar article that gives structure to our function, the kind of thing you might add to your leadership slides to show scope and value. [How can your brand create the context for how it feels to work at the company?]
More useful articles
The ultimate branding checklist for businesses of all sizes [How Brands Are Built]
It’s Difficult to Be Different, but Necessary [Branding Mag]
The power of remote-work rituals [Dropbox blog]
The Best Way to Describe Career Growth When Engaging Candidates [ERE]
“If you know it’s going to work, then it’s not innovation.” - Tomas Chamorro-Premusic
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Here’s the 2022 version of The Employer Brand Manifesto.
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Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn)
Where the subject line came from:
The Cars - Since You’re Gone
The Cars are always seen as synth-pop, which makes no sense. Ignore the skinny ties and the keyboard curlicues, and this (like most of their best stuff) is a straight-ahead rock track. But a great one. A mid-tempo shuffle, it slow burns its way to its climax in three and a half minutes.
The Cars needs a renaissance. Just sayin’.
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:
