Tom Peters (one of my professional heroes) once said to a room full of executives, "Benchmarking is stupid. You pick the current industry leader and then launch a five-year program, the goal of which is to be as good as whomever was best five years ago five years from now." (He once told a room full of American automotive executives that, having spent millions in design and research to launch the Dodge Neon, "Congrats, you invented a 1986 Honda Civic.") So you have a sense of my bias against benchmarks: They care pictures of the past and too many people seek only to recreate someone else's past. That said, SmashFly just launched its own benchmarks for recruitment marketing. (Fair warning: you get to the top of their benchmarks by doing all the things they think you should do, not because you necessarily do it well). Takeaways? Engage with candidates honestly, transparently and deeply and you'll always be ahead of the curve.

To steal a line from David C. Baker, you can't read your label if you're inside the jar. If you are trying to see and distill your own employer brand, your biggest obstacle is you (and your biases you can't see). By way of example, my colleague Dennis Billgren reminds us that you might "know" that what US tech workers want is more work-life balance and autonomy. So why does Tesla and SpaceX (notorious for NOT having those things) consistently rank at the top of most desired employers? What you think you know isn't the same as objective knowledge, especially in employer branding.