"Requests for “distinctive tone of voice” are much the same. They start at the wrong end: the solution, not the problem. They work from the outside in, when branding only works from the inside out."

I really wish we could all get away from talking about "culture" as if there's some platonic ideal of culture we should all be shooting for. What I like is not what you like and that's completely fine. And while there are some good points here about fostering a stronger and more obvious culture, don't get sucked into the position that there's only one measure of quality culture.

Some days you just need to get into the weeds to help a hiring manager or recruiter "get" how employer branding can help. Big ideas and concepts just won't fly, and will likely push them away from what you're trying to say. Instead, here's a guide that I see as kind of a bridge to employer brand thinking. Using a DiSC framework (which I generally dig anyway), you can show someone how a "one size fits all" approach to messaging won't work. Once they see how tailoring their messaging to some basic personas can make an improvement, you've opened their eyes and they will be more likely to hear how they can tailor the message further to integrate the brand. How to put the perfect job ad in front of a candidate

I've been in a lot of meetings and rooms where someone asks, "why don't we do what XYZ is doing?" I wonder if that's a function of all corporate recruiting being functionally the same that they don't recognize that branding should actually be different. But that's a tangent we can investigate later. Here's an article that talks about why brands that imitate are going to get in deep trouble.

I've talked before about how much I love Oblique Strategies and how I would one day write my own deck for employer brand (tangent: the above article, which you should read all the way through because it talks about the weird shit Brian Eno came up with while recording Bowie's "Heroes," starts with a quote that should be tattooed on our collective hands, "Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." Anyway...), but this article does a pretty solid job listing 61 ways to differentiate a given brand. A great exercise would be to list all 61 (or maybe just 30) and then list all the ways you could differentiate your own employer brand with that strategy. Congrats, you now have a LOT of good ideas you didn't have before.