Employer Brand Headlines Newsletter

Some great quotes from business marketing leaders on how COVID has changed their view of how they can market their business to the world. It doesn't take much to read between the lines and see all the room for employer brand to be a strategic partner to marketing. But don't wait for them to come to you: go make that appointment to chat right now!

I loved this article on how "combinatorics" (that term had to have been invented by an MBA with a math background) can help find tune your value proposition. If you ignore the jargon, there's a heck of pitch here: because you don't really understand what your talent prospects want (because you haven't tightened your focus enough), you can't differentiate.

We all know how COVID is changing work, but it is time to stop thinking about "work" in terms of a "job." Our jobs are going to be more fluid and driven less by tasks and much more by outcomes. Add to that disconnection from a core office, and technology that allows anyone to tap into more remote systems and we're entering a time when the very concept of a job will be re-thought.

Last week I had some crazy technical issues. which is why the newsletter went out a day and a half late. In all the chaos, I didn't link to an article on how you can use the four drivers of your employer brand to better respond to the pandemic.

And if you'd like to understand how data can underpin a stronger, more resilient employer brand, I wrote something up to try and put it all together and create a string business case for data investment, even when everything seems "up in the air."

Let's talk data. First, ignore the misleading title of how COVID has impacted employer brand, but this article from LinkedIn shows how companies are changing their messaging strategies to reflect the new reality their employees and prospects are facing. I was interested in what content was getting the most engagement, but be aware that often a post talking about how a company is taking care of its employees is going to get more engagement because employees are effectively endorsing and upvoting the concept.

A lot of very smart people I read were talking about an article that came out from Marc Andreessen (co-writer of Mosaic browser, and all-around smart VC guy) saying that now was the time to build. The argument is obvious: when things are down, smart money takes the opportunity to surf the new wave of change, and the only way to be ready for that wave is to have the idea/business/product/model/function started before the water swells.

Cool tool: Take a conference call or webinar and turn it into a podcast. Anchor (which is owned by Spotify), can take your recorded call, strip out the audio and host it as a podcast for you. It something you could do with some other tools, but a one-stop process might get our company interested in getting on to the podcast train.

I've been thinking about recruiting in closed/finite tale pools (people with security clearances, veterinarians, clinical researchers with MDs, aeronautics engineers, etc) lately for the podcast and I was wondering if this is a situation ripe for micro-influences. Vets know vets. If you want vets (et al) to get interested in you, get a vet to say nice things about you.

Over at TalentCulture, there was a nice interview about how important data is going to become to all of HR (yes, it was sponsored by SAS, who deal exclusively data, but the interview was solid). I was struck by the idea that rather than focus on "here's how data will help you!" kind of conversation, it was really about how once everyone is trained and versed in seeing and thinking with data, the solution doesn't change, the whole question changes.

Think about all your metrics. How many are based on your company how your recruiting is "performing?" But how many are around what candidates think about you? Funnel metrics are about how people act, but do you know why they apply? What are your Candidate Performance Indicators?

Need to ask for budget? Right now, many companies are shutting down anything without a clear ROI (meaning: brand marketing is going dark to make room for more "butts in seats" pushes). So here's some data that shows that consumers still want brand marketing to help answer their "bigger" questions. It's an easy leap to say that candidates already know how to find the jobs, but they will likely have "bigger" questions around the brand they need answered before they will ever think of applying.

Speaking of communicating, Recruiter buried the lede over on this article on how to be a better communicator when everything is Zoom/Teams/Hangouts-based. The best part is at the bottom, where they talk about the importance of being memorable. While i'm enjoying my tour through everyone's dining rooms, it is hard to tell one conversation from the next these days. So yes, spend a few minutes thinking of (on-brand) ways you can be more memorable in your conversations.

We don't talk about corporate comms much (well... we complain about it sometimes, but that doesn't count). Hubspot has a nice writeup on how to level-up your corporate comms strategies. What? You didn't know you were in the corporate comms business? You think someone else does that? Yeah, you're going to be far more effective at building internal allies and advocates once you learn to lean into the corp comms stuff.

