The Last EBH 🔚 🔀
It's the end of the newsletter as we know it and I feel fine
Employer Brand Headlines was started to share what people were talking about in EB. Specifically, it started because the Harvard Business Review published their straw man argument that “employer brand needs to be re-thought” because it made no sense to have a separate brand for recruiting. And while their goal (a single brand for all parts of the company) is correct, their click-bait-y approach to the article made all our bosses even more skeptical of our work.
Two years ago, I pivoted to the idea that we need to make “a million employer brand thinkers.” And in a way, we’re getting there. Not only because it seems like every day a dozen recruiters add “employer branding” to the end of their LinkedIn headlines, but also because marketing publications, marketing leader, business leaders, and people far afield from recruiting are seeing the value of this work. We may not have a million EB thinkers, but we’re getting there.
So it’s time to pivot again. Instead of thinking about how to get more people to see and think in employer brand terms (attract instead of chase, quality over quantity, etc), we need to think more about the bigger change we’re making to businesses:
Making recruiting work better for the recruiter, the business, and the candidate
Making the employer brand a reflection of the culture and a supporting pillar of our consumer brands
Showing the connection between talent acquisition and business growth
Thinking strategically and systemically instead of buying the latest tool or tech
Ultimately, this is the newsletter for those in TA who are sick of doing it “the usual way.” The newsletter for recruiters, sourcers, branders, and leaders who are sick of being seen as a cost center. A newsletter for those ready to create real change in an industry desperate for it.
Introducing The Change Agent (Spoiler, you’re already subscribed).
Landing in your inbox one week from today (same nerd time, same nerd channel)!
So would you do me a favor and forward this email to someone who’s a change agent in TA, branding, or recruiting and let them know they need to subscribe? Thank you!
The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence —
it’s acting with yesterday’s logic. - Peter Drucker
🧮 It’s not enough to be good (a good recruiter, a good leader, a good company). You have to be different (“‘The best’ is a synonym for ‘the same’” - Alex MH Smith). How do you create that difference? Through focus. »
🧮 As we change TA for the better, we need to learn how to prepare for anything. »
🧮 “How to ‘contain’ employee negativity before it spreads” is how we thought in the last century. Shouldn’t the focus be: How to uncover what your people are seeing that freaks them out, and work together to solve for it? »
🧮 We need to reconsider how we think about the “Think Different” campaign. »
🧮 Every piece of content can (and should be) reused in a different format. »
🧮 What hiring managers want is ‘curiosity.’ But job postings don’t feel designed to attract curious people. »
🧮 20MM businesses in North America. Perhaps as many as 50MM in the world. How do you show how you are different? Are you even different at all? What you need is to spot that tiny little nugget of uniqueness. What you need to do is create an insight. »
🧮 Eva Baluchova (whose series on EB keeps getting better: when are you writing a book, Eva?) talks about emotion in branding. My issue is that when I read career sites and eb videos, the only emotion on display is “self-seriousness.” There’s got to be a wider spectrum on which we can spark emotion, right? »
🧮 From Hung Lee’s Recruiting Brainfood, how recruiters value themselves is not how their clients value them. And that is becoming a real problem. How can you grab your seat at the table when people don’t think your work is valuable??? »
🎙️ Podcast pairing you need: Start with Mark Ritson (who is a brand/marketing god) talking about how the US isn’t embracing “effective marketing” (it is a specific term, derived from the work of Byron Sharp (How Brands Grow) and Binet and Fields (The Long and the Short Of It)). Once you’ve listened to that, go listen to Peter Field and Adam Morgan on Uncensored CMO talking about how being ‘dull’ is costing our companies millions.
🧠🔌 AI Idea of the Week: Automated captions on all your photos. »
🏛️ All 2,200+ articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!
“Cyber Monday” is a vestige of the days when we didn’t all have high-speed internet connections at home.
But, like the “save” button that looks like a floppy disk (which, stopped being floppy by the time it became the de facto “save” image), it lingers. So, as my last Cyber Monday special, get my 30-minute talent insight call for only $25 (a huge discount from the already cheap $75 price). Just go to EmployerBrandOnDemand.com and use discount code 2023.
105 free (or almost free) ways to activate your brand »
Employer Brand Breakdown series »
Biotech Recruiting limited run email course »
Proof employer brand works »
Biotech Recruiting Chat series »
Employer Brand minute series »
The Brand Plan podcast »
The Talent Cast podcast »
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***
-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]
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