Employer Brand Headlines: The "Absolute Beginners" Edition (#78)
Our mission: Help you manage your employer brand better in clear and meaningful ways.
In this issue
Who’s driving?
Change the org one layer at a time
Story isn’t brand
Strategy is narrative
The big idea
I love to talk about how the employer brand is the consumer brand, or that they are really two different aspects of the same idea: what you want people to think about you, the Brand.
But there’s a piece missing from around this discussion: we assume employer brand is always in the backseat of the Brand conversation and that consumer brand, the driver of revenue, is always in the driver’s seat, that the title is in their name, and they have control over the radio, so all we can do is stare out the window and point out interesting things on the horizon.
Maybe that’s why we still see conversations about letting the consumer brand horn in on the employer brand. Case in point: should, at the end of the application process, you suggest the prospect shop at your website? What about suggesting a specific product? What about offering them a coupon?
On the surface, you can see the case being made: if applicants are the kinds of people who might also be your consumers, why not connect the dots and move them to a place where they might be revenue-generating? Heck, 99% of them will never be hired, so don’t let that traffic go to waste, right?
There are so many problems with that idea.
1) Candidates are often unemployed. Asking them to spend money is rude.
2) Will a candidate think their chance of rejection will go up or down based on whether they buy something?
3) The “job seeker” and “consumer” mindsets are radically different. If you were at the end of an interview, would you want to spend time shopping? Or decompressing?
4) As an employer, you certainly want to been seen as stable enough to fund everyone’s paycheck next week. If you rattle the cup at candidates, does that make your consumer brand look… shaky?
All this is to say that letting consumer marketing drive your employer brand is a horrible idea. At its core, if you offer a candidate a shopping opportunity, are you serving the candidate, or are you serving the business? As the employer brand owner, you serve the business by attracting great talent, not by offering lead generation for someone else. Trying to do both guarantees you’ll fail at both.
The value of a core brand isn’t that consumer brand can steamroller you. A core brand’s value is that each brand owner (consumer, investor, employer, etc.) serves their own audience, but collectively their actions reinforce a core set of ideas. You can’t sell innovation as an employer brand position when your consumer messaging is all about offering the lowest cost and being a commodity (as those ideas live in conflict).
So yes, connect with consumer marketing, find ways to share the brand, and support one another, but don’t let any of that keep you from serving the candidate.
Headlines!
How do you look at your job as an employer brand pro? Are you a marketer or are you in the change management business? If you think you’re a marketer, your eyes will be set and focused on KPIs and you might not make any real impact. You’ll be focused on making ads or reminding people about your referral program that you’ll miss the fact that you aren’t changing staff behaviors, especially not in a way that sticks. If you are here to create real change, the first step might be to understand how the different layers of your org structure change.
Speaking of creating change, have you developed the story you share at every meeting, the one that defines what you do and the one who defines who your organization is? Your culture grows like vines around the stories you tell each other, so have you designed yours?
Let’s be clear: you cannot create real engagement with candidates until they trust you (until that moment, they are giving you what negotiation experts call “the soft yes,” the kind of affirmative generalities that lead to ghosting you at the offer stage). And you can’t build trust without transparency. Don’t believe me? Go on a date and refuse to talk about yourself and see how things go. Anyway, here’s how Atlassian opens the kimono to foster trust and confidence with candidates.
Drucker said, “the purpose of business is to create a customer.” To paraphrase, the purpose of an employer brand is to create great candidates. To wit, The Drum offers this advice to CMOs: Figure out how to talk to the business in business terms, not marketing terms. That advice will help you in the exact same way. (h/t Follow The Bear newsletter)
It may seem iconoclastic to say that brands are not stories, but it’s true. Brands are concepts in our minds, fed by experiences and touchpoints, filtered through our own perceptions, and installed through the stories we tell ourselves. (And yeah, I know, that sentence was like branding-speak Yahtzee.) Stories told to us can share a brand and the stories we tell ourselves reinforce it, but no story I tell you becomes the brand. It is shaped by any number of forces before it impacts your sense of a brand. So don’t get too obsessed with the whole “my brand is a story” stuff. There are many many many ways to create and establish a brand. Don’t get myopic.
Here are a bunch of great examples of how companies are creating amazing video content in a remote-first world.
A solid article on the biggest trends that will impact your talent strategy in 2021, starting with getting ready for the Great Re-Hire, commitment to sourcing, diversity, and making friends with your (ahem) ATS.
Here’s a great Mary-Meeker-like trends deck of all the big macrotrend changes hitting us all at once. I mean, when $20B on the table is being flipped, you should understand which way the wind is blowing.
Finally, here’s a great “take your time and read this slowly” article I loved: Strategy needs good words.
Quick hits
Inside Google Marketing: Why we’re rethinking how we approach video captions
Why employers will have no choice but to embrace remote working
How Successful Brands Win By Failing
Tip of the week
Go into Google docs and make a little “work tracker” form with fields for who sent you the problem, who caused the problem, and a pulldown field of what kind of problem it was. You could do it as “who asked for help, and what you delivered” kind of thing. Now, every time something happens, log it in your form. The inputs will quietly dump into a spreadsheet with a time and date. After a few weeks, look at the spreadsheet. See any patterns? You might be surprised to see how much time you spend on repetitive tasks or on things you could automate. The real value? Show your boss you fielded 17 requests for job postings to start conversations on a better solution.
Inside the fortune cookie
“Gödel says you can’t program intelligence as complex as yourself. But you can let it evolve.” - Janna Levin
One last thing
I’m trying something new: Clubhouse. So far, I’m enamored, so I’m starting a little group of my own for EB pros. Employer Brand On-Demand, Feb 2 at 8:30 am. Hear you there!
Thanks, everyone!
Whew! That was a long one! Thanks for enjoying and sharing this newsletter.
And as always, when you reply to this email I will read your questions and comments. Is there any article I should be commenting on? A book? A podcast? Is there something you what to know? How can I help? Just reply to this email and it comes directly to me.
Cheers and thanks!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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