Where do you start?
What's the first thing you tell a candidate?
Introducing Flockity.
Where Influencer Marketing Meets Recruitment Marketing.
We leverage the network effect of micro-influencers to promote your jobs to their networks. More than 97% of the traffic Flockity drives to your career site will have never visited your career site before. Looking to boost your awareness channel with passive talent and untapped audiences, Flockity has you covered. It’s easy to start, cost effective, and delivers traffic you can’t get anywhere else. See your jobs take flight with Flockity.
To get started, visit Flockity.com, and start soaring today.
[Sponsored]
What’s the starting point for your conversation with a prospect who has no idea who you or your company is?
This is a crucial question many companies punt on. They task it to individual recruiters, who are supposed to figure what needs to be said to attract the right kind of talent.
What do we end up with?
“We’re hiring!”
“We’re a great company!” (or “We have a great culture!”)
“We’re the company that cares about our people!”
“We’re the company that invests $100,000 a year towards ensuring our people are always learning and growing!”
Perhaps you’ve seen variations on the above? Because if the goal is to attract and engage hirable talent rather than collect applications, these messages will have very different outcomes.
First, the “We’re hiring!” message. I keep hoping that this is trending downward, but then I see very well-known recruitment marketing agencies use it and realize that’s what they are selling people. They are teaching recruiters that this is an okay approach.
But think about the kind of person who is scrolling LinkedIn or Instagram (or their own InMail/email inbox) and stops what they are doing to click on a message from a company/person they don’t know saying they are hiring? They aren’t reacting to the company brand (because we’ve established they don’t know the company). They aren’t reacting to the recruiter (who, again, they don’t know). They aren’t even reacting to the job. The message is just “we’re hiring!” So what are they reacting to? The existence of a job opening at a company they didn’t know in a role that hasn’t been revealed.
Would you walk into a restaurant who’s sign said, “We have food!”? Of course not. There are a million other restaurants offering something specific, so only the absolutely desperate person would be attracted to that message as the first touch.
Even if they message is “We’re hiring a product manager!” the chances that the person being given the message is a project manager looking for a new job is DEEPLY unlikely. If they were looking for a job, wouldn’t they find the role on a job board? If they are scrolling Instagram, they are looking at cute cats, not a job they can find 11 different ways.
Next, the “We’re a great company!” This is a completely generic claim. First, great for whom? Great in what way? Great like Nike and Netflix or more like Pinterest? Or Oatly? Or maybe Spotify? Or Marriott? These companies are all very different, and yet they can all claim to be a great company with a great culture.
But the real issue here is that there are no companies who think they are a bad company. Even companies with a 1.3 star Glassdoor rating think they are just unfairly reviewed (and then blame GD for asking anyone their opinion) and think of themselves as a great company. So saying that you are great doesn’t tell a candidate anything (other than you have the wherewithal to try and make that claim or earn that badge, which in comparison to the millions of companies who think all it takes is a Zip Recruiter account to find amazing candidates, isn’t nothing).
So who responds to this message? Expect someone with mild PTSD from having spent years at that 1.3 star company who is exhausted and needs a change. Any change. They are thrilled to find a company who at least knows that they are supposed to say that theirs is a great company to work for, even if there’s no evidence to prove the claim.
Then we get to “We’re a company that cares about its people!” In this situation, I want to step around the whole ‘not everyone wants a company that cares about them’ argument. Feel free to replace “cares about its people” with “invests in your professional development” or “is trying to save the environment” or “is on the cutting edge” (whatever the brand focus claim is).
The issue here is that I would bet that lots of companies care about their people or those other brand claims. And when lots of people are making a claim, it becomes a competition for who is “the most” of that thing. Your company says they care about their customers, but do they care as much as Nordstrom (who accepts returns for products they never sold) or Zappos (where customer service is free to chat with you all day long if you like)? You may say those are outliers (and in truth, they absolutely are), but if that’s how you are planting your flag, understand that candidates are going to compare you to EVERY OTHER COMPANY who makes similar claims. And some of them will be outliers. And since outliers are easier to remember, that’s where the comparison gets made, much to your detriment.
The best way to see these claims for what they are is to add either a “kinda” or “too” into those claims. “We care about our people, too!” and “We kinda invest in professional development” because that’s what candidates are absorbing when you make those claims.
Finally, we come to “We’re the company that invests $100,000 a year towards ensuring our people are always learning and growing!” (Again, insert your own specific and differentiated brand claim.) This is a specific claim. It is clear. There’s no “kinda” or “same!” here. And its the sort of thing I wouldn’t expect to see very often at all, making it feel like something different.
The value of identifying your employer brand difference is that puts you in a category of one. You’re not being compared to anyone else because no one else is saying this. If someone doesn’t what it, they won’t bother to apply and clutter up your ATS with applications you can’t use. And if someone does want it, you’re the only company selling.
Defining your difference is like creating a monopoly on what you offer people. And that monopoly makes it easier for you to hire better-quality people more effectively.
But that doesn’t happen until you define your difference and make it part of every single touchpoint in the recruiting journey (including the very first one).
Check out this primer on No-BS EB:
🏭 How you design your content matters as much as the content itself »
🧰 Sam Monteath has seven steps for creating an EVP »
🏭 In branding, the small things matter »
🧰 Businesses regularly hide incredibly useful information from candidates. But they also hide important stuff from their own staff (if you can’t trust your own people, you shouldn’t have hired them). For example, tell people what it takes to get promoted »
🏭 The unstated danger of employer branding? The more someone identifies with the company, the more they ignore its flaws »
🧰 Don’t measure a brand. Measure its progress »
🏭 Changing work culture through employer branding »
🏛️ All 2,400+ (five years worth!) articles from this newsletter are in a searchable archive. Go get ‘em!
Want a case study that shows that it only takes 3 weeks to get an employer brand, the kind that makes every single one of your recruiters and your recruiting tactics more effective?
Reply to this email and let me know if you want to see the case study for the 250-person manufacturing company or the 450-person construction company. (Oh, and the case study for a 800-person video game company will be ready in a few weeks!)
Please share this: EmployerBrand.ing
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***