Your recruiting isn't strategic
Not even a little. And I can prove it.
To celebrate the two-year anniversary of Employer Brand Labs, I’m putting on a free course on how to better take advantage of LinkedIn to grow your employer brand. August 27, at noon Eastern. And yes, if you register, I’ll send you the recording.
Would you do me a favor and share the link? Either on social or just email it to a co-worker or friend who would value it? Thanks!
[Sponsored]
First, let’s all agree on this term: Strategy. It’s how you use what you have to win.
And when everyone has the same stuff, it is very hard to be strategic. With the same resources as everyone else, you end up having to out-work or out-spend to win.
Example? Southwest’s strategy is to ignore business travelers (no lounges, no perks) allowing it to be the low-cost airline. Being different (ignoring business travelers) is how they win.
But in 99.999% of companies, recruiting will talk a good game about being strategic or its talent strategy. But then…
Their job posts look exactly the same as everyone else’s. Same structure, same ideas, same terms, same verbiage. And you and I know most job postings aren’t written, they are cobbled together from other jobs (and often other companies).
Their career sites all say the same things. A paragraph about the company. The paragraph about how much people like working there and a line about growth or performance. A few values, a couple of bullets of the benefits (very very vaguely stated) and two links to jobs. And what do we do when we want to get “creative?” We look at what other career sites are doing.
They never change the default messaging on their ATS. If we did the math, I’d wager roughly HALF of all employer branding touch points come from the ATS, and I’d also wager most companies either never changed it, or changed it JUSTENOUGH to be about their company without saying anything specific or interesting. (I know, I know. “The lawyers won’t let us!”)
Social posts start with the Canva template. Can we be frank? Most people can spot a Canva template a mile away. It’s the “stock art” of design. Yeah, I said it.
They use the same outreach message over and over. You know the one. The “I was searching LinkedIn, ran across your profile and was impressed.”
They build the same candidate experience as everyone else: Collect applications by the ton, filter and winnow down to a manageable amount and then make them run a gauntlet where the last one standing gets a job. Call it “white glove” all you want.
They post the same sunshine garbage on Instagram and Tik Tok. I want a filter that automatically puts pom pom stickers on these posts to show how generic they really are.
They all have the same “Why work at [company]?” video. And it’s REALLY old.
When stuck, they ask, “What does Google/Facebook/OpenAI do?” Which would be fine if they were Google/Facebook/OpenAi, but they never quite are.
When in doubt, they post “we’re great” in one of the usual ways: Staff says we’re great. Award says we’re great. Exec says we’re great. Product sales say we’re great.
The “we’re hiring” post. Look. No successful sales person has ever posted, “we’re selling!” Ever. EVER.
This isn’t strategic. Not even a little.
At best, this is recruit-by-numbers.
And there’s nothing strategic about it.
And until you get serious about leveraging your difference, you can’t be strategic.
Your only option is to out-work and out-spend other companies for talent.
And your team is NOT interested in working harder.
And your company is NOT interesting in spending more.
Luckily, knowing how you are different and embedding into everything you do DOESN’T HAVE TO COST YOU A CENT.
So what’s your plan?
🀄 An exec-level view of AI at work »
🀄 Is Substack the new blog? »
🀄 When we talk about “social” media, are we forgetting the “social” part? (Spoiler: Yes. Yes, we are.) »
🀄 The problem with authenticity in branding »
🀄 A nice overview of how people create value propositions »
🏛️ All 2,500+ (five years worth!) articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!
Register here and use discount code JEERECA24 to get 10% off!
Problem: You need higher quality candidates
Maybe it’s your hiring managers or maybe it’s your leadership, but you’re starting to hear that your recruiting function isn’t bringing in the quality of candidate that’s expected.
Your reaction will likely be to figure out how to engage future Nobel-prize winning people (or similar) to your jobs. That is insanely expensive. Insanely.
Solution: What if instead of trying to raise the ceiling of your talent pool, you started to think about how to raise the floor instead?
When you focus on “raising the floor” you start by talking about things that only experts understand and care about. It dissuades less-qualified candidates from getting involved. It helps you focus on not trying t attract “the most” but in narrowing your focus towards people you really want.
Best of all, raising the floor is a far cheaper strategy to implement.
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 ad we’ll set set up a time to walk you through the case studies and answer questions.
The highest form of leverage is reputation.
-Shane Parrish
Four books
An employer brand buyers guide and agency listing
Four courses
150 videos
240 episodes of podcasts
Conversations on 23 podcasts
Seven “deep dive” resources
18 articles
All in one place: EmployerBrand.ing
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***
How you use what you have to win. Love this