Are you a Change Agent? 🕯️🔀💡

(Welcome to the next iteration of Employer Brand Headlines)

A Change Agent’s Manifesto

This is a first draft, but I feel like it captures my point of view on what’s keeping talent acquisition in a box.

One: Businesses are just people. Thus, business problems are really just people problems. Which means you don’t have a tools problem. You don’t have a system problem. You have a people problem. Good thing you’re in the “people business.”

Two: TA is NOT a cost center. It drives business growth. Don’t believe me? How about this: When you start investing in TA properly, you attract and retain higher-quality people and the business makes more money. Who’s a cost center now, pal!?

Three: The goal is hirable candidates, not applications. Chasing applications has led us into a cul-de-sac. We should be chasing quality over quantity every single time.

Four: Strategy beats effort. We’ve allowed recruiting to be turned into an optimization/brute force problem. We throw tools and people at the problem, then tweak things to turn a 1.8% conversion rate into a 1.9% rate. Do you think Goldman Sachs has a 1.9% outreach conversion rate? Or OpenAI? Having a stronger strategy replaces effort with thinking.

Five: People have to choose you before you can hire them. Offer people opportunities to interview at your company all you want. People won’t show up until they choose you as a potential employer. So why would people choose you? Live there.

Six: Talent never plays a “short game.” Changing strangers’ minds takes time. Building a pipeline takes time. Turning hiring managers into strong advocates takes time. Connecting the employer brand to the consumer brand takes time. The process of helping people choose to change their lives isn’t instant. But you can’t eat the fruit until you spend the time planting the tree.

Seven: Great talent acquisition doesn’t start at recruiting. It starts with the business. The more distance there is between TA and the COO/CFO/CEO, the more likely TA is being painted into a corner of mediocrity. Or just flat-out outsourced.

Eight: Advocacy over ad buys. Everything your company does, from its customer support to its automated ATS messages tells the world what kind of company you really are. You don’t have a brand, you have DNA, and that DNA drives choices from which feature will you launch next to how many women and under-represented minorities are in your executive team. No amount of ad budget can clean up what your employees tell their friends about what it’s like to work there.

Nine: Reject TA metrics. Only think (and talk) in terms of business metrics. Every team in your company has their own internal metrics to help them stay on track. But it seems like only TA reports them. For example, your marketing looks at so much data, that its a wonder they don’t go blind. But they don’t report brand awareness in the Female 55+ demographic, because that only matters to them. When they talk to leadership, they talk about brand lift, qualified leads generated, and increased sales attributable to marketing. Take notes.

Ten: Your company is begging for change. It just doesn’t know it. No one is happy with how recruiting works. Sales can forecast revenue, so why can’t recruiting forecast when that seat will be filled? Brand and marketing have a consistent go-to-market message, so why does it seem like all your recruiters are just making it up as they go? I’m not trying to be mean, but these are the things leadership thinks when they look at standard TA practices (especially when they look at the budget). So if they aren’t satisfied with the usual way, isn’t it your job to offer an alternative?

Eleven: Things don’t change. We change them. Look. The process of posting jobs and waiting for people to apply (don’t lie, that remains 60-80% of your team’s work) goes back to the early twentieth century. Since then, we’ve seen the advent of phones, the modern resume, the internet, and now AI. If things were going to change on their own, they’d have already changed. So I guess it’s up to us. All of us. Changing the rules, the expectations, the process, the people, the way we communicate, all of it.

Thoughts on this manifesto? Or maybe there’s something I missed? Reply to this email and tell me! I’d love to make this manifesto better.

🦤 Fellow change agent Kevin Wheeler drops a real bomb this week in his newsletter: Is recruiting about to become a phoenix or a dodo? His idea (and you’ll get no argument here) is that recruiting and TA need to change, but is fundamentally bad at change. Go read and subscribe. »

🙄 HBR’s idea of “getting creative to recruit during a labor shortage” is… about what you’d expect. Tik Tok, advertise, and maybe look into this AI thing. »

❓ Let’s be honest. 98% of being a TA leader or professional is managing uncertainty from all directions. »

🧮 Creating change leads inevitably to conflict. Managing that conflict is the difference between someone on another team dictating how you recruit and getting to make your own choices. »

🧮 The wave of established companies (FAANGs, megacorps splintering, etc) is fading. “70% of the time, transformations beyond the separation context fail, and the human element is a fundamental reason why.” »

🌩️ 5 worthless questions to ask during a brainstorm. Remember, as change agents, we want others to change with us, which means involving others in figuring out how to change or what to change. »

🧮 Need to make a case to your leadership for changing the way you recruit? I’m doing a webinar called “Building the air-tight case for employer branding” next week. It’s free. »

🧮 Along and Together. The new age of belonging when we don’t really want to be near each other. »

🧮 Yes, it’s a Tik Tok, but when I saw this rant about “work and meta work,” and (as the kids say) I got the feels. Maybe that’s your next interview question when you’re looking at new roles. “What percentage of this job will likely have to manage the meta work of having to justify myself to others relative to the percentage of time I’ll use actually doing the work?” »

🏄 Jason Seiden has a new newsletter about change. This week? Are you grinding through uncertainty or trying to ride it like a wave? »

🍔 It’s not a McJob. It’s the job posting for McDonald’s new social media director. And yes, you want fries with that. (hat tip Krista Brenner) »

💿 It’s a total lark, but Squaring the Circle is on Netflix. It’s the story of the world’s greatest album art agency, Hipgnosis. »

🧠🔌 AI Idea of the Week: What if AI could build an entire career site for a candidate based on a single call with a recruiter? »

🏛️ All 2,200+ articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!

It isn’t easy figuring out who to partner with when thinking about your employer brand. Pick any two companies at random and you won’t find radically different capabilities and approaches, you might find two companies serving completely different audiences. And it isn’t always clear how one branding partner might be different from another.

That’s why I have launched the Employer Brand Buyers Guide: a side-by-side listing of 16 different EB firms in the US so that you can see a wider listing of companies, but also understand how they are different. Download it at https://evpbuyersguide.com/. It’s free!

• 105 free (or almost free) ways to activate your brand »

• Employer Brand Breakdown series »

• Biotech Recruiting limited run email course »

• Proof employer brand works »

• Biotech Recruiting Chat series »

• Employer Brand minute series »

• The Brand Plan podcast »

• The Talent Cast podcast »

***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***

-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]

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