What's the value? 📈📉📊
The fastest way to make your career site (and so much more)... better
Even if the comms team won’t let you touch the corporate LI channel, this class will teach you how you can make amazing things happen!
TOMORROW!!! And yes, if you register, I’ll send you the recording.
Would you do me a favor and share the link? Either on social or just email it to a co-worker or friend who would value it? Thanks!
[Sponsored]
Here. Call it a gift: The fastest way to make your career site better. And you can use this to make your job postings and outreach better, too.
Before I talk about how, let’s start with an example. I’m going to go to a random career site.
Skimming the text… Ah! Here we are!
“We offer a flexible work environment.”
Cool!
…
Wait, what? What does that mean??
In the modern vernacular of the job seeker and career site, we may assume that this line is there to say that the company allows the employee to make their own schedule.
Or maybe it means that people can work from home.
Or that they can work from home a day or two a week, provided they get prior approval from their boss.
Or that people do yoga there, maybe? (It’s a “flexibility” joke, kids. They can’t all be zingers…)
But there’s two issues here.
One, what the hell does that mean? Recruiting and TA is already fraught with euphemisms. We’re drowning in terms designed to keep us from being blamed or feeling bad. You know, terms like requisition, disposition, and good fit. My current bugbear is “moving forward” as in “we won’t be moving forward with your application.” What garbage.
So it is incumbent upon us that we get super serious about saying what we actually mean.
If “flexible working environment” means that the employee has some say in what days and what times they work, say that!
If it means “work from home,” say that! Then add in some of the very basic mechanics (only if you work far away, for select roles, for the foreseeable future, etc).
If it means “you can work from home sometimes” say that! Give some of the rationale around how and when. Make it clear enough so that someone applying doesn’t think they can work from home and you mean that only happens the when the kids are sick.
📈📉📊 Just being clear on the value you offer will make your career site waaaaaaaay better. 📈📉📊
And by “better” I mean “clear enough that proper expectations are set on both sides and there is no ‘just kidding’ when that person joins and is forced to light you up on Glassdoor because they felt they were lied to and you think they should have ‘understood.’”
But we can take it one (significant step further).
Two: Take that value and put it in real human terms. Human terms? Yes! Don’t talk about the value you’re now now being clear about. Talk about what the value to them would be.
For example, if we go back to the “flexible working environment” thing, we can continue to make the site better.
“Make your own schedule” turns into, “We have a number of employees who work six hours during the day, pick up their kids from school or go to the gym and then finish their work day later that evening. We even know of one early bird who is home at 3pm every day because they prefer getting started before the sun gets up. Don’t worry, we know that’s a fairly rare personality type! These people are all building work schedules around their life instead of the other way around, and (according to our engagement surveys) leads to people feels more comfortable and productive at work.”
Night and flippin’ day, wouldn’t you agree?
Let’s do it again.
“Work from home” becomes “We hire experts, which means letting experts be experts. You know how you work best, so we empower you to decide your office hours and how often you need to come into the office. That means the ‘grind for 18 hours straight‘ thinker can work melt white boards at home without disturbing the ‘magic time is 5:30am’ writer. We offer this level of flexibility to our staff knowing they offer it to each other, adjusting their own preferred working patterns to serve and solve the bigger issue. Because we design our own ways to be productive, we achieve more when we work together.”
The first is a label. The second tells stories you can crawl into and live within. These things are at once the same and yet not even related.
It is very easy to just list something you offer employees. It is something else to make it clear.
But it is even more important to make it resonate, to help people understand how what you offer is legitimately valuable to them.
Giving people what they want in a useful package that they can understand will beat your CRM tool/Tik Tok creativity/LI Spamming every day of the week.
📈 Business press says, “a record 28% of US employees looking for a job.” Recruiters should hear, “That still means that 72% of ALL prospects will ignore your ‘we’re hiring!’ message” »
📉 A quick formula to make your marketing better »
📊 Work is a kind of community. But not all communities think and care alike. Jasmine Bina has a model that breaks down how successful communities are driven by one of six ideas. For me, those six ideas might suggest the reasons join work communities »
📈 The three traps that stymie reinvention »
📊 The right team can out-perform the “rock star” at work. Cool! But the only way to make this real is to be crystal clear what each person should bring to and expect from the team. That’s employer branding »
🏛️ All 2,500+ (five years worth!) articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!
Yes. I’m excited, too! I might change the title later. Register here.
Problem: Photo releases are a PAIN!!!
You want to tell your employee stories, but just because they are your employees doesn’t mean you have ANY rights to their likeness or words (probably… I suspect this isn’t actually settled case law, more like lawyers being risk averse).
You could get the legal team to write up a release and have everyone who you want to interview/record/quote sign it as you start. Heck, you can make it a google form. Just make sure they type their name and date to indicate acceptance.
But keeping track of who signed and who didn’t is a pain.
I would recommend you talk to HR and ask them to include a release in their onboarding process so that you know that anyone hired recently is automagically fair game to record and use. I’m always surprised that most companies don’t do this already, so if you don’t, make it happen, cap’n!
Hey! What’s a problem YOU have? Just reply to this email and I’ll do my best to answer it in future newsletter (no, I won’t tell anyone it was YOU).
Be more informed as you think about building your brand:
Start: 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! »
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