⚡ Employer Brand Headlines: The "Ghost Town" Edition (#117)

My mission: move the conversation around employer brand forward.

Employer Brand Headlines, brought to you by James Ellis

In this issue

• What’s the purpose of your career site?

• A million ways the power dynamics at work are changing

• Get real with DEI or don’t bother

The big idea

I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this on the newsletter or the old podcast, but I consider myself a drummer. I’ve been playing drums off and on for… does math… checks math… ugh, I’m old… more than three decades. What’s interesting about drumming (and a lot of music, actually) is that it becomes a game of pattern recognition. What is the rhythm? What is the beat? What is the groove? Whether it is three-chord Louie Louie or a “use every note ever invented” Frank Zappa solo, the thing you end up falling in love with is a pattern you hear. It doesn’t matter if it’s the melody, the beat, or the groove, what you remember is the pattern.

Humans are pattern recognition machines. We spot patterns in chaos better than any computer or software (example: this test where the computer has to determine: is it a muffin or a chihuahua?).

But ask any drummer pounding away on some simple backbeat – the fun is in the minute deviations from the pattern. A slightly different kick pattern on one bar, an extra hit-hat tap on another, a little swing somewhere else. When you have a strong pattern, the tiny differences stand out loud and clear.

Look at job/career sites. Like a good beat, they all seem to be built in roughly the same pattern: Home, jobs, culture, benefits/work life, mission, teams, and offices. Maybe there’s a blog. Maybe there’s a students section, but really, that’s the pattern. Some companies don’t have all the elements, so it’s a home page that stuffs the culture, teams, offices, and benefits onto a single page leading you to jobs, but the pattern is the same.

How often have you seen a jobs site that deviates from it? I’m not talking about video or a game (that are there to talk about the teams, the culture, the benefits, etc), but something that truly does something different?

Me neither.

So when I think about successful career sites, I go and revisit the patterns. Instead of looking for radically different things, what are the minor deviations? What are the nuances that reveal so much about the company.

Lots of pictures of magnificent campuses and facilities tell a candidate, “Yeah, we’re remote for now, but as soon as we can, we’ll expect everyone in the office.” They didn’t have to post their policy, but it came through in the nuances of the content.

What does it mean when there are videos of leadership and not staff? Or vice versa? What does it mean when the job search field is the first thing you see? Is the “Life at” content the first thing you see or is it hidden?

But take a step back and there’s another pattern at work that you need to consider: what is the purpose of your career site?

It’s not a dumb question. Looking at most career sites (and in talking to recruiters and talent leadership), you’d think that the purpose of the career site was to generate applications.

But is that what you really want?

A site optimized around applications gives just enough information to justify a candidate burning 5 minutes and connecting their LinkedIn profile. Everything is about “the conversion,” getting visitors to give up some amount of information so you can spam them into applying at some point down the road. It is taking everything learned about turning a browser into a buyer, which is exactly what you should do when you are looking for more applicants.

Of course, maybe you don’t want more applicants as much as you want better applicants. And how would you define a great applicant? One you would be happy to hire.

So maybe we’re building career sites all wrong, based on the lessons of other web marketers who are there to attract and convert as many people as possible. Instead of looking at some aspect of your career site and asking, “will this generate more applicants?” consider taking a different approach and asking, “will this actually generate more hires?”

Isn’t that why you have a career site to begin with?

Headlines!

The 37-Year-Olds Are Afraid of the 23-Year-Olds Who Work for Them

This week, it felt like every article was talking about the same idea from many different perspectives, so I thought it would make sense to collect them in the same way. The big picture is that the power dynamics at work have swung to a brand new place. Whether it is 23yo’s reframing office culture out from under leadership, “great resignation,” what perks people actually want at work, holding leadership accountable for (very) bad practices, or moving beyond the salary to determine what satisfies employees, all the old rules are changing. Employer brand can be the bridge between a changing labor culture and leadership, or it can be the glaring gap between the two.

• Forget Flexibility. Your Employees Want Autonomy.

• Rethinking assumptions about how employees work

• Creating Flex Work Policies … When Everyone Has Different Needs

• Employers Have Been Offering the Wrong Office Amenities

• The Great Cancellation: Next big trend after The Great Resignation

• Is the Great Resignation Giving Rise to the Entrepreneur?

• Creating a Meaningful Corporate Purpose

• Five Things Business Leaders Can Do To Create A Fantastic Work Culture

www.nytimes.com  •  Share

Application Experience (The State of Employer Branding in Australia, 2021).

I can’t decide if we over-index or under-index on the application experience. I guess it depends on what the AX is supposed to achieve.

www.linkedin.com  •  Share

5 Unconventional Strategies to Use When Hiring for Diversity

In a nutshell: don’t copy some textbook’s version of what diversity means, or how it impacts your company. Get real with DEI or get out.

talentculture.com  •  Share

Inside the fortune cookie

“You don’t always need to have the ultimate answer. Often the best next step is just to eliminate paths that lead to outcomes you don’t want. Avoiding the worst outcomes maintains optionality and keeps you moving forward.” - Shane Parrish

Thanks, everyone!

There are now more than 1,100 links in the link archive. Enjoy!

Reminder: The more people at your org who read my books, the better your job will get! employerbrandbook.com (They’re free!!!)

If you read this far, here’s a tease: there’s some big news on the horizon for the podcast!!!

Finally, if you have a question, just reply to this email and it comes directly to me.

Cheers and thanks!

-James Ellis (LinkedIn | Twitter | Podcast | Articles)

The Specials - Ghost Town [Official HD Remastered Video]

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By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd

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