Employer Brand Headlines: The "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" Edition (#77)
We’re not the biggest and best employer brand newsletter… oh, wait. Yes, we are!
In this issue
The 10 questions of employer brand
Advocacy!
Localizing!
Values, data, and lies!
The big idea
So I mentioned that I’m approaching a new book-like project and I want to keep it as open-source as possible. One of the ways I’m doing that is showing you more of my thinking before committing things to “print.” I invite questions and comments as you see fit, and if you have an idea of how to make it more useful to other people, I’m all ears.
To start, I wanted to break away from the usual structure of books. For most people, books are too big. I wrote Talent Chooses You to be a single complete idea, a concept considered from lots of different angles, but in the end one idea. Instead, how do I break this into more manageable pieces that I think people can absorb as they need them? (I was definitely thinking about Katrina Collier‘s amazing book, among others.)
Where I landed was a kind of Socratic method (that’s a pretentious term for “ask questions and answer them”), that to help anyone become a competent employer brand professional, what are the questions they need to answer?
10 questions every employer brander must answer:
What is an employer brand?
Why would someone want to work here?
How would they learn about us?
Who is the “right person?”
How do they engage and connect with the brand?
How do I leverage internal organizational support?
How do I cultivate and use internal advocates?
How do I justify this? <– still fuzzy
How do I measure the impact?
How do I pay for it?
I can see each “answer” being 5,000-15,000 words long, with lots of secondary sub-questions answered along the way. Are there questions you think are missing? What are your sub-questions that might live under these bigger questions? Feel free to reply to this email and give me your ideas.
Headlines!
I’m not sure how we all agreed that creating brand ambassadors is a painful (and expensive) proposition. Maybe it’s because it is a 100% influence process, something you can’t really build but can only facilitate and encourage. You can’t “make” advocates, but you can clear the path in front of advocates to encourage them to engage. Alex Her has a great write-up on how to rethink your advocacy project.
Is your employer brand fixed or flexible? Is it something designed to evolve or something akin to an idea trapped in amber? I would suppose it is easier to build a fixed brand, to get leadership buy-in on something not designed to evolve or mutate, but in a world that changes so fast, how can you afford something so rigid?
Speaking of flexibility, here’s a great article on localizing your brand. Don’t get hung up on localization as a function of geography. You need to be able to localize your brand to your formal legal department and your less-buttoned-up sales team while still maintaining an aligned core.
I myself grapple with how important values are to work and the brand. It’s not that I don’t think they matter, I just worry we over-index on their meaning and impact, often leading to lots of work stating values without having to live them. But I am a cynic, and you knew that. Anyway, this article actually got the gears turning again on the importance of leveraging values at work.
For most people, employer brand management is a very qualitative process. But what if you wanted to bring in data? It is not just a means to measure your impact but also to help you make better decisions about your brand. My friend and former colleague Richard Mosley put together a quick video to help you understand what that process might look like.
Have you spent any time thinking about your safety? I would imagine so. What about everyone who works at your company? Beyond physical safety, are they free to express new ideas? Are they free to challenge received wisdom? Can they be themselves at work, not simply to express their opinions, but to make the company better? Here’s a nice infographic on psychological safety at work.
For laughs: Tim Sackett (hi, Tim!) lists the lies candidates tell in interviews. I look forward to the rebuttal: the lies job postings and hiring managers tell. I’ll nominate Katrina Kibben.
Finally, I really liked this video breakdown of how comic The Far Side is a masterclass in storytelling. I was riveted by the tricks he used to get so much story into a single frame. Lots of lessons here.
Quick hits
The 6 Best Thank You Page Examples of 2021
How to Be a “Glass-Shattering” Organization
Tip of the week
How often are you reviewing all your outgoing messages, your ads, your images, your content marketing collateral, your automated messaging to candidates? Heck, do you even keep track of everything you built last year? Maybe you need to build and manage a master list of elements like this so that you (and everyone else) knows what’s going out to candidates and prospects. Bonus points for showing when each piece was written and last updated.
Inside the fortune cookie
“A circle looks at a square and sees a badly made circle.“ - Jeff VanderMeer
One last thing
I’ve absolutely fallen in love with two non-brand-related podcasts and thought I’d share:
The Moment. Brian Koppelman, the guy who writes and runs the TV show Billions, interviews his smart friends. Ten times better than your standard interviews, there are some very interesting guests, including at least six appearances by Seth Godin.
Strong Songs. A musician breaks down songs. I like this better than Song Exploder or Switched On Pop as he doesn’t talk as much about the chart success and doesn’t focus so much on “current pop.”
Thanks, everyone!
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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