Employer Brand Headlines: The "Wouldn't It Be Good" Edition (#65)
In this edition:
The curse of the easy compliment
2020 isn’t 2008
LinkedIn content tricks
What’s your professional event replacement strategy?
The Big Idea
One of the hardest hurdles to overcome in developing an employer branding mindset at work is the “curse of the easy compliment.”
People who don’t do what we do for a living, might assume that employer branding is all about saying nice things about the company. That its a wonderful place to work, that people here have great work/life balance, that there are amazing perks and the management is very friendly. Sounds great, right?
Except that might not be the story you’re trying to tell. Maybe you’re building a narrative around how people at your company come to be tested, that it is a hard (but very rewarding and worthwhile) place to earn a living. You might be trying to talk about purpose rather than perks. You might be trying to talk about the values of driven leadership instead of familial or fraternal ties.
Imagine that moment, when you have to ask someone to stop telling saying “nice” things about the company. Imagine the look on their face when you tell their “positive” messages are actively making it harder for you to build and manage a cohesive narrative.
It’s quite something, huh?
That’s a big, and often under-appreciated fight: getting people to stop seeing employer brand as being raw “positivity farmers,” but instead as weavers of something more specific. Spewing features isn’t the same as a brand position.
Have you thought about how you can teach your teams, your stakeholders and your leadership that what you do isn’t about generating positive mentions, that when they can say something, that they should try and connect what they say to your brand position?
On to the Headlines
It heartens me to see how even Recruiter is connecting the dots around how who you bring into your company is how you build a culture (turns out making posters doesn’t do much). This might make for some nice light reading when your culture team meets to talk about the next (virtual) picnic.
Here’s the data on why 2020 isn’t 2008 (from a hiring perspective). Turns out that when people ask “if the economy is tanking, how come it isn’t easier to hire?” (Or it’s corollary, “If everyone’s out of work, why do I have to invest in EB/CX/being nice to candidates?”) the answer is that the economy isn’t tanking equally for everyone, so there is still real demand in many many roles, thus buoying the talent market.
Need to get an edge on your LinkedIn content? Probably. On LI’s platform, we’re all begging for attention and the rules on how to get that attention aren’t obvious. So here’s the research that makes the LI black box a little more transparent. Memorize it to give your posts the maximum opportunity to be seen by the most people. (h/t Recruiting Brainfood)
Given that this whole pandemic thing isn’t going away, have you started planning on your event replacement strategy? Professional events, now unencumbered by hotel bills, can be anything now, so what do you want them to be?
Like a strong brand, diversity isn’t a project or campaign. It has to be something a company (and leadership) embraces and invests in quarter after quarter and year after year.
Most people seem to be of the opinion that brands play a meaningful role in people’s lives, so companies should consider how to get more involved in social causes. That sort of thing should involve your team, unless your company is just going to throw money at something, so here’s some smart thinking about how to connect your brand to social good.
Quick Hits
How to Host a Virtual Holiday Party & Bond With Your Team
How companies can win in the seven tech-talent battlegrounds
EB Tip Of The Week
Take a look at a bunch of your job postings and pull out the 5-7 most common bullet points (things around excellent verbal skills, ability to work with minimal supervision, etc). Re-write them (add in your EB language, wordsmith them to be more interesting, etc) and start adding them into job postings. As new job postings come in, insert the new language an other people will copy them for their own. it’s a kind of soft-hands kind of way of fighting the good fight.
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)
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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