This Is An Arms Race
It certainly doesn't look like a scene of any kind.
Employer Brand: Where Are the Gaps?
What could be improved with your employer brand? Authentic employee videos? Better storytelling? Culture insights? Content planning?
Outhire has a great tool to analyze your employer brand. Simply enter your careers website and a job description, and the tool will send you a scorecard highlighting what works well and providing actionable recommendations to enhance your employer brand.
Get your free scorecard here: https://outhi.re/scorecard
[Sponsored]
Recruitment (and the larger world of recruitment marketing) has become an arms race. Even when execs say, “you have to do more with less,” TA leaders are spending piles of cash to manufacture some kind of “advantage” to help them attract and hire great people.
Did you get a CRM? Great! But everyone has a CRM. How does that help you, especially when you don’t even know what you want to say?
Did you re-do your career site! Great! But what’s the value of a tool that alerts people to new jobs when they sound just like all the old ones?
Did you embed a chatbot? Great! So now you can push the same “doesn’t really say anything of meaning” information to candidates in a new way!
Did you decide invest in programmatic ads? Great! Do they just say, “We’re hiring?”
Did you invest in AI? Great! Now what?
Uh oh. Don’t look now, but here comes the bill…
The moment you buy a tool designed to be “the solution” you’ve been looking for, you should know that the company selling it to you also sold it to 10 more companies today. And will sell it to ten more tomorrow.
Even employer branders love to ask “is this new social channel the new LinkedIn/Instagram/TikTok?” We are always looking to be the early adopters and claim territory in the next big thing, as if there’s advantage in being the first to post, “We have a great culture!” in a channel that is only attracting people who are sick of people posting that on FB/IG/TT/etc.
An arms race is a race in which only the biggest and best-resourced can win. Even if you have a lot of money to spend, do you think you can out-ad Facebook or Google (who not only own the two biggest ad channels but likely can use theirs for free)? Do you think you can out-LinkedIn LinkedIn? Or out-content Netflix? Or out-social Tik Tok? Or out-AI OpenAI?
Which makes an arms race a suckers game where no one actually wins.
The only way out of an arms race is to play a different game.
Because while literally anyone with $150k in their pocket can buy a LinkedIn Recruiter Seat, a fancy new website, and a pile of ads, no one else can be you.
The way and win the arms race is to be something no one else can compete with.
Be the company everyone knows goes above and beyond in developing their people.
Be the company everyone knows is changing the world.
Be the company everyone knows takes care of its people.
Be the company everyone knows offers each person abundant autonomy.
Because that’s the company that wins regardless of their competitor’s tech stack or ad budget. They can’t buy their way into being clearly and credibly known for something.
That’s how you win.
And that’s why employer brand is so important: it allows you to win without having to play the arms race game.
🃏 Reinventing the EVP »
🃏 Aesthetics matter as a means of proving and reinforcing a brand idea. But don’t mistake them for the actual brand »
🃏 There is no such thing as a “good” culture. Some are collaborative and others are competitive. We need to find new ways to describe the kind of culture we offer staff, including “courageous” ones »
🃏 A ritual is a physical or behavioral express of what we believe. Is there a ritual at your company you can use to illustrate what your company and people believe? »
🃏 Develop a circular strategy »
🃏 A great example of how a brand changes perception and helps people see you more clearly (far beyond the features you offer) »
🃏 Everything is Merch »
🏛️ All 2,400+ (five years worth!) articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!
Think your marketing team doesn’t “get it?” Two tricks that will help.
One: Help them hire someone on their team. Show them how “the usual” way of posting a job doesn’t get it done anymore. Show them how building a little content that connects to the larger brand creates a more credible and compelling message that attracts the people they actually want to talk to. Want to really twist the knife? Ask the to message ten sourced candidates with the “standard” LI outreach (you know the one, it starts ”I came across your profile and was intrigued…”) and something you wrote that speaks to what makes that team in that company different.
They’ll see it.
Two: Show them the ATS. They are likely laboring under the assumption that when the ATS has 100 applicants, most are worth talking to. They think that since all sales are good sales and all dollars are good dollars, it probably stands to reason that every applicant is a good applicant. And honestly, it’s not until they’re wading hip-deep in people who tripped on their keyboard and seemed to accidentally click the “apply” button that they’ll see the value in thinking in quality, not quantity.
Remember: you can’t build trust overnight. Getting your marketing team to see you as a useful part of the larger marketing ecosystem occurs over the course of months and even years. So don’t get discourages.
But you need to start taking baby steps now…
One: Understand the financial impact having a strong employer brand. Nine questions to get your custom report. It’s free! »
Two: Compare 25 employer brand building companies side-by-side. It’s how you make a better decision about who will help you best in your EB journey. It’s free! »
Three: Three case studies that prove how an employer brand can be built in just three weeks. A 250-person manufacturer, a 300-person construction company, and an 800-person video game company. Just reply to this email.
Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
- Richard Feynman
Please share this: EmployerBrand.ing
And… have you ever wondered why they don’t write songs about employer branding?
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***