Two HBR articles in a row?! Goodness. But this one was so good, I had to share. Next time someone starts dropping metrics and KPIs on you to start to measure up to, pull this out and treat it like a checklist: Who else is involved in making this KPI go up or down? What really causes the number to go up and down (remember, correlation is not causation*), and how much control do YOU have other it? And metrics are a two-way street, a relationship between the organization and the market.

Bryan Adams kicks his article off by saying, “talent acquisition professionals and employer brand leaders can often fall victim to an over-reliance on conventional thinking” so you knew I was going to mention this one. His call is to go beyond “typical employer branding” is music to my ears. It’s a call to stop being passive, to stop just focusing on polishing up and providing the “nicest” face on the company and taking a more active role in shaping the brand. Don’t tell stories, make stories. Love it.

It’s nice to see an article admit that everyone offers a competitive salary, benefits, opportunities for growth and flexible working conditions. So what happens next? What happens you have to build an employer brand beyond that?

Weren’t we just talking about branding as a means of solving for cognitive dissonance? Here’s another article on building brands on conflicting desires.

As mentioned earlier, it does feel like so many companies have the same pillars and recruitment messaging. To be fair, so many companies are structured the same and have the exact same perks and org chart, so it probably shouldn’t be surprising. Which is why I loved this article equating a company’s branding elements to ingredients in a basket on TV cooking show Chopped. The chefs get the same ingredients, so the skill is in how you bring them together and build something far bigger/better than its components.

How is your employer brand? This post will help you evaluate your employer brand, consider important factors and ways to improve company culture and reputation.

Complete case study on how Mondelez built its global employer brand (video)

Metrics, anyone? EB Rock star Shaunda Zilich writes up a nice piece on EB metrics. I was going to quibble with it until I realized that the best part of the article is unstated: Metrics are gibberish until you decide what your strategy is first. You can measure oodles of things and easily get batted around like a leaf on the wind unless you have clearly defined what you are trying to do and deciding the metrics on that. Once I saw that, I realized how great the article was.

You’ve seen the video going around showing what it would look like if we interviewed doctors the way we do developers, right? It’s great. Total must-watch. Anyway, it brings up an idea I hadn’t really heard before: Overfit. As I help the day job re-write job postings, I wonder if lots and lots of companies are suffering from trying to meet the demands of overfit. I mean, the job postings we write are semi-outdated by the time we start screening, so overfit seems like the absolute wrong course-correction. Shouldn’t we be trusting recruiters to spot talent without hand-holding them with requirements and qualifications?

Employer brands can’t all be the same, so why are they all espousing the same ideas. They all seem to care about opportunity, and innovation and caring for their employees (in the same kinds of ways). So I love that Coinbase is taking a (very sharp) turn. They are very publicly rejecting the idea that companies have to take a stance on social good. It’s not that I don’t think companies shouldn’t care about social good, it’s that I love when a company is willing to do something different. The best part is that they didn’t dictate the position to the world, they gave staff a chance to jump ship as the boat changed course.

For my money, designing a brand is only the start. Successful brands need to be connected to segments within your company. Locations, sure. But what about teams, or offices? It’s all about localization.

I’ve talked before about different attributes that can help define your brand (how does your company approaches personal/professional development, what’s the level of internal transparency, amount of hierarchical structure, etc). Here’s one I hadn’t thought of before: Courage. How does your company reward courage? Can you disagree with your boss? Do you have to do it quietly one on one, or are you allowed to disagree more publicly? What about disagreeing with leadership? Answers to these simple question (assuming leadership and front-line staff agree on the answer), go a long way to defining your own company.

Most people seem to be of the opinion that brands play a meaningful role in people’s lives, so companies should consider how to get more involved in social causes. That sort of thing should involve your team, unless your company is just going to throw money at something, so here’s some smart thinking about how to connect your brand to social good.

Here’s the data on why 2020 isn’t 2008 (from a hiring perspective). Turns out that when people ask “if the economy is tanking, how come it isn’t easier to hire?” (Or it’s corollary, “If everyone’s out of work, why do I have to invest in EB/CX/being nice to candidates?”) the answer is that the economy isn’t tanking equally for everyone, so there is still real demand in many many roles, thus buoying the talent market.

