But not the CEO.

Apologies to Sandra Boynton, who's books continue to delight children.

One size fits all? 👟 🥿 👠 🩴 👢

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I know I talk a lot about how employer branding needs to be taken seriously by higher levels of the company, because it is there to serve the business, rather than ‘just’ recruiting. The employer brand should embody everyone in the company because a company is really just a bunch of people (yet another shout out to Shaunda Zilich for being the de facto leader of calling it a ‘People Brand’), right?

So what I am about to say may sound strange. Maybe even contradictory.

One: I see a LOT of talking head videos on career sites where the CEO is talking about their company (I really want to say “his” company because I don’t see very many female CEOs on these videos, but let’s leave that can of worms for another day).

In many cases, the video is the bulk of the career site. Maybe a short paragraph about how great they are, and warning about recruiting scams and a link to the jobs site. With only 50-75 words, the content of the video dominates the message. The video effectively IS the employer brand.

Two: Because “everyone knows” an EVP is so expensive (disagree!!!!), it’s generally a capital project or a “below the line” expense. Consequently, that’s something that the C-suite is very much involved in. Perhaps a little too much.

It’s like a wedding dress: The bride will wear it, but when the bride’s parents are paying for it, they get a lot of say about something they won’t be wearing.

Three: We all too often treat employer branding like magic pixie dust - It hires people better, increases retention, supports culture efforts, mends leather, takes can cook an entire chicken in two hours, and whitens as it brightens. In a pinch it makes for a delightful PR campaign! We don’t focus on what we want employer branding to do, and consequently, we expected it to do everything under the sun short of make us coffee. With so many “impacts” we don’t bother defining what we WANT it to do. This gets us in lots of trouble down the road.

And without a clear set of purposes and goals, employer brand defaults to “making the company look good.”

Four: CEOs lead companies, and often equate “company seen as ‘good’” with “CEO seen as ‘good.’” And when the goal of employer brand hasn’t been defined (see issue #3), they insert themselves into the project and use it as their personal PR machine.

Hence, the career site-dominating video.

I mean, are YOU going to tell the CEO they can’t be the career site video? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Let’s add one further point. For the majority of companies and the majority of roles, who the CEO is is effectively immaterial to how someone chooses their next role. No one wants to work at Lockheed Martin because of the CEO (and they are this year’s “most desired employer for engineers” according to Universum). Heck, most of you couldn’t tell me who the CEO is.

But from the outside, it looks a lot of effort and consideration is being given to the CEO to drive the employer brand, and they aren’t the most effective driver.

This is a real issue.

It certainly feels like companies building career sites suddenly realize that without a brand established, building content is WAAAAAY harder than they think, and end up handing the keys' to the CEO, thereby undercutting the ultimate value of the career site investment.

CEOs have a place in the employer brand. But it isn’t in the drivers seat.

So if you’re thinking about your career site, don’t build it in a vacuum. That’s how it gets filled with filler messages (“We’re hiring!” “We have a great culture!” and my newest favorite, the page headline that just says, “Careers”) and becomes a huge opportunity lost.

This was literally my favorite book to read to Emilia when she was little. My version was more… dramatic.

🌬️ What can a brand make you believe? »

🌬️ What happens after the “funnel?” »

🌬️ What do you mean “passion” can backfire at work? »

🌬️ OKRs are NOT strategy »

🌬️ Clear advice on how to better communicate with your team at work »

🌬️ What happens when even investors think companies don’t care about their employees? »

🌬️ Important change is systems change »

🌬️ When user generated content goes wrong »

🌬️ The only way to maintain an advantage is to get good at change »

🏛️ All 2,500+ (more than five years worth!) articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!

Problem: Marketing wants us to use stock art/video.

Solution: Let’s say that for the moment, your company sells sneakers. Would your marketing department allow anyone to promote their sneakers by using stock footage of “sneakers?” Of course not. They would be appalled and look for someone to fire.

So why do they force EB to do that? Because they don’t trust you. That is, they don’t trust employees to not say “Bruce Willis was dead the whole time!” or something, and they don’t trust that you’ve built systems to ensure that that kind of content gets tossed out.

So the solution is to focus on trust building. Ask them to document their concerns with using people and ask, “Would you be willing to let me to build systems that ensure that these issues never happen?” (Marketers love to hear you’ve built a system.)

Let them see that you are serious about understand and preventing their concerns. Don’t just huff that they “just don’t get it,” because I can assure you they are saying the same as you.

If your want your employer branding to drive value, you need to start by building trust.

Be more informed as you think about building your brand:

Start: Compare 25 employer brand building companies side-by-side. It’s how you make a better decision about who will help you best in your EB journey. It’s free! »

Then: Three case studies that prove how an employer brand can be built in just three weeks. A 250-person manufacturer, a 300-person construction company, and an 800-person video game company. Just hit reply and we’ll set up a time to walk you through the case studies and answer questions.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.
If it’s any good, you'll have to
ram them down people's throats.
- Howard Aiken

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