Get simple
But not simplistic
Hear from CGI’s Director of Talent Brand and Recruitment Marketing:
In today’s competitive talent market, candidates ignore inauthentic messaging. That’s why David Phillips, CGI’s ‘Director of Talent Brand and Recruitment Marketing’, turned to AI to help create and scale genuine content from EMPLOYEES.
By using AI as the accelerator (not the originator) David is able to gather & distribute 100’s of authentic employee video and written pieces at the scale he needs to impact enterprise hiring, and big initiatives such as DE&I:
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On my whiteboard (it dominates an entire wall of my dining room/office), I collect ideas.
Something someone said on a podcast I heard while making dinner.
Rough notes around upcoming presentations.
The structure for two big courses (I cheat and use post-its so I can sort and group).
Strap lines for future websites (“EBL: Employer branding so good it will make your marketing team jealous!”)
Bits of todo lists (Gah! I need to print and file my taxes today!)
The hex codes for the colors of various projects.
There’s a line that’s been sitting there for a while and I can’t tell if it’s obvious or if it needs unpacking, so here we go:
Employer Branding Is Simplification.
Yeah, that what I thought. It needs more explanation. So here goes.
Bearing in mind that there are a lot of ways to “employer brand” (verb), and no one approach is inherently wrong, there are a few things we need to agree on:
Job searching is HARD. Candidates might be feeling a little desperate and freaked out about their future. Even when they aren’t feeling freaked out, they are likely overwhelmed with options because…
There are millions of companies hiring right now. Millions. Which means that…
Most titles, when searched for on a job board, will return hundreds or thousands of results (not all of the related, but there they are). But let’s be honest…
Not all jobs are the same. They may have the same title, but the company, team, culture, role, context, expectations, etc, are very very different for each opportunity. And yet…
Our job postings are still pretty crap. We’re lucky when they actually make some brand claims, but no time or thought is put into putting much details into those job posts. Add on to that…
We’ve done pretty good work making it relatively easy to apply (not so fast, Workday. You go back to your developer team and you think about what you’ve done).
So no matter how you think about your employer brand, this is likely the context: people are looking to change their lives, and are getting no information about what that means, but everyone is begging them to apply.
What does this mean? In a context with lots of disparate and low-value information, when companies are sounding and looking the same, candidates are going to find it hard to chose.
In the face of that, you might think to build a “complete” employer brand: an EVP that establishes the core reason engage with the company regardless of team or level, pillars that support and define that reason to engage, talking points for each audience to make those pillars feel real.
Hold up. You were trying to turn the laundry list of reasons a recruiters might share into something focused and you ended up with… another laundry list. Oops.
Look at what we want the employer brand to do: to give people a reason to engage. We don’t need to serve them a buffet of proof points for every single claim day one. We just need to give them a reason to engage.
We often get enamored by the completeness of the employer brand. But there’s an inverse correlation between how “complex” the brand is and how easy it is for a candidate to understand and remember.
All we want them to understand is that our company cares more about innovation than other companies. Or that it goes the extra mile to support its people. Or that they take care of their own equipment more than anyone else (yes, this is how simple your brand can be and add real value). Later on you can surround that hook with a more complete picture.
That’s why when you are thinking about an employer brand, start simple. A single reason that makes your company different. Something that gives you a little space to work. A meaningful and unique hook that attracts attention because it is so unusual or striking.
Employer brand is a kind of winnowing down of the million reasons someone would want to work there into the handful that matter, so that
People can understand and remember it
You can focus your energy on proving just those two or three instead of spreading the peanut butter too thin across a hundred reasons
That’s the way 99% of companies should start with their employer branding. Something simple that gets the right attention. You can grow it into a more complete EVP later, once your recruiters and HMs understand what EB is there to do.
😵💫 Is your EVP actually working? »
💡 75% of companies are finding it harder to find talent. Huge numbers of recruiters and employer branders are looking for work. Could it be that simple??? »
🌊 If you can believe it, companies are starting their 2025 planning. If you want make a bigger splash, consider reinventing your annual planning process »
😲 Leading brands excel at the customer-employee interaction. Huh. »
💘 I know we like to think of ourselves as rational humans (contradiction in term though it may be), but there’s a case to be made that we should also think about helping people develop a slightly irrational love for their work »
🧓 My only challenge to this article on “how to use Tik Tok to engage Gen Z” is that Tik Tok is long past being a Gen Z thing »
⚙️ For all the talk about how great AI is, there needs to be more discussion on how hard it is to integrate into existing workflows »
💥 Speaking of AI, my AI class had a number of “holy shit!” moments. So I increased the price. But for this week, newsletter readers can use discount code “CHANGEIT” to get it at the original price. »
💘 “Jargon Monoxide” is my new favorite term »
🗣️ I’m doing two webinars in the next two weeks you might want to join. I’m doing a workshop with BuiltIn about employer branding during “organizational changes” (which is code for “layoffs) on April 18, and a presentation I called “The Red Queen Effect: Recruiting Is Running To Stand Still” for TALK on April 25th.
🏛️ All 2,300+ articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!
All episodes can be found wherever you get your podcasts or on YouTube.
And what’s next? I actually have a plan. Watch this space!
Yep. I have PROOF that it only takes 3 weeks to get an employer brand that makes every single one of your recruiters and your recruiting tactics more effective.
Don’t believe me? Let me send you one of two case studies I just wrapped up. Just reply to this email and I’ll send one over.
Still here: EmployerBrand.ing
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***