The Employer Brand Manifesto (2022)

In 2018, I wrote the Employer Brand Manifesto, a document that was designed to be metaphorically nailed to the doors of HR and TA, demanding they see employer brand as it is, a means to reinvent talent acquisition for the better.

Based on what employer branding looks like today, it seemed like time for an update.

»The Employer Brand Manifesto, 2022«

Employer branding isn’t the new kid in town anymore. After hype and promise, we’re in danger of being relegated to a party trick TA does when it runs out of ideas. But you and I know that employer branding is magic. It is the catalyst for changing the way companies think about their people.

So today, let us pick up these ten ideas and carry them, holding them high for the world to see. That’s how we’re going ensure we reach our own potential.

One: Clarity

All business success starts by seeing reality for what it is rather than pretending things are the way you want them to be. That is no less true in employer branding. We can’t pretend tweaking some job postings or launching some Tik Toks is "evolving our brand." If we want to make a real change, we need to see what's real.

Two: Insight

Successful employer branding requires an insight. What makes your company unique? What is something that only you know about what your audience wants? What do you offer that everyone will demand next month? What is the thing that annoys your audience the most? Without insight, we might as well sell detergent.

Three: Ownership

You must take ownership of the outcome, regardless of how many other people impact that outcome. That might require building something bullet-proof instead of elegant, or working twice as hard to get your internal audiences to “get it.” But saying “it was out of my hands” isn’t an excuse anymore.

Four: Selection

Define your own outcome and the means. Pick your partners. You must choose the means of your success (or destruction), whether it be Tik Tok, billboards or in-person events: there is no right answer save the choices you make. Reject was is given to you and be intentional with how you will make this work.

Five: Audience

Define and know your audience. You can’t know everyone, so pick the audience to care about. Seek to know what they want, what they care about, what they see from other companies and the industry. When it comes to jobs, do what you can to know them better than they know themselves.

Six: Fail

Be willing to fail in the service of learning something unique, surprising, inspiring, secret, or just plain useful. Failure is inevitable if you’re pushing hard enough, so pick when you fail. Don’t take risks because you’re lazy, take them with the specific intention of learning something you could otherwise not know. This will encourage you to take better, more useful risks. Create the experiments that will make you better. This is your lab. Use it.

Seven: Diligence

Take advantage of any and every way to do something that no other company would consider or accept. We make a difference most often in the small projects we select rather than the big ones, so we always have a dozen (or four) projects going at once. But that workload is no excuse for simply coloring within the lines. What will make your work great are the ways in which it isn’t like anyone else’s. That requires focus, effort and diligence.

Eight: Change

Incrementalism leads slowly and inevitably to the middle. Doing things the way everyone else does them and obeying the best practices is a safe path to obsolescence. Change the goal. Change the tactic. Change the strategy. Change yourself. Change is the only path to something amazing.

Nine: Defy

Blow up the standard for what people expect from employer branding. No, really. If you wait for others to tell you what you can do, what you can be, you’ll wait a very long time for anything useful. It’s on you to set your own bar high enough that others will see it.

Ten: Accept

This is hard work. In fact, it won’t always work. Every single day, we extend and strengthen the brand in completely new ways, with no guarantee, so we work hard to give the brand its best chance to succeed. We aren’t here to carry water or take someone’s order. We are here to make art in service of the company, employees and candidates. 

This article was originally published as part of the Employer Brand Headlines, a free weekly newsletter dedicated to pushing the conversation around employer brand forward. Subscribe here.