Does employer branding work??? 🩻 EBH

Part one of a VERY interesting series

Programming update!

In May, this newsletter will shift from five times a week to three times a week (MWF). 5x a week was a really interesting experiment, but we keep playing with the format to ensure Employer Brand Headlines serves the most people it can.

If you know someone who should be thinking about their company’s employer brand, I would very much appreciate you sharing this with them.

-J

A few weeks ago, I asked you to respond to the following prompt: “I know our employer branding is working because once we started taking it seriously…”

While the individual responses from the 50+ of you were interesting, when I saw the complete set of responses, the breadth and depth of the impact blew my hair back.

In this series, we’re going to see how employer brand impacts recruiters, marketers, leaders, advocacy, band awareness, quality of talent, etc.

Today, we start with how the employer brand has impacted our candidates.

We see the value of EB through our candidates’ eyes

• Candidates mention that our employer brand content is why they chose us over a competitor.

• Candidates regularly point to our employer brand-driven videos as the reason they apply to our roles.

• Candidates talked about refreshed automatic disposition emails on social media and how the emails sparked joy and got them excited about the hiring process.

• I know it is working because I have measured that I am one of the proffered employers by my key target groups (meaning, I am on their shortlist).

• In our trainee programs focused on young talent attraction, we have really improved their overall experience, with better messaging, better SEO, and better candidate evaluation, with the most significant outcome being that candidate satisfaction has also improved.

• When a candidate mentioned a specific employee story in the interview as the main reason they applied. 

Employer branding has many outputs and outcomes as anything else in business, but its first user is the candidate. 

The brand can be used purely to attract attention, the equivalent of wearing a chicken costume and waving a sign. But strong branding starts by defining the core differentiated value that working there offers and then communicating it to targeted audiences. 

If the brand doesn’t speak to the candidate, if it doesn’t stir something inside them, it fails. But if it does spark something, it shifts the recruiting process away from something purely transactional to the beginnings of a relationship with the company.

The value is usually seen in emotional terms (sparking joy, being desirable enough to be on the shortlist), but as we will see, it is measured in speed of hire, cost of hire, and connection to the company mission.

Tomorrow: Recruiters!

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What can you do with a strong employer brand you build yourself? Oh, let me count the ways…

The next cohort starts May 3rd. Register now!

***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***

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