Employer Brand Headlines: The "Unforgettable Fire" Edition (#57)
In this edition:
Does purpose still matter?
What’s authentic?
Market penetration
Yes, you can make your resume great
Don’t buy my book
The Big Idea
Conventional wisdom says that a good employer brand is built on some sort of “brand purpose.” That purpose often morphs into “the reason we help people (because our brand isn’t only about money),” which should go a long way to highlighting my general level of cynicism. Purpose, which could be the magnetic north of the how/why of the business, becomes the “heat shield” against a business’s more crass capitalistic impulses. It becomes PR, not principle.
In articles like this, we can see how purpose becomes a business tactic, a scheme rather than a reason.
So I was very interested to see MIT Sloan’s article about how the idea of business purpose needs to be re-evaluated. They looked at it in terms not of “purpose as direction” but more in terms of “the world has changed and your purpose needs to be adjusted” kind of way. As contexts change, people change and their needs change, so the things you assume and build structures on (notice the similar thinking in this article on internal disruption).
So have you looked at the things you thought were permanent and asked how they might not be applicant now? What is your business’s purpose now?
On to the Headlines
Bookmark this: Gallup, the research company, makes a pretty compelling case to your leadership on the power of employer brand. The overall focus is on how the employer brand makes a clear impact on your corporate brand (remember, businesses only speak three languages: make money, save money, extend the brand), which would be something you might want to slide under the virtual door of leadership.
My rule of thumb for strengthening your employer brand is to separate your sentiment and reach and treat them independently. But when you try and extend reach, its a rare day that you’re extending into blue ocean. So here is some great thinking on extending your market penetration, how to push others out of the way while staking your claim.
Trying to grow your brand without emotion (I mean, we are in the people business, right?) is a mistake. But leveraging emotion isn’t necessarily obvious or simple. It helps to understand your talent targets’ needs and desires.
Oh, hey. Here’s Marketing Week making a clear case for how your employer brand supports your customer brand. Trust me, they don’t care about recruiting or niceties like candidate experience. They only can about making and keeping customers. Slip this under your CMO’s door.
Pop quiz: what’s the one thing that adds authenticity to your brand claims? When actual employers align to those claims. Even more so when they can internalize those ideas and even talk about the less-attractive aspects of the brand (all traits have good and bad features, and every strength becomes a weakness if taken too far). Charlotte Marshal breaks it down.
My feeling on over-indexing on candidate experience are well known (your CX should reflect your brand and work reality, not just “white glove”), but there are still great online ways to engage talent online outside of tests and (god help us all) the ATS. Here are some examples from the consumer world we could all steal ideas from.
Quick Hits
Examples of great branding on Tik Tok.
EB Tip Of The Week
Candidates aren’t applying for jobs. They are applying for a specific future. Have you defined what future you are offering them? If you offer them innovation, what does that look like two years from now for them? If you offer them stability, what does their future look like in ten years? Connect it to what they want and what that looks like for them. Bonus points of you can include some of those ideas in the job posting.
On The Talent Cast
Are you looking for a new gig? It sure sounds like a lot of people in employer brand are getting displaced and are looking for a new role. Having helped a few friends polish their resume, I realized that there are a lot of ideas employer branders can be leveraging to make their resumes stand out. So I turned it into this week’s episode: A Better Resume (Yours!)
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)
On Sept 7, I am cutting the price of Talent Chooses You in HALF. As of Labor Day (US), I won’t make a single penny on book sales. Why would I do something so crazy? Because when I wrote it, I wasn’t trying to make a fortune, I was trying to change the conversation in recruiting, to help every single company and organization evolve their TA and recruiting thinking. So don’t buy this book!!!
By James Ellis, Employer Brand Nerd
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