So, I have this idea.
I think weâve let âEmployer brandâ become too⊠fuzzy.
Your boss kinda-sorta gets it, but their boss definitely doesnât.
From the outside, it seems like slapping a coat of paint on a companyâs reputation.
That means weâre in the âlipstick on a pigâ business.
Iâm not. Iâm in the âThis bacon tastes freakinâ amazing!â business.
Thatâs why I am changing my core offering.
Instead of offering companies consulting, I am offering help.
- Help attracting more of the right people.
- Help turning employees into advocates.
- Help telling more meaningful and effective stories.
And I am going to put my money where my mouth is:
Iâm going to offer my clients the option to pay when they get results.
Pay when youâre saving money and attracting the talent you really want.
If youâre a head of recruiting or TA and want to learn more, reply to this email.
If youâre a recruiter who thinks this is a major solution, letâs talk with your boss.
If youâre an employer brander, letâs connect and figure out what shape would be best.
I mean it when I say employer brand is one of the most impactful elements of a business. And Iâm going to prove it one company at a time.
Maybe it should be yours.
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[Read the first half of this from Monday]
Why this works
We canât state the stakes highly enough. Aside from buying a house, selecting your next job is the most meaningful business decision most of us will ever make. Changing a job is changing a life. We need credible and meaningful information with which to make an informed decision.
Actually, the comparison to buying a house is surprisingly useful. When you search for a house, the average house listing is chock full of information. From how old the house is, how big it is, the school district it exists in, what the taxes were last year, photos of the interior and exterior, video walk-throughs, asking price, HOA situation, what it sold for last time and when, etc etc. No matter where that listing exists, it is deep.Â
Compare that to the amount of information you find on a job posting. While it may look like a lot of stuff, what is the salary? Who had that job last? Who is the manager? What does the office/cubicle/desk space look like? When was the last time you had to hire for this role? Did that person quit, get promoted, or get fired? What should you expect your insurance costs to look like? What is the AC set at? What is the complete WFH policy? Are you an Outlook company or a Gmail company? Or is it all Slack or Teams? Zoom or WebEx?
Looking at any job, you could easily come up with dozens of valid, useful and meaningful pieces of information that the company probably has at its fingertips that it chooses to NOT include. These include all the companies who talk about how much they care about (and spend on) the candidate experience. I presume their goal is to treat the candidates like mushrooms: keep them in the dark and feed them crap.
So set your company apart and get specific, attractive, different, and real.
The SADR model is designed to create clarity, the kind of clarity that leads to trust over time. And if you ask any recruiter, a candidate who trusts you is way more valuable than one who doesnât.
Where this falls apart
Most candidates are operating in a vacuum of information.Â
So give them some. Give then as much as you can.
This is the moment where someone from your legal or HR team would like to have a word with you. At this stage, youâll hear phrases like âmaterial informationâ or âconstitutes a promise.â Now, for me, most words out of your legal teamâs mouth are advice. They are there to tell you where the risk is, should you pursue that path. Sure, what they say often sounds like a rule or a demand, but very often, itâs just how theyâve been trained to communicate.
Material information is information that is not yet public which might impact the perception of the company and impact the stock price. Once you share material information, go ahead and immediately get yourself a lawyer because youâre about to spend a LOT of time getting sued by lots of people.Â
Constitutes a promise means that what sounds like âa reason to engageâ to you, sounds like a contract to someone else. And when you make a promise in your marketing, people will start calling your legal and they will no longer be your friends.
Honestly, it doesnât take much water to make someone dying of thirst feel better. So while you might not be able to show pictures of the office or say the salary (yet), anything you can share that your competitors donât will serve you.
Examples
Clarity exists in many forms in many places.Â
If I were to look at your job application process, Iâm probably going to be faced with a form requesting my demographics. That form is likely one of the worst-written things on your entire career site.Â
First, itâs not necessary for a candidate to fill out that form and be a successful candidate. The data itself is voluntary in almost all cases. But it is written as being a mandatory part of the application.
Second, while thereâs a ton of verbiage about how the government mandates the collection of this data and that it isnât directly connected to employment, it sounds like it was written by the person who wrote the âdo not remove this tag under penalty of lawâ tag on your mattress: Semi-intentionally unclear about who should abide by these rules, or who the rule is meant to help.
The outcome is likely⊠rough. Underserved audiences might see the form as a means to filter out âcertain typesâ of people and refuse to give it out of fear of being one of those people. Other audiences will assume the data will be used to support quotas of underserved folks, and refuse to give data for fear that they will also be filtered out because of it. The current language doesnât have the clarity of purpose to inspire trust, so consequently, you have a pretty dismal completion rate.
Go ask your HR team. Youâll be surprised what they tell you. Iâll wait.
What if you replaced your legalese with something like, â[XYZ company] cares about doing everything it can to provide an open and inclusive workplace, and one of the ways we measure our success is by measuring basic demographic data. We canât get better if we donât know where we stand, right? So we are asking you to fill out the following form with your demographic information. If you choose to voluntarily complete this form, it will be immediately separated from your application and not be used in any way to determine who we select to call and interview. Thanks so much!â? Isnât that way more understandable and clear than what you have now?
Run it by legal (they might ask that your language be used above their legal copy) and see the percentage of people who complete the form rise immediately.
Clarity works.
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Yes, when built and activated, your employer brand can grow businesses.
I have a program that is impactful, effortless (on your part), and almost immediate.
Reply to this email or reach out to James@EmployerBrandLabs.com and letâs get your employer brand working for you.
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***
-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]
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