Employer brand has a branding problem
I went to RecFest and got rained on so you didn't have to (but you should have been there)
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So Iâm back from RecFest (and to the many many readers who found me to say âhi,â thank you! Send me a picture of you in the shirt (you know what Iâm talking about)), and after a solid week of catching up (and distracting myself with an interesting video idea), Iâm ready to talk about what I saw.
Audra Knight and I hosted the âemployer brand" stage on day two, with people like Orlando Haynes, Nichole Stephens, and Bryan Adams talking about things like personal brands, advocacy, and creativity. Add in the great employer brand presentations outside our tent from people like Celinda Appleby, Ankit Pathak, and John Graham, and there was a lot for an EB pro to get from the event.
(And yes, youâre going to want to be at the next one.)
But something struck me watching all these presentations, and seeing the kinds of questions being asked. While we know employer brand is a massive, complex, and deeply impactful function, we seem to have âtrick-ifiedâ it, turning something strategic into a series of good ideas, hacks, tips, tactics and tools.
First of all, I get that an outdoor conference may not be the ideal channel in which to get TA leaders to see the employer branding big picture. Speakers had 30 minutes to deliver some value, another 10-15 for questions and then itâs on to the next one (with a brief stop for a free hat or bottle of water).
But thatâs maybe 90% of what people saw about employer branding:
Create a day in the life video
Showcase your POC+ employees
Record a video of an intern pointing to blank space and just add in the text you want
Write better âthanks for applyingâ and âThanks but no thanksâ automated emails
Understand what motivates your target audience
Use your personal brand to create visibility within the company
More photos and videos on your career site
ChatGPT to make your job postings suck less
Automate the stuff thatâs rote and embed some branding in that automation
Thereâs nothing on this list thatâs bad (well, I have some issues with recording an intern and adding in text later, but Iâll keep that to myself). But⊠these are all solid ideas. Things you can and/or should do to support your employer brand.
But these ideas fall squarely in the category of âeasy to do,â and rather far away from the category of âmakes a long-lasting impact.â
Then I look at job boards and see that the vast majority of open roles are for specialists. You know, the people who write the posts, build the videos, schedule the blog, make the testimonials. These roles arenât expected to lobby for budget, or connect with marketing and TA to ensure that employer branding efforts support consumer marketing and recruiting objectives. They arenât empowered to reconsider the messages brought to candidates or evaluate the larger brand pillars. They just⊠do.
And of course, we all complain that our work is getting put into smaller and smaller boxes, that weâre relegated to pretty pictures and bland generalizations, that its others who push us into the âemployer blandingâ space when we want to do great work because we arenât allowed to build a brand that stands out or says something different.
Iâm not going to say cause and effect here, but⊠couldnât I? The more we talk about the tricks in public spaces, the more people think tricks are all weâre good for.
And youâre better than that (or at least strive to do better than that).
When weâre seen as the people who do the tricks, thatâs all weâll be asked to do.
Where are the conversations around:
How to build a brand brief so that comms, marketing, TA and leadership can get aligned on your differentiated value
Designing a strategy that extends your reach into the networks you care about
Five things your leadership will need to know about employer branding that will make budgets happen
Partnering with Comms/Social/Legal/HR/Marketing/Brand/Product/Operations to ensure the brand isnât relegated to âmake hiring prettyâ
The conversations you should be prepared for when you ask Marketing to extend the brand
Sure, lower ad spend is nice, but what are the metrics that actually matter most (or have the biggest impact) to the business that we should be focused on?
I know a lot of smart employer branders, and some of these ideas come up when we chat. But when asked to build a 30-60 minute presentation, it seems like weâve all (myself included) been asked to boil big ideas into tricks and hacks that people can write down in their notebooks to feel like they got a little smarter. Itâs all about the âdo it on Mondayâ takeaways to the exclusion of âchanging peopleâs mindsâ ideas.
Conferences are not perfect microcosms of the industry, but they arenât far off. When youâre wondering why your boss is asking for you to do something instead of thinking about how to do things better, conferences foster the idea that thatâs all we can do.
So what can we do together to change things?
Get strategic, like⊠tomorrow!
đ âPower lawsâ might be the secret to better work »
âïž Marketing as a force for good? »
â 15 marketing tactics for startups (that you can repurpose for your employer brand startup) »
âïž How generative AI changes (and can be used by) creative work »
đ (Pod) Every useful strategy starts by defining the future you want »
âïž A playful mindset boosts creativity »
đ€ïž Iâm not saying Iâm intensely jealous of what Chad & Cheese are putting out these days. Nope. Iâm not saying it. And you canât prove that Iâm thinking it »
âïž Last reminder: My LinkedIn class is now available for free on YouTube. Now you have ZERO excuse to do great social work even if the social team wonât let you post to your corporate LI channel »
đïž All 2,500+ (five years worth!) articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get âem!
Problem: You need to get more people to âgetâ the employer brand
No matter what Mad Men says, the secret isnât to âpitchâ your idea well. The secret lies in getting everyone to agree on the problem being solved first.
To that end, you need a brief.
Agencies use briefs to collect good thinking by the strategists and deliver it to creative to turn into finished deliverables. And you can use it to get more people on to your side of things without turning things into a political dogfight.
A brief answers a few questions:
What is the problem weâre solving? Too many projects fail here because one party doesnât see the problem like you do. So define the issue and include some of the pain the company feels because of it.
Who are we solving it for? This is your target audience. This ensures that other people donât try to scope creep your project into impossibility. Sure, there might be people who value the solution, but thereâs one audience thatâs critical and THATâS who weâre solving it for.
How does the audience perceive the problem? How will they know itâs solved? How will their lives be better? This is all expectation setting.
Constraints. Costs, legal limits, etc
What is something that you know that most people donât that will help resolve this issue? In other words, what is the actionable insight?
How will solving the issue benefit the company? Obviously, taking in terms of money is good, but feel free to list positive anticipated outcomes.
Whatâs missing? Not the solution. Because you shouldnât show the solution until everyoneâs in agreement on the above. It will take a little extra work, but the time saved having to go back to the drawing board again and again will more than make up for it.
People will want to tell you that an employer brand has to be expensive or that it has to tale months and months in order for it to be good.
Thatâs not true. Work that your Director of TA might call âinspiringâ (as one recently did), only takes a few weeks and is roughly the same cost as a LI recruiter seat.
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
- W. Somerset Maugham
Four books and one audiobook
An employer brand buyers guide and agency listing
Five courses
150 videos
240 episodes of podcasts
Conversations on 23 podcasts
Seven âdeep diveâ resources
18 articles
All in one place: EmployerBrand.ing
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