It heartens me to see how even Recruiter is connecting the dots around how who you bring into your company is how you build a culture (turns out making posters doesn’t do much). This might make for some nice light reading when your culture team meets to talk about the next (virtual) picnic.

I point this out not because you need to know it, but employer branders always need to have a full quiver of ways to explain what employer brand is (and isn’t), so here’s a solid article from South America on demystifying employer branding.

Ooof. When you ask the question, “Does TA Understand Passive Talent Engagement?” you know what the answer is going to be, and that answer isn’t going to be positive. But what I was amused by was that after examining the wreckage of the question, the solution the author came away with was that more time and energy should be spend on marketing. Now, if you’re a marketer, you know that marketing can be broken into two kinds: direct and brand. Direct marketing is what you get when you Google “kid’s STEM activities,” the direct response to a need. Any marketing with a clear CTA is direct marketing, which hardly seems in keeping with the original question. So what the author is actually prescribing is that employer branding should be in charge of passive talent engagement. QED, right?

I really appreciate Charlotte Marshall popping the bubble around the seemingly-universally-agreed-upon-yet-never-discussed idea that companies need to be “fun.” More than that, that there’s only one emotional trigger at work and it is called “happiness.” She touches on the idea that a strong employer brand isn’t just a claim you put on a poster, but needs to answer questions about the experience of working somewhere. Not, “do you offer free food” or “what’s the holiday party like,” but questions that start with the phrase “what happens when…?”

In honor of World Employer Branding Day, let’s recognize that as organizations continue to manage through today’s difficult times, there’s one key strategy that many smart businesses have started to re-prioritize — employer branding. Yet even with the best intentions, many companies still fail to capitalize on the opportunities of a newly refreshed employer brand…

"The creative yet strategic art of marketing is now no more than a simple race for the numbers, endlessly and irreversibly deforming brands for momentary capital gain."

This coming up in this newsletter once every 2-3 months in different guises, and I continue to be fascinated with it. Your brand is a function of the terroir and context as anything else. You’re all about innovation? What that means in a Palo Alto incubator is very different from a large law firm. As you try and reveal the brand, you have to be cognizant of the context in which it exists and grows. Trying to take it out of the context and turning it into an ad or a message will fall apart because there’s no frame around it giving it meaning.

Can a brand help make people happy? No, really. Our brands offer people feels of opportunity, freedom, education, community, support, prestige, and any number of other things, but are they making someone happy? Beyond the initial “I got the job!” elation, can and should an employer brand create happiness?

We all love stories! Create an emotional connection with candidates using storytelling techniques to become an Employer of Choice

"Companies that use a brand funnel powered by some brand tracking software are able to enforce strong marketing direction rather than decisions based on gut feeling."

Are you confusing habits with brand loyalty? Are you good enough, or are you connecting to your candidates’ needs? Here are three myths around brand loyalty which may make for some uncomfortable reading.

A quick “hell yeah!” to Stephen Brand’s article on networks of networks. So much of employer brand is focused on looking for blue oceans of talent (hahahaha… like those still exist) to shout branded messages at instead of looking at who our own people already know. Quoting: “chances are, you already know 90%+ of all the talent you’ll ever need.” To ignore the best advocates you have because they don’t report to you is lunacy, so take it seriously.

"We’ve gone from one brand for every 1,700 people in 2,000 to one for just 158 people today. At this rate, we’ll soon be outnumbered."

Building your EVP? While there’s no right way to go about it, if you are doing it quickly, simply and without any doubts, I promise that you’re doing it wrong. So how do you make better decisions in that kind of situation? Combine data with doubt.

Emily Firth pulls zero punches with her list of ten ways employer brands fail. A lot of them could fall under the category of “ you treated your employer brand like some external ad campaign” or “you only think you got buy in, but you really just got ‘fine, fine, leave us alone.’”

This year has reminded businesses and brands that the work of being a consistent source of value is never finished. In helping clients reimagine their This year has reminded businesses and brands that the work of being a consistent source of value is never finished. In helping clients reimagine their offerings and relationships for lasting value we discovered ten things that may help you do the same.