Why the Law of Strategy works ♟️♖ EBH
And where is runs into walls
[Continued from Monday’s newsletter]
Why this works
Recruiters are tasked with requisitions. They do the crucial retail work of translating hiring manager desires to the marketplace. They source, engage, attract, persuade, build relationships and shepherd great people who will make the business run. As such, they often feel the effects of a lack of strategy (we’re going up against the biggest companies and we aren’t interesting enough, we’re going against other companies and sound just like them, no one knows who we are, no one has a reason to open my outreach emails, I think the career site is three years out of date, etc) and sometimes they can diagnose the lack of strategy (who’s in charge of making sure we’re known in the market? Is there any central support for this tool or is it every recruiter for themselves? etc), but they are too busy swimming to build a boat.
At the same time, TA leadership is busy playing defense, protecting the TA team from hiring manager frustrations while translating TA frustrations into potential new resources. And HR focuses on creating an equitable process for all, not helping the company stand out in a crowded talent marketplace.
And marketing is (rightly) focused on more leads not better leads, which is anathema to recruiting, which only can put one person into a given role. And broadly, strategic thinking about the consumer market is often (and perhaps correctly) seen as more valuable than imperfect strategy about the talent market.
This leaves a gap for employer branding to own. To see the bigger picture, to create deeper relationships across the company, to look at the talent market as a whole and define an interesting position within it, to build the content and marketing that defends that position. That is where employer branding lives.
Where this falls apart
As employer branding is a young field, it is often staffed with less experienced marketers or recruiters (there is no training ground for employer branding skills other than being a junior employer brander). Leadership often looks skeptically at a 26-year-old trying to develop a strategy for a function that uses 4-7% of its entire operating budget. So the employer brander is reduced to a tactical role. That employer brander will be tasked with “pretty words, pretty pictures” rather than the strategic work that will yield the most benefit.
Here, the strategy isn’t the issue. The stumbling block is that leadership doesn’t want to give someone junior something as important as a “strategy.”
Examples
In 1999, a company almost no one heard of in Cary, North Carolina made the cover of Fast Company because it offered what seemed like an insane amount of perks and benefits to its staff. Among other things, SAS offered meals, snacks, child care, health care and workout facilities on-site for free. Because they took care of their people, word spread and the people who liked that much support would all but fall over each other to apply. A strategy of abundant benefits leads to hiring great talent at a far lower recruiting cost. Could they have offered fewer perks and saved a little money? Sure. Would the company make the cover of a national magazine about how amazing they were? No. Their strategy was to be better at one thing than anyone else, which effectively created their own gravitation pull for talent.
By hiring entry-level talent almost exclusively, Enterprise Holdings can hire en mass at a very low cost. That budget is poured into its training and development teams to take great raw materials and turn them into amazing managers, salespeople and workers. Theirs is a strategy of “build, don’t buy.”
So what is your talent strategy? How will you array your resources to create maximum impact?
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The CandE’s virtual conference is in August, but you should register now (it’s free!)
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Apricots, blackberries, corn, and peaches are in season in July. Do you know what else is in season for your employer brand and recruiting content? Join Rachel Kennedy and me as we build a LinkedIn content plan for July.
***This Newsletter Contains No ChatGPT***
-James Ellis [LinkedIn] [Website]
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