While we're here, McKinsey dropped a whole lot of data on how Covid is changing... well... everything.

"While some businesses will be more affected than others, this is the time for all businesses to think and operate in new ways."

Even HBR is saying companies need to take this chance to invest in better talent now, and a strong, well-developed brand is a big part of that.

These six rules for revitalizing your brand are written about consumer/corporate branding, but terms like Culture, Experience, Trust and Relevance shouldn't require any translation. The net: your brand exists and lives, even when things seem "down." The companies that continue to invest in the brand are the ones who will escape the pandemic positioned with the talent to succeed.

We don't talk much about sourcing here, and it might be obvious why. But this article on the Law of the 9 just hit me hard. If you have a sourcer on staff, do you know what they are saying to prospects? Do you know what they are doing with prospects who aren't ready to engage that moment? This article is big on slow-playing the prospect with content until they are ready to bite, which sounds like something we should b very involved in.

I mean, if your brand position is all about letting people bring their whole selves to work (or the dining room), this is a way to build a policy to cement the idea in place. This article from Google talks about how to make people working from home feel more included, even if they aren't naturally inclined to shine via teleconference.

Lately, I've been talking about the four drivers of your employer brand (See article on ERE): Culture, Leadership, Options and Policies. Since we're all working from home, you might be realizing how distracted we all are: kids, pets, life in general, etc. So what if you suggest making a formal policy to help employees feel more comfortable working like this (I still hear people apologizing about their kid in the background asking for a snack: dude, that's all of us!).

It feels like everyone's still hot on Instagram as a tool for growing brand awareness and engagement (I have doubts as I haven't seen great metrics on how many people search Instagram like that, and you have to pay money to get a call to action on a post, but I digress). So if you're ready to raise your instagram game, take some tips from professional Instagram managers.

Speaking of content marketing, have you started experimenting with live video yet? In a remote world, it might be exactly what you need to get people interested in what your company is doing and why they might consider applying. Here's a great how-to on how to get good at live video in a hurry.

Predictions on how content marketing will likely change in the near term is a guidebook for all your employer brand tactics (what, did you not know you're a content marketer? Oh indeed you are). Example: social and video look to continue their rise, but now that most google searches are mobile, how are you going to react?

You know I'm a story fan, so you might not be surprised to see that I loved this piece on creating a villain in your own brand story. Who opposes your company? Who are you trying very hard to NOT be? What are you working to vanquish? Villains don't just offer an element of drama, they serve as a driving purpose to your own brand, offering a suggestion of how far you'll be willing to go to defeat the enemy.

Sure, you might be measuring your brand awareness, but are you measuring brand equity? I've been thinking that the killer metric might be how much value does a candidate place in your brand. Are you able to offer a salary discount because everyone wants to work for you, or do you have to pay a premium to get talent in the door to overcome that brand sentiment?

HBR has a nice post about what new employees should do to ensure a remote on-boarding is still effective. I say, take this advice and internalize it. Work with your on-boarding manager/team and implement the ideas proactively, but look for places to insert your employer brand messages. Remember: new employees are more likely to accept your brand because they've only known a company with your brand in place.

You've heard of the five stages of grief, right? As we all do our best to come to terms with the new pandemic reality, these five steps might be a helpful guide to not only understanding our own feelings, but to understand how to position our messaging to employees. If you can tap into this model, you can come out with stronger employee engagement, which powers your own employer brand.

Employer brand is still seen purely through the lens of "filling the funnel" at too many companies. And while EB should be showing it own impact across every aspect of what the business does, it will always need to remember that until it fills the funnel, other things can't get done. To that end, here's a great white paper ATAP put together on creating, executing and managing a talent attraction strategy.

If you are being forced to re-think your candidate experience (because you can't just have them show up to the office at the moment), here are some suggestions on leveraging human-centered design to re-invent the entire experience.