Employer Brand Headlines: The "Goody Two Shoes" Edition (#62)
In this edition:
Necessities and virtues
Are you upskilling?
Have you been chopped?
Better job postings
Ready for sequential videos?
The Big Idea
Turn your necessities into virtues.
The biggest sin in employer branding is envy: we envy those other massive companies and their brand name, their scale, and even their resources. That envy leads us in the wrong direction, to try and be smaller versions of those massive and/or famous brands. To mimic their plays, as if size is nothing but a number.
Too many brands look at those big companies, not just for tactical ideas, but also for guidance their own brands. How else can you explain that every EVP seems to talk about the same stuff? Pillar on how we all work together? Check. Pillar on how we’re inventing some future? Check. Pillar on how every employee can make an impact? Check. Whether or not it is true, the usual 10-12 pillars dominate the landscape. And it’s because we envy those bigger brands.
But you aren’t those companies. Your brand is supposed to be about you, not about how you think of yourself as a smaller version of those other brands.
The fastest way to break that envious cycle is to turn your necessities into virtues. Are you small? Maybe that means you are nimble though it is not a lock, as I know plenty of small companies who are as agile as Buckingham Palace). Are you slow? Maybe that means you are stable? These things that are simply “how it is” can be seen as constraints and issues, or you can flip them around and treat them as gifts.
On to the Headlines
One of the very clear axes (plural of axis, not a thing for chopping wood) by which you can communicate your culture and brand (though it isn’t often used), is the way a company invests in individual professional growth. Is the employee in charge of their own growth (a la every agency I’ve ever seen), the employee is in charge but the company will pay, the company encourages and supports upskilling, etc. If you want to be known as a place where people are expected and supported in their growth (you’d think that was every company, but you’d be very very wrong about that), it means getting your CEO involved.
As mentioned earlier, it does feel like so many companies have the same pillars and recruitment messaging. To be fair, so many companies are structured the same and have the exact same perks and org chart, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising. Which is why I loved this article equating a company’s branding elements to ingredients in a basket on TV cooking show Chopped. The chefs get the same ingredients, so the skill is in how you bring them together and build something far bigger/better than its components.
Emily Firth pointed out this amazing example of how one company its branding into even the most boring of corporate elements: the on-boarding and employment agreement. Now, Tony Chocolonely isn’t a massive company (171 people according to my cursory Googling), which makes the fact that it spent time and energy to design an internal-only document into something that could be put into a shop window a clear statement of brand.
If you see employer brand as crafting the rosiest picture possible around a company, the safest play is to write great stories to paint that picture. Done right, using text primarily to talk about your brand can hide a multitude of sins, effectively letting a brander put lipstick on the proverbial pig. But a brand isn’t just (or even) the words you use. It is found in the actions of your company.
Speaking of text, let’s talk job postings. (Yay!) There are a number of schools of thought on how to write better job postings. Personally, I lean towards a structured/modular approach (goal: ensure every job posting is a B+), but there are creative approaches and strategic approaches. Jacynta Clayton offers some great ideas on how to build a more creating posting (rhyming?! Genius). Alternatively, Katrina Kibben (is there anyone who thinks more or better about job postings? I doubt it), asks the killer question: for entry-level job postings, why even have bullets at all?
Ready to get deep? To jump off the really high platform? Here we go. Instead of thinking about your video strategy in a “let’s make a video about the London team” way in which you try and take enough footage that shows what you’re trying to say kind of way, what if you really began to think about telling real stories. Google has some examples of hardcore marketing storytelling told via sequential videos. My money says we’re going to be spending a LOT of time thinking about building these kinds of videos in the next year or two.
Quick Hits
How To Do a Poll on Instagram: A Beginner’s Guide
Employee Engagement Is About To Get (A Lot) More Challenging
EB Tip Of The Week
Employer branding ends up being the connective tissue of the body corporate (what a poet!). You need to help every team and every location understand and communicate their own story within the framework of the brand. But how can you be everywhere at once? Do you have a single place all your messaging and collateral lives? Are there instructions to each team/location on how to use it? Do you share the location of that stuff every week?
Thanks, everyone!
The mission of this whole thing 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)
I tried to write the best book ever written on employer branding. I don’t know if I completely succeeded, but for 99 cents, you can decide for yourself.
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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