⚡ Employer Brand Headlines: The "Things Can Only Get Better" Edition (#120)
My mission: move the conversation around employer brand forward.
Employer Brand Headlines, brought to you by James Ellis
In this issue
The state of job searching
More employee advocacy
Place, People and Past
Talent community hacks
The big idea
So, my secret is out: I am moving day jobs.
Though I don’t talk much about my day job, I learned a LOT going back to square one and seeing what a candidate gets to go through. That includes job boards, job postings, placement recruiters, blind applications, phone screens, interviews, ghosting, the works.
Here are the (unordered) top things I saw and learned in the last six months:
It’s 2021, and yet (effectively) every recruiter starts their call with “so tell me about yourself.” Despite my entire professional life being online, (most) recruiters are ONLY looking at the resume/application.
Recruiters are still ghosting candidates.
I’m still waiting to hear about roles I applied for in May. MAY.
I’m still waiting on a few recruiters I INTERVIEWED with two months ago to tell me if they want to continue the conversation.
Companies love to throw you on their mailing list… sorry, I think we’re calling them talent communities now. But they are still newsletters, because I can’t reply to them and I can communicate with any other “members” of the “community.”
99% of non-interactive recruiting messages would be called “spam” in any other context.
Workday is the clear marketplace leader in ATSs. But it still is too long, parses information from Linkedin poorly, and doesn’t understand social media URLs well at all (hint: if you use WD, and you see a LOT of drop-off at the “share your websites” section, that’s why).
The best ATS is the simplest ATS. That doesn’t mean the process is short, its just that the process of creating a simple application forces companies to really think about what info they need to make a decision instead of asking for everything short of my grandparents’ dog’s name or the phone number of a boss I has twelve years ago.
I’m not saying I dislike Zoom/Teams/WebEx (!) meetings, but phone conversations are SOOOO much nicer. With a set of ear-buds, I could walk around the room and chat like a human.
If a candidate says they are NOT moving to NYC and the job requires it, don’t schedule a second interview with the head of TA. Why are you wasting everyone’s time?
COMPANIES ARE NOT GIVING FEEDBACK, regardless of interview stage. I don’t care how big a brand you are, being selfish and greedy with candidate time (defined as taking without giving) will not pay off down the road. This is doubly-true if this is a candidate with whom you already have an existing relationship with and/or a conversation you initiated.
Every career/job site is the same. They say the same things without revealing much of use. Sure, as an EB person, maybe they are hiring me to fix that, but I saw PLENTY of websites that someone paid big money for that were NOT driving any kind of return on investment.
In a world of employer blanding, the teeniest, tiniest glimmer of personality or engagement SHINES LIKE A LIGHTHOUSE. Even a weak joke in a scheduling email is great because you’re attempting to bring some humanity to an inhumane process.
I feel sorry for new grads and young talent who don’t understand how TA works. From the outside, it is an insulting, dehumanizing process, and the only target of a candidate’s frustration is the recruiter. A smart company will offer a 15 minute video on how modern recruiting works, showing how many people are involved in a decision, why it takes FOREVER and to encourage the candidate that even good candidates get over looked. We really need to be injecting as much humanity into this process as possible.
Takeaway? The bar is still VERY low. But you (and I) have a lot of work still to do.
Before we get to the articles, can I ask a quick favor? I wrote an article on how to think differently about your EVP and it got nominated for an award. I would really appreciate it if you voted for it (or one of the others if you think they are better) this week. Thank you!
Headlines!
Aligning brand and demand: the future of B2B marketing
Marketing is over-indexing on short-term targets over long-term strategy, suggesting employer branders can learn some good lessons (and talking points) around the long game.
Employee Advocacy: Empower Your Team to Tell Your Story
In my experience, the biggest hurdle to employee advocacy isn’t tech, it’s knowing what they could say that might get them fired. Define that, and people will be happy to talk more.
As The Great Resignation Accelerates, CEOs Face A Grand Reckoning
I would love to think of the “great resignation” as a longterm trend of valuing people (slightly more) than valuing profits, but I am cynical. These kinds of shifts swing the pendulum back to the middle, in the same way that people coming back from WWII to find women in their roles changed a lot of power dynamics. But long term? I’m not sure. It means you have to work double-time to be clear about how your company values (and in what way) labor.
What’s Next for Employer Branding?
This article suggests we’re one or two technical leaps from understand how to measure employer brand (among other things). Consumer brand has been trying for decades and the best they can come up with is an NPS score, so… don’t hold your breath.
Why We Buy Products Connected to Place, People, and Past
Defining a company’s place, people and past (and with a little vision thrown in) sounds like a recipe for an employer brand, don’t you think?
One Person, Many Needs: How Customer Centricity Has Changed
Wharton could have asked anyone in our industry and we would have told them, “people want more money, but it’s never all about the money.” So where’s my grant??
knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu • Share
Talent Community Email Hacks (That Work)
Older post, but worth a re-read. Having just gone through a full-scope job search, I can tell you: even the “ best” talent communities are not very good. It’s a low bar.
Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
Maybe I’m paranoid, but I often wonder if TA, HR and Marketing look at us and think,“ why can’t we just automate employer brand?” This article spelled out a defense strategy which would be useful even if you weren’t feeling paranoid.
www.welcometothejungle.com • Share
12 Top Certifications HR Professionals Should Pursue To Enhance Their People Skills
I’ve never understood why HR and EB seem to have such a Capulets/Montagues vibe. We are both looking to present the best parts of the our company to the world (internal and external) and tell a compelling story. And yet it often seems that HR holds EB at arms length. So it was great to see that one of the major areas that HR pros can extend their value is in the EB space.
Inside the fortune cookie
“The reason conservatives cohere and radicals fight: everyone agrees abut fears, no one on visions.“ -Brian Eno
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!!!)
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)
Where the subject line came from:
Howard Jones - Things Can Only Get Better
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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