Employer Brand Headlines: The "Cruel, Cruel Summer" Edition (#54)
In this edition:
Here comes the marketers
LinkedIn treats alumni right
Trust and purpose
Ready for Reals?
What’s your bias?
The Big Idea
I love how Forbes wrote a whole article about the power of employer brand when marketers and leadership gets involved, and then had the gall to suggest that employer brand was “territorial” about their part of the brand and didn’t want to let marketing play their game. I’ve talked with dozens (if not a hundred) EB owners and they all, to a person, would have loved for marketing to acknowledge their existence, let alone combine forces and/or resources.
This is part of a larger trend I’m seeing where marketing has finally seen the light about the impact people stories can have on various aspects of branding and marketing (one of the surprising impacts of Covid, by my lights). When they couldn’t talk about coupons or features, they learned how to talk about their people.
The issue is that having seen the power of the people brand, marketing isn’t going to want to let go. And rather than fight it out, marketers will do what marketers always do: redefine the playing field. They will say that they should own the people brand because it drives more value for the business than it does connected to comms or TA, redrawing the boundaries to make EB all but nonexistent. The danger is that it will beholden to marketing thinking rather than recruiting thinking (goodbye quality, hello quantity).
So this is EB’s moment: our value is so clear, people are willing to steal the thinking, further muddying the waters of what a company wants EB to be and do.
It sure seems like a double-edged sword.
On to the Headlines
I think maybe 10-15% of companies actively think about their alumni in any way shape or form. Despite them being the most vocal advocates (positive or negative), the people who once worked for you can be the people referring new talent, posting on your review sites, and they can be examples of what kinds of people “graduate” from your company. So I was deeply impressed when LinkedIn (and I don’t often use the words “impressed” and “LinkedIn” together) posted a directory of their own alumni who were recently let go. We’re in a world where leaving is no longer the stigma it once was, but it’s rare that companies actively support their alumni. The obvious outcomes of this kind of project is that it makes LinkedIn look good, but it creates an army of people connecting with all new networks who now have very positive brand associates with LI. It’s unfair to point out that the costs to do this was effectively nil, but the willingness to try something new for an audience who are no loner “responsible for” is laudable.
Call me old fashioned, but I still love a good blog. And is there a cheaper way to manage a platform on which you can tell deep sharable stories that support your employer brand? I didn’t think so. Here are 5 brand-driven to make sure your blog isn’t boring.
One value of a strong brand is that as new offerings come from it, customers are more inclined to consider the brand new offerings because of the lingering positive associations. In other words, strong brands are those we trust. So I wonder, how do you build trust? When the people brand is one aspect of a corporate brand, how do you instill that trust?
Case study: Cisco reinvents its employer brand around the concept of trust.
And once you have “trust,” can you lead? Are brands morally obligated to change the world for the better?
Instagram’s “Tik Tok-inspired” Reels might be the Gen Z content tool compromise you were waiting for: Tik Tok content, Instagram Reach and Facebook ad infrastructure. Here’s what you need to know now.
I’m a big fan of a modular employer brand (multiple pillars and a single EVP that you can choose from to speak to a given audience), so I have things to quibble with in Gabriela Torres’ approach to think about an EVP as having multiple personalities (usually when you have multiple, you end up seeing a doctor). But the underlying reasoning is sound: monolithic brands aren’t as agile and can’t connect with enough talent. You need to connect the brand to the person.
Brands take time to fine-tune their position, to develop enough validating and confirming evidence to even be taken seriously. But all too often, employer branders have built something more flimsy than a true “brand,” find an “issue” and try to re-brand. So ask yourself: why are you re-branding?
Has anyone come across a legitimately good (not “good enough”) talent community? I still haven’t. But I have hope that it can be done, especially when I see consumer-side communities grow. Here are some examples on a strong community and how they got that way. P.S. the word “community” suggests two-way communication. P.P.S. If you think spamming people with open requisitions is a “valuable service,” try again.
Here’s some good thinking on how to think as deeply around your employee experience as one might for their consumer experience.
A good list of companies doing D&I videos well. (h/t Hung Lee)
EB Tip Of The Week
My favorite little secret for coming up with cool ideas and tools to communicate a brand is ProductHunt. You know how there seems to be a new cool tool every day? Well, there’s actually a dozen or two every day. This is the place to stay up to date on the app that will make your photos look better, help you streamline your comms flow, and find the plugins that make you more productive.
On The Talent Cast
We all use little tricks and shortcuts to be productive (and really to just survive). But these shortcuts can often lead to not seeing the brand that’s right in front of us. Jason Kent Crowell asks: how do we avoid cognitive biases in our own work and how can we use them in talent attraction?
Other housekeeping
At ATAP, I’m talking with Todd Raphael about budget-constrained recruiting and branding, August 18th
I’m going to talk about data-driven talent branding over at The Goodhire Summit, August 20th
Thanks, everyone!
I really appreciate you signing up and reading this. As you know, my mission is to help you get better at employer branding, so if you have questions or want me to consider other articles, just let me know (reply to this email and it comes straight to me).
Cheers!
-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)
Makes a perfect Labor Day gift!
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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