Employer Brand Headlines: The "Save It For Later" Edition (#92)
My mission: Help you understand your employer brand better and make it work for you.
In this issue
What are the right KPIs?
It isn’t about you
Why people leave
Who’s producing?
The big idea
What are your KPIs?
Not your data, not your metrics, but your KPIs. Your Key Performance Indicators. The things that say you are doing your job.
There’s a good chance you thought of how many followers you have, or how many videos you made. Maybe you (shudder) list your Indeed rating. Or your engagement rate on Facebook. Or how many employees share the links you put in front of them.
But if we’re trying to measure the things that define our job performance, do those things matter?
Maybe it makes sense to decide what our KPIs need to be before we figure out what ours are.
1: A KPI must have significance. KPIs must connect to your core goal. Metrics that are easy to collect or have no direct impact on the goal are potentially interesting, but cannot be called KPIs.
Not a KPI: Social media engagement rates. Number of followers. Open rates on emails. How many posts per week.
2: A KPI must have meaning. If a number goes up, we must be able to say that it is a positive or negative thing. If a metric changes and we can’t say that it is a good thing or a bad thing, it cannot be called a KPI. It’s input.
Not a KPI: Number of applications. Number of jobs posted. Videos created.
3: A KPI must be responsive. If we cannot take action to compel or influence a metric to go up or down, it isn’t a KPI. It’s the weather.
Not a KPI: Glassdoor score. Rankings. Glassdoor pageviews. NPS score. Stock price.
Did some of your standard metrics not make the cut? Did any?
One of the big issues is that we often steal our metrics from the marketing team. But that’s not fair. Notice that KPIs are functions of what our goals are. The metrics team likely has a single goal: create more qualified leads for the sales team. Or maybe even: create more sales. Everything leading up to the sale is a step in the journey. More steps forward equal more sales. The KPIs are easy to select because they are anything we can make happen that moves someone forward in the sales journey.
[case in point: this article lists recruiting metrics (there will be no surprises) that are all gameable and seem not to understand what the goal is]
If we want to understand our real KPIs, the ones that ensure that we are effective in our job, we need to define our goal.
Have you defined employer brand? Have you established what it’s FOR? Does your boss agree?
Scary thought, right?
So many employer branders are working VERY HARD to “increase brand awareness.” Go get yourself a chicken costume and a ticket to Times Square and you’ll have plenty of brand awareness. What good did it do you?
Many employer branders are losing sleep over what people say about their brand. Why? The folks at Goldman Sachs slept great (on piles of used $20 bills, no doubt) even when public sentiment declared them evil for all but working junior analysts to death.
Plenty of employer branders are exhausted trying to attract more applicants when their recruiters are drowning in submissions.
If you haven’t defined your goal, you can’t define your KPIs. All you can do is measure the effort you are applying to get nowhere.
Headlines!
Employer Branding Isn’t about You – It’s About Your Audience
A strong brand isn’t what you say, it’s what gets internalized. It lives in their heads, not yours.
employerbrandwagon.com • Share
Dissonance Disaster: When Employer Brand And Talent Brand Don’t Align
🙄 Yeah, I was a bit baffled by that headline, too. I guess we’re saying “talent brand” is what you say, but your “employer brand” is what people think? Yikes. As if all you are thinking about is pushing a message without understanding how it’s being absorbed and how it’s being integrated into prospects’ perceptions. It’s clearly written by someone who doesn’t actually do any EB work but happens to sell into the HR/TA tech stack. I literally only point to this because there’s a 10% chance your leadership saw it and thought about forwarding it to you.
Performance Marketing? No-One Knows Anything
“So, Adidas came to a conclusion that, with hindsight, might seem obvious. Quit the tactical tricks and concentrate on building a brand that talks to people in a more attitudinal, interesting, and genuine way without the comforting paraphernalia of data.”
Why your best employees are leaving and how to stop it
The news seems flooded with “people aren’t working because they make as much money on unemployment” stories, but for most of us, our challenge isn’t to attract minimum wage folks, but higher-value employees. This might help you see what’s happening right in front of you.
4 Actions Transformational Leaders Take
If you think you’re here to “make recruiting better,” you are missing a huge opportunity to transform the company (though now that I think about it, maybe you should start by trying to transform your recruiting team first).
There is real value in having a second set of eyes on your video work as you record it. If you’re going to be in the moment and listen to what your subject is talking about to make sure they get where you want them to be, someone who can see that weird shadow or notice that they stepped on their own name turns a wasted take into gold.
How to Transform Your Internal Recruiting Strategy
Strong recruiting (and strong branding) starts from within.
www.smartrecruiters.com • Share
Events of the future will be hybrid and "always on"
I can’t decide how I feel about events. If you see them as knowledge-transfer vectors, in-person events are SUCH a waste of time and money. It’s infinitely better to read a book and make plans in that same two-day span as an event. But as a way of getting people together to realize that they are sharing an experience of change? That’s where in-person events SHINE. Sadly, that’s not how they’re often designed.
How to Think: The Skill You've Never Been Taught
“The best way to improve your ability to think is to actually spend time thinking.”
Quick hits
Tip of the week
You know what makes you special, right? Great! Can you map what makes you special relative to your biggest competitors? Can you help recruiters make the contrast between you and some other company crystal clear? Create a “compare and contrast” map of what you offer and what others offer. That might mean praising the competitor, but it gives you a chance to solidify your brand position (and help your recruiters advocate for the brand even more effectively).
Inside the fortune cookie
“There are many futures and only one status quo. This is why conservatives mostly agree and radicals always argue.” - Brian Eno
This is not a commerical
We live in a world where your best prospects are “happy” at another company. What if you could get a sense of when things at that company get strained so you know when to approach the prospect? This low-cost information tool was built by Joel Cheesman (of Chad and Cheese fame) and might be your sourcing team’s newest secret weapon. (Full disclosure: No one paid me to say this: Joel is a friend and the tool is cool. I don’t do commercials.)
Thanks, everyone!
We’re about to hit 800 links in the link archive.
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:
English Beat: "Save It For Later"
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
In a sea of content, how do you stay up to date on employer branding news? How do you know what's worth reading and what's just a waste of time?
So glad you asked! Here's a weekly digest of the best content to make you smarter about employer branding, curated by James Ellis.
In order to unsubscribe, click here.
If you were forwarded this newsletter and you like it, you can subscribe here.
Powered by Revue
James Ellis, 421 W Melrose, Chicago, IL 60657