Employer Brand Headlines: The "In Between Days" Edition (#72)
We’re not the biggest and best employer brand newsletter… oh, wait. Yes, we are!
In this edition:
Innovate or optimize?
Story archetypes
Tik Tok Creators?
One-stop-shopping
The Big Idea
Last week, I talked a bit about how jobs fall into two main categories: Artists and Workers. Workers do what they are told and are measured on how well they meet spec. Artists figure out what needs doing and how it should get done and (in a perfect world) are measured by the outcomes.
Clearly, this touched a nerve.
So I want to put the same idea into a different frame. Optimization and innovation.
We are surrounded by messages about amazing new tools designed to make the application process a little faster. A little smoother. A better conversion rate. A wider reach. Tools that are designed to take what you do and make them… better. Faster. With less work. That’s how workers think: if the role is transactional and you give me money for my effort, let’s optimize the effort to be most effective. Squeeze the lemon a bit better to get a bit more juice for the same squeeze.
Artists don’t optimize. They innovate.
Innovation requires (REQUIRES!) deviation. You can’t do something new unless you do something different. Optimizing is all about looking backwards and optimizing against what worked in the past. Innovation is looking forward, thinking about what could work, something that has no proof that it will work except your ability to think through the problem.
Artists can optimize things they don’t want to do any more, but don’t confuse optimizing something with innovation.
There’s a tool I saw on Product Hunt that writes better outreach messages for you. It looks like innovation, but it really is just looking at millions of old emails and learning what worked in the past and helping you get to a “good” solution faster and with less effort. That solution will look a LOT like what worked in the past. The software will never come up with a new idea, it will only optimize against what happened in the past.
If you are worker, your only choice is to optimize, and there lies danger, as optimization leads to automation (and you out of a job). So maybe optimization makes sense short-term, but innovation is where your future needs to be.
So keep that in mind when you are investing (time or money). Are you trying to optimize or are you trying to innovate?
Are you an artist or a worker?
On to the Headlines
Employer branders are expected to master an insane breadth of platforms, channels and tools, many far afield from any core recruiting or sourcing skills (here’s a list). When we get a new tool, we usually do the 101 thing, get it set up and get on to the next thing without diving too deeply into the mechanics and strategy. Which is why I really liked this article (and video) on email automation, which really has more of a 301 feel than most articles on the subject. (h/t Managing Editor newsletter)
I have an innate love of archetypes, primarily in marketing and branding. The idea that we are hard-wired from birth to understand certain ideas, or that those ideas are so closely tied to the hardware of humanity makes me feel like these things are hackable, that we can push deeper into our own collective consciouses to find resonance. (Wow. Where did that come from? Anyway…) So here are 7 story archetypes and how you use them in recruiting.
As an avid Tik Tok user… just kidding. My wife likes to joke that the only Tik Toks I see are ones that rank well on reddit, and she’s probably right. Which is why this article was absolutely amazing. If it’s time to take Tik Tok seriously, maybe you should get some professional help. Maybe you should work with some Creators.
When you hit the wall of content creation and can’t think of anything to build, here’s a great video on how to squeeze more content ideas out of what you already have on hand. (h/t Tracey Parsons)
Please ignore the ATROCIOUS acrostic used, but here’s a nice article to meditate on in terms of thinking about the trends we all face and how to leverage them to strengthen your brand next year.
I am legit jealous that I didn’t think of it first, but here’s Danaher’s one-stop-shopping page on how to do your research before interviewing at Danaher. So well done.
Anyone else all-in on LinkedIn Stories?!?! Yeah, me neither. Consider me skeptical in any content marketing strategy LinkedIn attempts as their success is more about brute-force audience than smart strategy or well-considered implementation. Anyway, if you’re curious (and please share your results!), here’s a great write-up on how to approach them for recruiting.
Embarrassing admission: I’ve spent a good deal of time in the NLP/Neuro-linguistic programming world of Bandler and Grinder (Hey, I was young once. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, consider yourself lucky). Anyway, while 99% of what came out of NLP was garbage, some smart tidbits did manage to escape. Specifically, mirroring. If you want someone to listen to you and consider what you say, you have to talk more like they do.
Quick Hits
Social media trends in 2021: What do the experts predict?
Engaging Internal Company Newsletters: 9 Rules You Must Follow In 2021
EB Tip Of The Week
“Recharge Month” continues.
As much as I like to read, I like to re-read more. It’s weird, I know. But I’ve read my ~20 favorite novels half a dozen times each, easily. One of my favorite authors is Nick Harkaway, who writes some wild (and insanely smart) not-really-science-fiction that I just adore (if you’ve read Gone Away World, I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!). I bring this up because I just realized that insanely smart speculative fiction authors make for some amazing podcast guests, really helping me see things in different ways, as well as revealing their own internal content creation processes. Here’s my favorite episode, but I highly recommend you search out your smartest author and hear how they do what they do.
And Inside Your Fortune Cookie It Says...
“The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it sells him.” - Peter Drucker
Thanks, everyone!
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Cheers and thanks!
-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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