If you're going to force your candidates through your TSA-like ATS (huh... they share the same letters... weird), you better be taking advantage of it as a shared point of contact (and data) for candidates and recruiters.

It feels reasonable to me that in a time of virtual/remote everything, the thing that will help bring people together and build connection and increase productivity is shared learning. What we learn together is what keeps us together. That holiday zoom class where everyone learned to make gnocchi in their own kitchens was the highlight of your Q4? Keep that in mind and start supporting shared learning experiences at work as a means of developing culture.

When it comes to transforming recruitment marketing, I don't know anyone who knows more (or done more) within tech or large companies than Allyn Bailey. As she is someone who truly knows how to turn the biggest boats around, this series on how to think through your own recruitment marketing situation is going to be epic.

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I love Skill Scout's reverse-brief thing, where they show you how they made teh decision to shoot a particular kind of video

The article itself sighs at yet another list of employer branding stats that you and I might find incredibly pedestrian, but having these kinds of things handy might help move that roadblock at work. Example: 91% of candidates seek out at least one online or offline resource to evaluate an employer’s brand before applying for a job.

The phrase "recruiting through the op-ed pages" may becomes shorthand in my head for finding unique ways of getting your employer brand story out into the wild without using the "usual" channels.

I can't be the only one who feels the hesitation and mild panic that comes from occasional work-induced anxiety. I would expect it to be somewhat endemic within our industry (though I have no data to back that up). So if you need a primer on how to think (and breathe) your way through anxiety at work, HBR has something for you.

I used to have a boss who used the phrase, "one man invading China" as shorthand for the person she tasked with a project that really should have gotten a LOT more resources. Of course, that could describe every employer brand person I've ever met, so I always love to see stories of how one person can make a difference in even large organizations.

In business, success means you can hire, engage and retain top talent. Here are several tips and links to help with employee retention.

For the 1,142nd time: employer branding is in every aspect of your business, even offer letters. Indeed has some great ideas on how to make those offer letters better.

How can you figure out which employees are really engaged? Kris Dunn has a VERY interesting litmus test for managers. I love it because it taps into what engagement is all about: a willingness to take initiative to make tomorrow better.

There's a chance I've linked to this before, but in case I haven't, here are ten ways to encourage workplace transformation (yes, transforming your company is kind of your job). Focus, the experience, advocacy, influencers and metrics should all be very comfortable subjects in your vocabulary.

If there is "low-hanging fruit" in getting staff to engage with your employer brand, it is likely new hires. Get them before they become jaded or cynical, and show them how their engagement supports the brand and the company, and you can build an army of advocates. That said, Meghan Biro suggests the best way to engage with those new hires is to start by intentionally creating a sense of psychological safety.

Branding Magazine takes a few steps back and asks, "what does brand success look like in 2020?" It's an interesting question for us employer branders, as many of us still have to explain our job and occasionally justify our existence (ugh). It's not a complex article, but might help you simplify your approach to what matters.

This one came out too late for my summery of brand trends, but here are five emerging brand trends for 2020. I heartily endorse their first trend that as more and more "authentic reviews" turn out to be fake, candidates will stop relying on review sites as much. At the very least, candidates will change how they interpret those reviews, which should impact your own review site strategy. (And here's early examples from the Washington Post: companies that sell fake people.) Also see the fifth prediction: People will pay more for brands with a human side. As the de facto owner of the human side of your corporate brand, this is where you can make a real impact.

Adaptive marketing and psychographic branding?! Yup. It's time to raise your game, folks. As Seth Godin talks about, people don't want a 1/2" drill bit, or even a 1/2" hole to a screw. They want to be able to hang a picture to feel like they've accomplished something. Your employer branding will work if you can better define its meaning, and tailor it to different motivations.

Do job seekers really change? Here's two charts to show how much graduating talent has changed in just nine years.

Universal Music UK have changed their work culture to be more inclusive to neurodiverse people.

If you've been thinking about investing in tools to help you see the social media sentiment of your employer brand, this article is a nice primer. My own experience is that it is very hard to separate out consumer brand halo effects from employer brand. But this is how consumer brand pros do it.

There are a lot of reasons you might communicate as to why someone should work for your company. But have you considered that they'd want to work here because you're a thought leader? Here are some guidelines to consider when building out your thought leadership connected to your brand.

So many companies rely on case-based interviews, that there's an assumption that they must be useful. 50 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, right? But there's a lot of data refuting the value of this kind of evaluation. As top consulting companies shift interview styles, there's an opportunity for employer branding to both shape what is being evaluated for (thus aligning with the brand) and communicate why the shift is happening (again, reinforcing the brand and how a holistic approach to talent might be driving these changes).

Joel Cheesman of Ratedly has a nice write-up on employer brand that leans heavily on developing a framework with which to see the problem first. It does my systems-driven heart good to see more and more people realizing that just jumping into employer branding without validated frameworks is kind of like buying a used car in a language you don't understand.

Some interesting data from Talent Board on what candidates long for in their candidate experience. Spoiler: while most of us are focusing on sexy and cool programs when candidate really just want to feel like they've been heard.

Consider how many people applied to Valve after seeing this viral employee handbook (which was designed as a public-facing document because it has a section on what it is looking for in new employees). If you read it, it is filled to the brim with so many little touches and brand-specfic in-jokes that it REEKS of publicity stunt, but an insanely specific one.

Have you heard that joke that every item in an employee manual should be named for the person who necessitated that rule? The drinking at work social engagements is the Chad Rule, for example (he knows what he did)? Yeah. Employee manuals are kind of the worst. Don't take my work for it. Fistful of Talent agrees with me, calling it the "worst HR document ever." I bring this up because anything that sucks that people see is an opportunity to support your employer brand.

What's the hardest part of getting your employer brand ideas off the ground? Building a business case. Very few of us were taught this skill, so my friend Mezjan wrote up his own process for business case development perfect for EB pros.

And since we're talking about content in employer branding, Beamery has a great guide to building a recruiting-focused content marketing playbook.

And if you're looking to fine-tune your storytelling content strategy, Narrative Science has a nice ebook called Let Your People Be People I can recommend.

You you content marketers and lovers of narrative-driven employer branding, have I got some gold for you... but I'll tell you more in a minute. That feeling, right there, where the writer yanks the rug out from under you and doesn't immediately satiate your curiosity? That's emotional power, something referred to as an "open loop," a glitch in your own cognition you can leverage to create more engagement and emotional connections with people.