Employer Brand Headlines: The "Number One" Edition (#84)
My mission: Help you understand your employer brand better and make it work for you.
In this issue
Stop with the features, already.
Content planning
Appreciate employees
Alumni networks
Avoid bad decisions
The big idea
Think back to the last commercial you saw. This experiment works better if it was a commercial you liked or worked on you to buy something, but really, any decent commercial will work.
Remember, this is a 30-second ad. This isn’t much time for that commercial to embed itself in your brain and get you to take some sort of action.
In a way, it’s like a magic trick. In 30 seconds, a mini-movie or mini-song gets beamed or streamed into your home and suddenly, you’re going to do something different.
So anyway, how would you describe the commercial?
Was the commercial a list of features and benefits? The movie equivalent of a bulleted list that rushed past as fast as it could?
Was the commercial just a logo and instructions on how to buy something?
Was the commercial just directions on how to connect with a salesperson who would then explain the product or service to you?
I’m willing to bet that that commercial was none of those things. I would imagine that commercial started with something that grabbed your attention (maybe a surprise, maybe a song you liked), then proceeded to build some kind of emotion or feeling in you.
Maybe it was something that was supposed to inspire you to greatness (which is like every Nike commercial).
Maybe it was to help you find that piece of your lost youth (half the car ads).
Maybe it wanted you to feel safe and that you were a good person for protecting your family (the other half of the car ads).
Maybe it wanted you to change your perspective (every good travel ad).
Maybe it made you want to tell your spouse that you love them (every diamond, jewelry, wine, romantic restaurant, or life insurance ad).
All those commercials were designed to make you feel something. Maybe laughter, maybe fear, maybe hope, maybe nostalgia, but every single frame and pixel existed to create an emotion.
So now look at your recruiting process (which is really your recruiting marketing message). What emotions are you creating? Frustration? Anger? Self-doubt? Impatience? Chances are if you’re creating an emotion at all, it is both negative and unintentional.
Now, look at the descriptions of crappy commercials (feature lists, logos, connect to salespeople). Aren’t they more accurate descriptions of your marketing? Job posts that say nothing but jargon and words that look like English but read like word salad, followed by a laundry list of bullets? Career sites that are really just your logo with just enough text to justify its existence? Everything designed not to inform, educate, define, or describe the job, but designed to get someone to apply so a recruiter can decide if they will reach out?
Trying to attract talent via features is a fool’s game. Do you really pay so much more than everyone else? Do you really have “world-class” benefits? Do you really care about your employees more than every other company? Do you really think you’re the only company who paid to put that “best place to work” badge on your career site?!?? That’s not ‘differentiation,’ that’s pandering.
Marketing has been telling us for years to stop with the feature lists to attract an audience and getting them interested in a job. They have shown us over and over that the key to controlling your audiences’ minds is to tap into people’s emotions. That’s the open window when logic has bolted closed the door.
So I ask you: are you creating an emotional message? Is it serving you? Are you able to back up the emotion’s promise with action that delivers? Or are you going to try and pretend you’re the only company that “cares about its people”?
Headlines!
Virtual or IRL? Recruitment marketing content planning in 2021
The underlying assumption here is that it really doesn’t matter how you build or push your story to the world. What matters is finding a story that matters. Great stories are right there, sitting in your Slack, Outlook, Gmail, and Confluence. Don’t let distance and tools keep you from getting that story.
storiesincorporated.com • Share
How to celebrate employee appreciate day (pdf)
I hate the idea of an “employee appreciation day,” but I liked how it embraced our remote situation to find ways to make employees feel good. Ignore the saccharine tone and focus on how it plots out how to influence feelings.
430a9f32-aa69-48f8-a0f7-516aa3adbc13.usrfiles.com • Share
I live by the maxim that “good strategy is what you don’t do,” and this might be its corollary: Making good decisions is about avoiding bad ones.
Turn Departing Employees into Loyal Alumni
The way you treat your people as the leave isn’t just the difference between a 1 and 4-star Glassdoor review, but the difference between an alumni network you can tap for new hires and… not.
Dave Trott’s amazing, but don’t let the glib headline distract you from a powerful idea: sometimes we try to be too clever for our own dang good. A good idea treated simply will out-perform overly-creative and overly-produced group-think.
www.campaignlive.co.uk • Share
10 Truths About Marketing After the Pandemic
You’re smart enough to do your own math (old v new), but it helps to adjust your own perspective. This article had a lot of ways you can be changing your own perspective.
How to Create a Comprehensive How to Guide [+Examples]
You can’t be everywhere doing everything (even if you tried). The next best thing is to get others to do it as you would. So in a lot of ways, your employer brand rests on your ability to train others. So start by making excellent how-to guides.
Anyone Can Be an Innovator. You Just Have to Think Like an Outsider.
The challenge for EB professionals is that pretty much everywhere we go, we’re the ‘outsider.’ Turns out, if you’re trying to create change (and you should be!), being an outsider is the best place to be.
Employer Brand Insider - Why Talent Chooses You
If you miss hearing my voice or seeing my face (?), Dylan Kress invited me on to be his inaugural guest on his podcast. It was a great long chat, covering some of the obvious stuff, but Dylan threw me a couple of curveballs and I had a great time thinking them through on the fly.
Quick hits
Tip of the week
When’s the last time you asked recruiting what they needed? Not told them, but asked them? The act of asking itself may actually increase the likelihood that they engage. Heck, just saying things like, ‘this idea came from Susan on the tech recruiting team…“ can raise your credibility substantially.
Inside the fortune cookie
“There are no solutions, only trade-offs.“ - Thomas Sowell
One last thing
Clubhouse update! Tuesday at 8:30AM Central, we’re talking content marketing hacks. Bring your questions and ideas!
And since the Holland+James test went so well, we’re going to make it a regular thing! We’re going to take listener challenges and break them down for everyone. Got a challenge you want us to wrestle with? Tweet me @TheWarForTalent.
And I’m going to be facilitating a section of The Talent Brand Summit in April. I’m not doing a lot of speaking this year, and I’m really excited to hear from people like Kerry Noone, Lisa Smith-Strother, and Michael Mager. Ping me if you want a discount on the tickets.
Thanks, everyone!
You may have noticed some changes to the look and feel (but hopefully not the tone) of the newsletter. What do you think? Is this better or worse? I’d love to hear your thinking.
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)
Where the subject line came from:
Real Genius - Number One
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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